Green billionaires behind professional activist network that led
suppression of Planet of the Humans documentary
MAX BLUMENTHALSEPTEMBER 7, 2020BIG TECHNON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
The Michael Moore-produced Planet of the Humans faced a coordinated
suppression campaign led by professional climate activists backed by the
same green billionaires, Wall Street investors, industry insiders and
family foundations skewered in the film.
By Max Blumenthal
We must take control of our environmental movement and our future from
billionaires and their permanent war on Planet Earth. They are not our
friends.
-Jeff Gibbs, director of Planet of the Humans
It is hard to think of an American film that provoked a greater backlash in
2020 than Planet of the Humans. Focused on the theme of planetary
extinction and fanciful proposals to ward it off, the documentary was
released for free on YouTube on April 21. The date was significant not only
because it was the eve of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, but because a
global pandemic was tearing through Americas social fabric and exposing the
human toll of the countrys globalized, growth-obsessed economic model.
Even before Planet of the Humans was released, however, the producers of
the film had fallen under pressure to retract it. Upon the films release, a
whos who of self-styled climate justice activists proceeded to blanket the
internet with accusations that it was a racist, eco-fascist screed that
deliberately advanced the interests of the oil and gas industry. When
Planet of the Humans was briefly yanked from YouTube thanks to a
questionable copyright claim by an angry climate warrior, the free speech
organization Pen America issued a remarkable statement characterizing the
demands for retraction as a coordinated censorship campaign.
What had this documentary done to inflame so much opposition from the faces
and voices of professional climate justice activism? First, it probed the
well-established shortcomings of renewable energy sources like solar and
wind power that have been marketed as a green panacea. Planet of the
Humans portrayed these technologies as anything but green, surveying the
environmental damage already caused by solar and wind farms, which require
heavy mining and smelting to produce, destroy swaths of pristine land, and
sometimes demand natural gas to operate.
While major environmental outfits have lobbied for a Green New Deal to fuel
a renewables-based industrial revolution, and are now banking on a
Democratic presidency to enact their proposals, Planet of the Humans put
forward a radical critique that called their entire agenda into question.
As the director of the documentary, Jeff Gibbs, explained, When we focus on
climate change only as the thing destroying the planet and we demand
solutions, we get used by forces of capitalism who want to continue to sell
us the disastrous illusion that we can mine and smelt and industrialize our
way out of this extinction event. And again, behind the scenes, much of what
were doing to save the planet is to burn the bio of the planet as green
energy.
Planet of the Humans crossed another bright green line by taking aim at
the self-proclaimed climate justice activists themselves, painting them as
opportunists who had been willingly co-opted by predatory capitalists. The
filmmakers highlighted the role of family foundations like the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund in cultivating a class of professional activists that tend
toward greenwashing partnerships with Wall Street and the Democratic Party
to coalitions with anti-capitalist militants and anti-war groups.
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and guru of climate justice activism,
is seen throughout Planet of the Humans consorting with Wall Street
executives and pushing fossil fuel divestment campaigns that enable powerful
institutions to reshuffle their assets into plastics and mining while
burnishing their image. McKibben has even called for environmentalists to
cooperate with the Pentagon, one of the worlds worst polluters and greatest
exporters of violence, because when it speaks frankly, [it] has the
potential to reach Americans who wont listen to scientists.
Perhaps the most provocative critique contained in Planet of the Humans
was the portrayal of full-time climate warriors like McKibben as de facto
lobbyists for green tech billionaires and Wall Street investors determined
to get their hands on the whopping $50 trillion profit opportunity that a
full transition to renewable technology represents. Why have figures like
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Michael Bloomberg, Virgins Richard Branson, and
Tesla founder Elon Musk been plowing their fortunes into climate advocacy?
The documentary taunted those who accepted these oligarchs gestures of
environmental concern at face value.
For years, leftist criticism of professional climate activism has been
largely relegated to blogs like Wrong Kind of Green, which maintains an
invaluable archive of critical work on the co-optation of major
environmental organizations by the billionaire class. Prominent greens might
have been able to dismiss scrutiny from radical corners of the internet as
background noise; however, they were unable to ignore Planet of the
Humans.
That was because Oscar-winning documentarian Michael Moore put his name on
the film as executive producer, alongside his longtime producer, Gibbs, and
the scholar-researcher Ozzie Zehner. Michael Moore validates this film,
Josh Fox, the filmmaker who led the campaign against Planet of the Humans,
told me. So if Michael Moores name is not on that film, its like a
thousand other crappy movies.
By racking up millions of views after just a month on YouTube, Planet of
the Humans threatened to provoke an unprecedented debate about the
corruption of environmental politics by the one percent. But thanks to the
campaign by Fox and his allies, much of the debate wound up focused on the
film itself, and the credibility of its producers.
I had some sense that the film was going to ruffle some feathers, but I was
unprepared for that response from what ended up being a group of people who
are like an echo chamber all related to the same funding organizations,
said Zehner. Its a pretty tight circle and it was a really strong,
virulent pushback.
The line of attack that may have gained the most traction in progressive
circles portrayed a convoluted section of the film on the dangers of
population growth and overconsumption as Malthusian, and even racist. Zehner
told me he considered the attacks opportunistic, but from a public
relations standpoint, they were effective. What we were trying to do was
highlight the dangers of a consumption-based economic model.
The backlash to Planet of the Humans also related to its portrayal of
renewables as badly flawed sources of energy that were also environmentally
corrosive. Many of those attacks painted the films presentation of solar
and wind to present the documentary as out of date and filled with
misinformation.
Oddly, the professional activists who coordinated the campaign to bury
Planet of the Humans glossed over an entire third of the documentary which
focused on the corruption and co-optation of environmental politics by
green foundations and green investors.
As this investigation will reveal, those climate justice activists were
bound together by support from the same family foundations, billionaire
investors, and industry interests that were skewered in the film.
Josh Fox Planet of the Humans billionaires
Filmmaker Josh Fox
Censorship, plain and simple
The ringleader of the push to suppress Planet of the Humans was Josh Fox,
the Oscar-nominated director of the film Gasland, which highlighted the
destructive practices inherent to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fox
launched the campaign with a sign-on letter calling for the documentary to
be retracted by its producers. Then, in an incendiary takedown published in
The Nation, he branded Michael Moore the new flack for oil and gas, a
racist, and eco-fascist for producing the film.
As videographer Matt Orfalea reported, Foxs crusade began the night Moores
film was released, with an unhinged mass email to online publishers that
blasted the documentary as A GIGANTIC CROCK OF SHIT. Fox commanded, It
must come down off your pages immediately.
Hours later, Fox fired off another breathless email to a group of public
relations professionals. A number of reputable websites are hosting this
abomination and I need your support in getting them to take it down, he
wrote. The following day, Fox took to Twitter to assure his ally, 350.org
founder Bill McKibben, We are on it.
Next, Fox organized a sign-on letter demanding the film be retracted by its
creators and distributors and an apology rendered for its misleading
content. Among the letters signatories was academic and renewables
advocate Leah C. Stokes, who proclaimed her wish in an article in Vox that
this film will be buried, and few will watch it or remember it.
On April 24, Josh Fox claimed he had successfully pressured an online video
library, Films For Action, into removing Planet of the Humans from its
website. His victory lap turned out to be premature, as Films For Action
re-posted the film and publicly condemned Foxs campaign to drive it into
oblivion.
The relentless push by Fox and others eventually triggered a striking
statement by PEN America, the free speech advocacy group. Calls to pull a
film because of disagreement with its content are calls for censorship,
plain and simple, PEN America declared.
Listen, nobody called to censor this movie, Fox insisted to me. We asked
the filmmakers as part of their community to retract it, because it unfairly
attacked people that we know are good, honest dealers and its premise was
wrong and false.
Fox likened Planet of the Humans to radio host Mike Daiseys monologue on
visiting the Foxconn factory in China where iPhones are made, and which was
retracted by NPR after major fabrications came to light. Its clear to me
that the filmmakers
put incorrect information into the film that they knew
was incorrect. That thing was out of date, Fox said of the Moore-produced
documentary. And many, many people from within our community reached out to
them, which I didnt know actually, prior to the release of the film and
said, This information is incorrect. What are you doing?'
Fox was particularly incensed at Michael Moore for attaching his reputation
to the film. He described the famed director as one of the bad guys; a
megalomaniacal multi-millionaire who craves attention unlike anyone Ive
ever met; the 800-pound elephant in the room; the maker of a racist and
eco-fascist film; and a multi-millionaire circus barker guilty of
journalistic malpractice.
The real bully is Michael Moore here, Fox maintained. Its not me.
Though Fox and his allies did not succeed in erasing Planet of the Humans
from the internet, the documentary was momentarily removed from YouTube on
the grounds of a copyright claim by a British photographer named Toby Smith.
In a tweet he later deleted, Smith said his opposition to the film was
personal, blasting it as a baseless, shite doc built on bull-shit and
endless copyright infringements.
As the attacks on Planet of the Humans snowballed, director Jeff Gibbs
attempted to defend his film. Following an article at The Guardian branding
the film as dangerous, Gibbs emailed the papers opinion editors
requesting a right of reply. He told me they never responded. However, just
hours after Toby Smiths politically-motivated copyright claim prompted
YouTube to remove Gibbs documentary, he said The Guardian reached out to
him for comment. Howd they catch that so early? he wondered.
A few left-wing journalists tried to push back on the attacks as well. But
in almost every case, they were spiked by editors at ostensibly progressive
journals. Christopher Ketcham, author of This Land: How Cowboys,
Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West, was among those
unable to find a venue in which to defend the documentary.
I have come across very few editors radical enough to have the exceedingly
difficult conversation about the downscaling, simplification, and the turn
(in the developed world) toward diminished affluence that a 100 percent
renewable energy system will necessarily entail, Ketcham reflected to me.
You see, they have to believe that they can keep their carbon-subsidized
entitlements, their toys, their leisure travel no behavioral change or
limits needed and it will all be green and sustainable.'
Naomi Klein, perhaps the most prominent left-wing writer on climate-related
issues in the West, did not weigh in to defend Planet of the Humans.
Instead, the Intercept columnist, social activist, and Gloria Steinem
Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University
was an early participant in the campaign to suppress the film.
According to McKibben, Naomi [Klein] had in fact taken Moore aside in an
MSNBC greenroom before the documentarys release to lobby him against
publishing the film. Klein later signed Josh Foxs open letter demanding the
film be retracted.
On Twitter, Klein condemned Planet of the Humans as truly demoralizing,
and promoted a big blog/fact check of the film by Ketan Joshi, a former
communications officer for the Australian wind farm company Infigen Energy.
Mining a green future and burying the cost
Like most opponents of Planet of the Humans, Ketan Joshi painted the
documentary as a dumb old bull in the china shop that is 2020s hard-earned
climate action environment. And along with other critics, he accused the
films co-producers, Gibbs and Zehner, of wildly misrepresenting the
efficiency of renewables.
To illustrate his point, he referenced a scene depicting the Cedar Street
Solar Array in Lansing, Michigan with flexible solar panels running at 8%
efficiency purportedly enough to generate electricity for just 10 homes.
Because that scene was part of a historical sequence filmed in 2008, Joshi
dismissed it as an example of the films extreme oldness.
However, this February, the solar trade publication PV Magazine found that
Teslas newest line of flexible solar shingles had an efficiency rate of
8.1% almost exactly the same as those depicted in Planet of the Humans.
While it is true that mono-crystalline solar panels boast a higher
efficiency rate (between 15% and 18% in commercially available form), they
were also on the market back in 2008. These panels are significantly more
expensive than the flexible, less efficient panels, however. And their
efficiency levels do not account for the intermittency inherent to solar
energy, which does not work well in cloudy or dark conditions.
Yet according to Josh Fox, the most vehement opponent of Planet of the
Humans, the planet-saving capacity of solar and other supposedly clean
forms of energy was so well-established it was beyond debate.
The premise of the film is renewable energy doesnt work and is dependent
on fossil fuels. And that is patently ridiculous, Fox remarked to me. And
the reason why I got into this is because I had young environmentalists
young people who are steadfast campaigners calling me in the middle of the
night, freaking out, [telling me] I cant believe this! And I looked at
them and I said, Well, theres a reason why you cant believe this; its
because its not true.'
But was the presentation of renewable energy sources in Planet of the
Humans actually false? Ecological economist William Rees has claimed that
despite rapid growth in wind and solar generation, the green energy
transition is not really happening. That might be because it is chasing
energy growth instead of curtailing it. Rees pointed out that the surge in
global demand for electricity last year exceeded the total output of the
worlds entire 30-year accumulation of solar power installations.
Are there not reasonable grounds then to be concerned about the practicality
of a full transition to renewables, especially in a hyper-capitalist,
growth-obsessed economy like that of the United States?
A September 2018 scientific study delivered some conclusions that
contradicted the confident claims of renewables advocates. A research team
measured solar thermal plants currently in operation around the world and
found that they are dependent on the intensive use of materials, which is
code for heavily mined minerals.
minerals renewable energy IEA
Minerals needed to produce renewable energy (Source: International Energy
Agency / IEA)
Further, the researchers found that the output of these plants was marred by
significant seasonal intermittence due to shifting weather patterns and
the simple fact that the sun does not always shine.
The negative impact of massive wind farms on the environment and
marginalized communities an issue highlighted in Planet of the Humans
is also a serious concern, especially in the Global South. Anthropologist
and Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance
in a Latin American Context author Alexander Dunlap published a
peer-reviewed 2017 study of wind farms in the indigenous Tehuantepec region
of Oaxaca, Mexico, which has been marketed as one of the most ideal wind
generation sites in the world. Dunlap found that the supposedly renewable
projects largely reinforced income inequality, furthered poverty
entrenchment and increased food vulnerability and worker dependency on the
construction of more wind parks, which cumulatively has led to an increase
in work-related out-migration and environmental degradation.
When wind turbines reach the end of their life cycle, their fiberglass
blades, which can be as long as a football field, are impossible to recycle.
As a result, they are piling up in rural dumping sites across the US.
Meanwhile, the environmentalist magazine Grist warned this August of a
solar e-waste glut that will produce megatons of toxic trash when solar
panels begin to lose efficiency and die.
In response to my questions about so-called renewable energy, Fox referred
me to a close ally, Anthony Ingraffea, who signed his letter calling for
Planet of the Humans to be pulled. A civil engineer and co-founder of
Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy, which advocates for
renewables, Ingraffea is a former oil and gas industry insider who turned
into a forceful opponent of fracking. In the past six years, he has produced
scientific assessments for the governments of New York State and California
on a transition to mostly renewable energy sources.
Ingraffea slammed Planet of the Humans as way off base and derided
research by Ozzie Zehner, the co-producer, as conspiracy theory shit. He
contrasted his credentials with those of Zehner, boasting that while he has
earned 15,000 citations in peer-reviewed academic journals during his career
as an engineer, Zehner had chalked up a mere 300.
When I turned to the subject of social and environmental damage caused by
so-called renewables, Ingraffea argued that the burning, storing, and
transportation of fossil fuels outweighed any of those costs. According to
Ingraffea, when New York State makes a decisive transition to renewables,
only about 2% of the states land would be occupied by solar and wind farms
which translates to about 1,100 square miles.
He pointed to the New York State Assemblys Climate Leadership and Community
Protection Act as an embodiment of the foresight of proponents of a
near-total transition to renewable energy. The bill, which calls for the
state to run 70% of its publicly generated energy off of renewable energy
systems by 2030, also mandates that 35 percent of investments from clean
energy and energy efficiency funds [be] invested in disadvantaged
communities.
Thats wisdom speaking, Ingraffea said of the legislation. Thats telling
you that yes, we are aware of the problem that you said we should be aware
of. Yeah, were not all dumb. Were not all crazy. Were not all
ideological. Not all technical nerds who just fall in love and want to make
sex with solar panels.
However, the communities (or their designated NGO representatives)
supposedly compensated through the New York State bill are not located in
the regions that will be most impacted by the extraction necessary to
manufacture so-called renewables. Already devastated by coups and
neocolonial exploitation, swathes of the Global South from Bolivia to Congo
home to massive reserves of cobalt hand-mined in slave conditions for
electric car batteries and iPhones are being further destabilized by the
minerals rush.
Even mainstream environmentalists acknowledge that rising reliance on
renewable energy means a lot of dirty mining to extract the minerals
required for electric batteries and solar cells. This prospect has sparked
excitement within the mining industry, with the editor of Mining.com, Frik
Els, dubbing Green New Deal spokeswomen Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Greta Thunberg minings unlikely heroines.
Going all in on the green economy and decarbonisation requires siding with
the greens against fossil fuels, Els informed fellow mining industry
insiders. It means selling global mining as the solution to climate change
because mining metals is the only path to green energy and green transport.
Mining com Greta Thunberg AOC
The inevitable rush on minerals required to power the green revolution has
not exactly delighted residents of the Global South, however.
Evo Morales, the indigenous former president of Bolivia, was driven from
power in 2019 by a military junta backed by the United States and local
oligarchs, in what he branded a lithium coup. With the worlds largest
untapped lithium resources, Bolivia is estimated to hold as much as half of
the worlds reserves. Under Morales, the country guaranteed that only
state-owned firms could mine the mineral.
The ousted socialist leader argued that multi-national corporations
supported his right-wing domestic opponents in order to get their hands on
Bolivias lithium an essential element in the electric batteries that
provide the cornerstone to a digital economy dependent on smartphones,
laptops, and electric vehicles. As a small country of 10 million
inhabitants, we were soon going to set the price of lithium, Morales said.
They know we have the greatest lithium reserves in the world [in a space
of] 16,000 square kilometers.
minerals electric cars IEA
Minerals needed to produce electric cars (Source: International Energy
Agency / IEA)
Just before the military coup in Bolivia, a report (PDF) by the World
Economic Forums Global Battery Alliance reported that the global demand for
electric batteries will increase 14-fold before 2030. Almost half of todays
lithium is mined to produce electric batteries, and the demand for the
mineral will only rise as power grids incorporate high levels of battery
powered tech and the demand for electric vehicles increases.
Electric batteries are also heavily reliant on cobalt, most of which is
mined from Congo, and often in illegal and dangerous conditions by child
labor. In December 2019, over a dozen Congolese plaintiffs sued Apple,
Googles Alphabet parent company, Microsoft, Dell, and Tesla, accusing them
of knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal
use of young children in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to mine
cobalt.
This July, Tesla CEO and electric battery kingpin Elon Musk appeared to take
partial credit for the 2019 military coup that forced Bolivias Evo Morales
from power, asserting that big tech billionaires like him could coup
whoever we want.
The payoff for all the dirty and deadly mining required to manufacture the
solar panels, wind turbines, and electric batteries required to power the
new industrial revolution is supposed to be a planet no longer faced with a
climate emergency and nevermind the damage to the Earth and its
non-human inhabitants. But with the demand for electricity constantly
growing, is it even possible to power an economy like that of the US with
entirely renewable sources of energy (excluding nuclear)?
A scientific projection by one of the closest allies of Josh Fox and Anthony
Ingraffea was supposed to have answered that question and put all doubts to
bed. Instead, it resulted in acrimony and embarrassment for its author.
The 2050 transition goal: real science or a murky crystal ball?
In his piece hammering Planet of the Humans in The Nation, Fox touted the
proliferation of 100 percent renewable energy plans put forward by Stanford
University Professor Mark Jacobson as one of the most important pieces of
evidence refuting the films grim narrative.
Jacobsons study, according to National Geographic, was a foundation stone
of the Green New Deal proposal put forward by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was also central to the energy plan
advanced by the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who
co-authored an op-ed with Jacobson that called for a full transition to
clean energy by 2050.
Jacobson, like Ingraffea, is an environmental engineer and political partner
of Fox. The Stanford professor helped Fox found the environmental advocacy
organization the Solutions Project, alongside actor Mark Ruffalo and the
banker and former Tesla executive Marco Krapels in 2011. (More on this group
later.)
Besides his working relationship with Jacobson, Fox failed to acknowledge
that the professors all-renewables projection was strongly challenged by 21
leading energy scientists in the prestigious Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences journal. The scientists concluded Jacobsons paper was
rife with invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made
implausible and inadequately supported assumptions.
A survey of the debate by Scientific American scoffed at Jacobsons
remarkable assumption that U.S. hydroelectric dams could add turbines and
transformers to produce 1,300 gigawatts of electricity instantaneously
or
the equivalent of about 1000 large nuclear or coal power plants running at
full power.
Jacobson retaliated against his critics by filing a $10 million defamation
lawsuit, which he was forced to withdraw in 2018. Legal commentator Kenneth
White described the suit as clearly vexatious and intended to silence
dissent about an alleged scientists peer-reviewed article.
This April, a DC Superior Court judge invoked anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit
Against Public Participation) legislation that reportedly ordered Jacobson
to pay the defendants legal fees.
Planet of the Humans co-producer Ozzie Zehner saw Mark Jacobsons flameout
as a symptom of a wider problem within mainstream climate activism. When
Big Greens talk about facts, they often arent talking about what most
people understand to be facts, he explained. Theyre usually talking about
models, which attempt to predict the future based on estimations of physical
conditions, projections, and assumptions. Greens industrialists claim they
can accurately model a renewable energy future and its effects on the global
biosphere. But our best science cant even model a fish tank.
Ingraffea insisted that Jacobsons legal fight had only begun, and said the
professors critics were partially driven by Mark [Jacobson] having made a
very famous name for himself in an arena with many other people working, and
theyre not getting all the fame.
Jacobson echoed this line in his own defense: They dont like the fact that
were getting a lot of attention, so theyre trying to diminish our work.
Give the guy a break, Ingraffea appealed. You know, if hes wrong, of
course hes wrong. No ones going to be right. No one could possibly be
right right now about whats going to happen in 25 years. Were all entitled
to our projections. Were all entitled to our crystal balls.
That same courtesy was not extended by Ingraffea and his allies to the
makers of Planet of the Humans, however. We were unable to identify any
factual errors in the film, and were open to the idea that we could be
wrong about some things, Zehner said. But wed like to have that debate
and not be shut down.
Among the wave of attacks on Planet of the Humans, a disproportionate
number were churned out by renewables industry insiders, from an innovation
strategist at the Green Power Energy firm that was criticized in the film
for clearing a Vermont mountaintop to build a wind farm (For me, this film
was personal, he stated), to Now You Know, a podcast by two mega-fans of
Elon Musk who fawningly refer to the billionaire as Elon and have proudly
declared that they are long on Tesla stock.
Missing from nearly all of the takedowns was the documentarys scathing
critique of the corruption of environmental politics by billionaires and
elite family foundations.
The conversation our critics really didnt want to have was about the last
one-third of the film, Zehner remarked, which dealt with the influence of
billionaires and money in the environmental movement, and the divestment
sham.
The shell game of fossil fuel divestment
The tactic of fossil fuel divestment is at the heart of the so-called
climate justice movements plan to defeat the fossil fuel industry. Launched
by Bill McKibbens 350.org and a coalition of professional activists soon
after the re-election of President Barack Obama in 2012, the campaign has
resulted in institutions like Oxford University and Goldman Sachs supposedly
divesting their holdings in oil and gas companies. Campaigners like McKibben
simultaneously encouraged their constituents to invest in funds whose
portfolios were supposedly free of fossil fuel companies.
Planet of the Humans raked this tactic over the proverbial coals,
demonstrating how investment funds endorsed by 350.org have engaged in a
shell game in which fossil fuel assets are simply replaced with investments
in plastics, mining, oil and gas infrastructure companies, and biomass.
The big issue with divestment is that it absolves the destructive power of
extreme wealth, Zehner explained. Its saying that family foundations can
be forgiven and money can be moved into mining, gas and oil infrastructure,
solar, wind, and biomass. They divest from the brand name coal companies
while investing in infrastructure companies that support coal mining.
In one of the most controversial scenes in Planet of the Humans, Bill
McKibben was seen inaugurating a wood-burning biomass energy plant at
Middlebury College, where he has been a scholar-in-residence. The
environmental leader praised the initiative as an act of courage.
Because the event took place in 2009, McKibben and his allies have attacked
the scene as an unfair representation of his current position. In an
official 350.org response to Planet of the Humans, McKibben claimed that
his views on biomass have evolved, leading him to cease his support for the
energy source in 2016.
Yet less than a week after The Nation published Josh Foxs incendiary attack
on Michael Moore and Planet of the Humans, Nation editor-in-chief D.D.
Guttenplan hosted an event with McKibben that was sponsored by a fund with
major investments in several wood-to-energy biomass companies.
Called Domini Impact Investments, the fund claims to hold investments in 68
companies
that both impact forests and depend on them, whether for forest
derived products or ecosystem services. One such Domini holding is a
wood-to-energy company called Ameresco, which builds large, utility-scale
biomass-to-energy plants, according to its website.
Domini Impact also features its sustainable timber holdings, including
Klabin SA, a company with logging operations spanning 590,580 acres in
Brazil. Klabin SA manufactures pulp and paper products and operates a 270MW
on-site black liquor biomass plant. This May, just days after Domini
sponsored McKibbens talk, the company purchased a second biomass plant.
(Fabio Schvartzman, the former CEO of Klabin SA, was charged with 270 counts
of homicide in Brazil this January, after allegedly concealing knowledge of
an imminent dam burst to protect the share price of his current company,
Vale. The 2019 Mariana dam collapse has been described as Brazils worst
environmental disaster.)
While introducing the Domini-sponsored event with McKibben, The Nations
Guttenplan stated, By investing in the Domini Funds, you can help build a
better future for the planet and its people, and be part of a movement
working to address a wide range of social and environmental issues including
human rights, climate change mitigation and forest stewardship.
Neither McKibben nor Guttenplan responded to email requests for comment from
The Grayzone.
Domini Funds was hardly the only investment fund that McKibben has partnered
with to promote fossil fuel divestment and which has engaged in the shell
game exposed in Planet of the Humans.
In what was perhaps the films most devastating scene, narrator Jeff Gibbs
detailed how McKibben has advised 350.org members to direct their money into
the Green Century Fund, an investment portfolio that boasts of being wholly
owned by environmental and public health nonprofit organizations, and free
of fossil fuel stock.
Green Century Funds Bill McKibben invest fossil fuels
As Planet of the Humans revealed, however, the Green Century Funds
portfolio has contained heavy investments in mining companies, oil, and gas
infrastructure companies, including an exploiter of tar sands, the biofuel
giant Archer Daniels Midland, McDonalds, Coca Cola (the worlds leading
plastic pollution proliferator), logging giants, and big banks from Bank of
America to HSBC.
Asked about this section of the film, Josh Fox dismissed it as out of date.
He claimed that the entire idea of what constitutes a divested fund has
changed really radically over the last eight years, starting at first from
just oil, coal and gas investments, to then encompassing things like
plastics and the meat industry and derivatives and all other options.
However, a probe of the 2019 Securities and Exchange Commission filings by
Green Century Funds showed the fund held thousands of shares in meat giant
McDonalds and Royal Caribbean Cruises, among other mega-polluters. The
latter companys Harmony of the Seas ship happens to be the most
environmentally toxic cruise liner on Earth, relying on three massive diesel
engines to burn 66,000 gallons of fuel a day. By the end of one voyage
across the Atlantic, the ship has expended the same amount of gasoline as
over 5 million automobiles traveling the same distance.
Green Centurys SEC filing boasted that it elicited a pledge from Royal
Caribbean to make its food waste management and reduction strategies more
public. It also claimed to have helped convince McDonalds, the largest
purchaser of beef in the world, to restrict the use of antibiotics in its
beef and chicken supply chains.
It was a classic case of greenwashing, in which corporate behemoths
burnished their reputation among progressives by embracing cosmetic reforms
that did little to challenge their bottom lines.
When I informed Fox about Green Centurys ongoing investments in
carbon-heavy industries, he said, Well, Im all for an investigation of
those things on real grounds.
In the same breath, Fox pivoted to another complaint about Planet of the
Humans: The film attacks Bill McKibben in ways that were unfair and
untrue.
Was that the case, though? One of the most provocative points about McKibben
and his allies in Planet of the Humans that they function as de facto
public relations agents for the green billionaires seeking to cash in on
the renewables rush was never coherently answered. But as this
investigation reveals, the climate warriors criticized in the film are
sponsored by many of those same billionaires, as well as the network of
family foundations that help set the agenda for groups like 350.org.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund incubates 350.org
In perhaps the most uncomfortable scene in Planet of the Humans, Bill
McKibben was shown visibly squirming as an interviewer asked him about
family foundation support for his 350.org.
Were not exactly Big Greens, McKibben insisted during a 2011 interview
with climate journalist Karyn Strickler. Im a volunteer, weve got seven
people who work full time on this 350.org campaign.
With a telling smirk on her face, Strickler asked McKibben how his group
sustained itself.
To the degree that we have any money at all its come from a few
foundations in Europe and the US, McKibben insisted.
He mentioned a foundation based in Sweden, I think its called the
Rasmussen Foundation that I think has been the biggest funder.
After some prodding by Strickler, a visibly uncomfortable McKibben divulged
that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave us some money right when we were
starting out. Thats been useful too.
However, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rasmussen were not observing the
birth of 350.org from the sidelines. In fact, the Rockefeller Brothers were
instrumental in establishing 350.org and guiding the organizations agenda.
It began when the foundation incubated a group called 1Sky with a $1 million
grant. McKibben immediately joined as board member.
As documented by radical environmentalist Cory Morningstar, 1Skys launch
was announced at a 2007 gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative by former
President Bill Clinton, who stood on stage beside Rockefeller Brothers Fund
President Stephen Heintz. Four years later, the Rockefeller Brothers
announced the exciting marriage of 1Sky and 350.org two grantees of the
Rockefeller Brothers Funds Sustainable Development program.
Why McKibben was so uncomfortable about discussing his relationship with
Rockefeller was unclear. Perhaps he was concerned that the organization he
once described as a scruffy little outfit would be seen as a central node
in the donor-driven non-profit industrial complex.
Whatever his motives were, since the testy exchange with Strickler, the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund has contributed over $1 million to McKibbens
350.org.
Alongside a network of foundations and green billionaires, the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund and its $1.2 billion endowment serves as a primary engine of
the network of self-styled climate justice activists that sought to
steamroll Planet of the Humans.
These interests have cohered around the Environmental Grantmakers
Association (EGA), which is located in the New York City offices of the
Rockefeller Family Fund.
The EGA enables elite foundations and billionaire donors to cultivate a
cadre of professional doers during retreats in scenic locations. One
first-time student attendee said the retreat experience was designed with
the intention of strengthening relationships between funders and build[ing]
relationships within the environmental movement. As soon as she arrived,
she was paired with mentor buddies, folks who had been to past EGA
Retreats to show us the ropes.
These encounters take place in Napa Valley, California, or at the Mohonk
Mountain House resort in New Yorks Hudson Valley.A report by the Threshold
Foundation described the theme of the 2015 EGA fall retreat at Mohonk:
Fund the Fighters! Thats the rallying call from the stars. Not the
celestial stars, but from well-known artists such as Mark Ruffalo and Naomi
Klein.
In accordance with its relationship with the EGAs network of environmental
cadres and outfits like 350.org, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund embraced
their fossil fuel divestment campaign, shedding its stocks in oil and coal
while increasing assets in other industries that can hardly be described as
green. A look at the results of the foundations move offers another
disturbing case study in the divestment shell game.
The Rockefeller Brothers go green, invest in Halliburton
In 2014, following consultations with 350.org, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
announced that it was divesting from fossil fuels. We were extremely
uncomfortable with the moral ambivalence of funding programs around the
climate catastrophe while still being invested in the fossil fuels that were
bringing us closer to that catastrophe, Rockefeller Brothers Fund President
Stephen Heintz said.
At a December 2015 side session of the UN climate conference in Paris,
350.org executive director May Boeve joined Heintz to celebrate the
foundations decision to divest. A growing number of investors representing
a growing amount of capital do not want to be associated with this industry
any longer, Boeve stated.
350.orgs Boeve and Rockefellers Heintz at the UN climate summit in 2015
A look at the most recent publicly available financial filing of the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, from 2018 (PDF), offered a clear glimpse at the
shell game that divestment has entailed.
According to the filing, while the Rockefeller Brothers freed itself of
fossil fuels, the foundation remained invested in companies including the
oil services giant Halliburton, the Koch-run multinational petroleum
transportation partnership Inter Pipeline Ltd, and Caterpillar, whose
bulldozers are familiar at scenes of deforestation and Palestinian home
demolitions. (Several NGOs that advocate divestment from companies involved
in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, such as +972 Magazine and the US
Campaign for Palestinian Rights, have also received support from the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund).
The foundation padded its portfolio with stock in financial industry titans
like Citigroup and Wells Fargo, as well as Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold,
Wheaton Precious Metals Corporation, and Agnico Eagle Mines.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund listed at least $20 million of investments in
Vision Ridge Partners, which was itself invested in a biomass company called
Vanguard Renewables under the guise of renewable energy. In December 2019,
Vanguard Renewables forged a partnership with Dominion Energy the energy
giant whose Atlantic Coast Pipeline was defeated this June thanks to
grassroots environmental mobilization to convert methane from farms into
natural gas.
Since the Rockefeller Brothers Fund answered 350.orgs call to divest from
fossil fuels in 2014, the foundations wealth has increased substantially.
As the Washington Post reported, the Rockefeller Brothers funds assets
grew at an annual average rate of 7.76 percent over the five-year period
that ended Dec. 31, 2019.
The outcome of the Rockefellers widely praised move established a clear
precedent for other elite institutions: by allowing organizations like
350.org to lead them by the hand, they could greenwash their image, offload
stocks in a fossil fuel industry described by financial analysts as a
chronic underperformer, and protect their investments in growth industries
like mining, oil services, and biomass.
McKibben, for his part, has marketed fossil fuel divestment as a win-win
strategy for the capitalist class: The institutions that divested from
fossil fuel really did well financially, because the fossil fuel industry
has been the worst performing part of our economy
Even if you didnt care
about destroying the planet, youd want to get out of it because it just
loses money.
Blood and Gore make the case for long-term greed
In another move apparently intended to burnish its green image while padding
its assets, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund invested over $100 million in
Generation Investment Managements Generation Climate Solutions Fund II and
Generation IM Global Equity Fund.
These entities are jointly managed by Al Gore, the former US vice president
who negotiated a notorious carbon offsets loophole at the 1997 Kyoto Climate
Protocol that has been blamed for the release of 600 million tons of excess
emissions. Gore launched the fund alongside David Blood, the ex-CEO of asset
management for Goldman Sachs, in order to promote a climate-friendly
capitalism.
In a 2015 profile of Blood and Gores Generation Investment Management fund,
The Atlantics James Fallows described their investment strategy as a
demonstration of a new version of capitalism, one that will shift the
incentives of financial and business operations toward a profitable green
economy while potentially saving the system of capitalism from itself.
Blood was blunt when asked about his agenda: We are making the case for
long-term greed.
The banker Blood and the green guru McKibben shared a stage together at the
2013 conference of Ceres, a non-profit that works to consolidate the
mutually beneficial relationship between Big Green and Wall Street.
Bill McKibben (on the right) and former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood
at the 2013 Ceres conference
The event featured a cast of corporate executives from companies like
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and GM. Sponsors included Bank of America,
PG&E, Bloomberg, Citi, Ford, GM, Prudential, Wells Fargo, TimeWarner, and a
collection of Fortune 500 companies.
During their conversation, the investor Blood pledged to mobilize something
in the order of $40 to $50 trillion of capital in renewables, underscoring
the massive profit center that a transition to green energy represents.
Its entirely dependent on what kind of political will we can muster,
McKibben proclaimed, pledging to work toward Bloods goal.
The unsettling sight of McKibben discussing multi-trillion dollar profit
possibilities with a former Goldman Sachs banker was featured prominently in
Planet of the Humans, and undoubtedly helped inspire the ferocious
backlash against the documentary by the 350.org founders network.
McKibben was far from alone among climate justice warriors in his dalliance
with the billionaire class, however.
A foundation-supported ragtag bunch
Before Josh Fox launched his media blitz against Planet of the Humans, he
directed a full-length documentary vehicle for 350.org, titled Divest. For
the 2016 film, Fox followed McKibben and allies like Naomi Klein as they
embarked on a cross-country road trip to promote fossil fuel divestment.
Foxs ties to the professional activists extend to the funding network
centered around the Environmental Grantmakers Association. Between 2012 and
2017, Foxs film company International WOW reported grants totaling $2.5
million. Much of that funding came courtesy of the Rockefeller Brothers
Cultural Innovation Fund and Rockefeller MAP fund, as well as the Ford and
Park Foundations.
Josh Fox International WOW funding foundations
Foundation funding for Josh Foxs production company International WOW
(Source)
In 2012, the year Fox and his allies launched their campaign promoting
fossil fuel divestment, he co-founded an environmental advocacy group called
the Solutions Project. He conceived the organization alongside celebrity
actor Mark Ruffalo, former Tesla executive Marco Krapels, and Stanford
Universitys Mark Jacobson the professor behind the dubious 2050
all-renewables projection.
The four founders gathered seed money from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation
of the eponymous film actor, and from the 11th Hour Foundation of Google CEO
Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, according to Fox. Fox said that after a
power struggle and an attempt to force him out in order to raise several
million from the Sierra Club, he, Krapels, and Jacobson eventually left the
organization.
Krapels has since launched an electric battery company in Brazil another
country that happens to hold a massive reserve of lithium and other minerals
necessary for his products. Brazil has experienced a rush on lithium mining
in recent years thanks to the roaring demand for lithium-ion batteries.
Krapels former partner at Teslas disastrous Solar City project, Elon Musk,
announced plans this year to build an electric car factory in Brazil. Musk
has even reportedly sought an audience with the countrys far-right
president, Jair Bolsonaro, to further his business interests.
Today, the Solutions Project is 100% co opted and sold out, Fox
acknowledged. Indeed, the groups board members currently include Brandon
Hurlbut, a former Obama Department of Energy official who founded Boundary
Stone Partners a lobbying firm that represents the nuclear industry. Also
on the board is Billy Parish, the founder of Mosaic, a financial firm that
declares its mission to revolutionize two of the biggest industries in the
world: energy and finance
Mosaics website states. We focus on the
integration of doing good (for the planet) and doing well (financially).
According to its website, the Elon Musk Foundation is among the Solutions
Projects funders. The organization describes Musk as the guy who is trying
to save humanity in like four or five different ways, comparing him to a
Marvel Comics superhero.
In reality, Musk is a ferocious union-buster who recently fired workers for
staying home as the Covid-19 pandemic hit but not before deceiving them
into believing they had permission to safely quarantine.
Other Solutions Project supporters include the Skoll Global Threats Fund,
run by eBay billionaire Jeffrey Skoll. Skoll funded Al Gores film on
climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, which went into production soon
after Gore launched his Generation Investment Management fund an
inconvenient truth pointed out by Planet of the Humans.
The 11th Hour Project foundation of Google CEO Schmidt and his wife remains
a supporter of the Solutions Project after ponying up the seed money to
launch it. Asked in 2014 about the inequality and displacement that start-up
tech businesses bring to the Bay Area, where Google is located, Schmidt
responded, Let us celebrate capitalism. $19 billion for 50 people? Good for
them.
When I challenged Fox about the co-optation of climate justice politics by
tech oligarchs like Skoll, Schmidt, and Musk, he grew defensive. You have
to see these things in a time continuum of us trying to take off big,
something bigger than anybodys ever tried to take on in the world, he
stated, referencing his and his allies fight against the fossil fuel
industry. Theyre bigger than Nazi Germany, bigger than America. Bigger
than all of them combined. Were a ragtag bunch of extraordinarily committed
people who are willing to put our lives on the line to stop the fossil fuel
industry.
Yeah, thats thats really laudable, Fox continued, referring to his own
efforts, and for a multi-millionaire circus barker, as Bill McKibben calls
Michael Moore, to take potshots using flawed science, dishonest techniques,
misrepresentation of the timeline, and 1,000 other things that are
journalistic malpractice and that was called out by an extraordinary number
of people thats the real story here. The real bully is Michael Moore
here. Its not me.
The Producer
This year, Fox launched a one-man show and film called, The Truth Has
Changed. According to promotional material for the performance, Fox
narrated his experience as an eyewitness to history who was the subject
of a 100 million dollar smear campaign from the oil and gas industry.
Josh Fox was the beta test for the types of propaganda and smears the gang
that created Cambridge Analytica is now known for world wide, the films
website stated. And Josh is telling his story in an uncompromising way like
never before.
The performance was supposed to have enjoyed a lengthy run this January at
one of the most renowned venues for political theater in the country, The
Public Theater in New York City. But the show was abruptly canceled after
the Public accused Fox of violating the theaters code of conduct through a
series of verbal abuses to the staff.
Fox, who is Jewish, retaliated by accusing the theaters directors of
anti-Semitism. According to the New York Times, Fox said he had been told
that he was too passionate, too loud and too emotional.
To me that is distinctly cultural, Fox told the paper. Thats a classic
anti-Semitic trope.
Behind the drama over the monologues cancellation, a more salient issue
lingered. The executive producer of Foxs The Truth Has Changed was Tom
Dinwoodie, a wealthy cleantech entrepreneur and engineer who owned dozens
of patents on solar technology, and therefore stood to reap a massive
windfall profit from the renewables revolution that Fox and his allies were
campaigning for.
Dinwoodie, who signed Foxs letter calling for the retraction of Planet of
the Humans, was a top donor to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a so-called
do-tank where he serves as a lead trustee. In 2014, Dinwoodie helped
oversee the merger of his think tank with billionaire Virgin CEO Richard
Bransons Carbon War Room, which was founded with a mission to stimulate
business-led market interventions that advance a low-carbon economy.
Increasingly, the solutions for climate change are those policy measures
that drive economic growth, a spokesman declares in a video announcing the
strategic partnership between Bransons non-profit and Dinwoodies Rocky
Mountain do-tank.
In the same video, billionaire former Democratic Party presidential
candidate and Rocky Mountain Institute donor Tom Steyer emphasized the
profit motive behind the renewables transition: Changing the way we
generate and use energy is the largest industry in the history of the world.
There is no time to waste.
This July 9 the day after the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force released its
policy recommendations the Rocky Mountain Institute launched the Center
for Climate Aligned Finance in partnership with four of the biggest banks in
the world: Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.
The initiative, according to Rocky Mountain, will serve as an engine room
for the financial sector to partner with corporate clients to identify
practical solutions through deep partnerships with industry, civil society
and policymakers to facilitate a transition in the global economy to
net-zero emissions by mid-century.
The partnership represented an obvious boon for green tycoons like Dinwoodie
who profit from renewable energy. And for the big banks that continued to
top the list of the worlds most prolific investors in the fossil fuel
industry, it was another opportunity to greenwash their public image.
Given the economic interests represented by Dinwoodie and his do-tank, it
was easy to understand why he signed Foxs letter calling for Planet of the
Humans to be retracted. The documentary had not only hammered his political
partner, Richard Branson, as a PR savvy oligarch exploiting environmental
politics, it took aim at the ethos of Big Green outfits that comforted their
ruling class funders with the promise that they could do good while
continuing to do well.
When I asked Fox why he thought big tech tycoons and their family
foundations were plowing their fortunes into climate activism, he responded,
Probably saving the planet.
The Danish connection
While wealthy green businessmen like Dinwoodie and Elon Musk furthered their
commercial interests by underwriting green advocacy, the V. Kann Rasmussen
Foundation and its closely affiliated KR (Kann-Rasmussen) Foundation have
strategically directed their resources into nurturing a whos who of
professional climate warriors including several that played a role in the
campaign to suppress Planet of the Humans.
Brian Valbjørn Sørensen, the executive director of the KR Foundation, was a
former special advisor to the center-left Danish government that lost power
in 2015. KRs chair, Connie Hedegaard, was the ex-minister for climate and
energy for the center-right Danish government of Anders Fogg Rasmussen, who
went on to serve as secretary general of the NATO military alliance. As the
European Unions first climate chief, Hedegaard argued that renewable energy
could strengthen NATOs soft power against Russia by reducing natural gas
imports from the designated enemy state.
KRs support for groups like 350.org surfaced in Planet of the Humans
during the cringe-inducing scene in which journalist Karyn Strickler grilled
Bill McKibben about his organizational funders. According to the KR
Foundation, it donated $2 million to 350.org in 2019.
Toby Smith, the photographer who filed the copyright claim against Planet of
the Humans on explicitly personal grounds, happened to have been the media
outreach director of a KR-funded non-profit called Climate Outreach. As the
Rasmussen familys KR Foundation stated in a recent financial filing, it
initiated grants totaling nearly $2 million to Climate Outreach in 2019
alone.
When British columnist George Monbiot published a vitriolic condemnation of
Planet of the Humans in The Guardian, he neglected to mention that he had
been a board member of the Rasmussen-backed Climate Outreach.
The V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation has also supported Naomi Kleins
environmentalist outfit, The Leap, according to the foundations website.
Klein, a longtime critic of elite family foundations and the billionaire
class, was among the most prominent figures to join the campaign to censor
Planet of the Humans. As her ally McKibben acknowledged, she
unsuccessfully pressured Michael Moore to retract Planet of the Humans
before it was even released.
Klein has celebrated the Danish government where KR Foundation leaders have
served for advancing some of the most visionary environmental policies in
the world. At the same time, she has denounced the autocratic industrial
socialism of the Soviet Union and the petro-populism of the socialist
government of Venezuela, where Denmark has recognized US-backed coup leader
Juan Guaidó.
Kleins recent broadsides against Venezuela contrasted strongly with her
signing of a 2004 open letter that proclaimed, If we were Venezuelan
we
would vote for [Hugo] Chavez; and a 2007 column in which she wrote that
thanks to the Chavez government, citizens had renewed their faith in the
power of democracy to improve their lives.
Naomi Klein and Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on November 4, 2015. Gurria was
a former Finance Minister in the administration of Mexicos neoliberal
former president, Ernesto Zedillo. Gurria won the OECDs Globalist of the
Year award for his role in negotiating the NAFTA free trade deal and
promot[ing] trans-nationalism.
From Big Green critic to Planet of the Humans opponent
Naomi Kleins opposition to Planet of the Humans was surprising given the
views she has expressed in the past on mainstream environmental politics. In
2013, for example, she bemoaned the deep denialism in the environmental
movement among the Big Green groups [on how to fight climate change]. And to
be very honest with you, she continued, I think its been more damaging
than the right-wing denialism in terms of how much ground weve lost.
In her widely acclaimed 2008 book The Shock Doctrine, Klein documenting
the Ford Foundations role as a CIA cutout that helped establish the Center
for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago.
The Ford-funded academic department nurtured the infamous Chicago Boys, a
group of neoliberal economists led by Milton Friedman who conceived the
disaster capitalist shock doctrine that inspired the title of Kleins
book. They applied their program to Chile as General Augusto Pinochets
economic advisors following his CIA-backed military coup to destroy the
leftist government of Chilean President Salvador Allende.
Klein also surveyed the Ford Foundations support for the Berkeley Mafia
at the University of California that advised the hyper-repressive junta of
General Suharto, which toppled Indonesias socialist government in 1965.
The Berkeley Mafia had studied in the US as part of a program that began in
1956, funded by the Ford Foundation
Klein wrote. Ford-funded students
became leaders of the campus groups that participated in overthrowing
Sukarno, and the Berkeley Mafia worked closely with the military in the
lead-up to the coup
Henry Kissinger, the Nixon foreign policy guru whom Klein identified as the
mastermind of the dirty war in Chile, had previously served as the director
of the Rockefeller Brothers Funds Special Strategies Project, which helped
conceive US national security strategies for countering the spread of
communism.
Today, the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund support an array of
liberal causes, from diversity and racial justice initiatives to the network
of NGOs organizing for fossil fuel divestment. At the same time, the Ford
Foundation backs organizations that push regime change in Latin America,
partnering with the US government to fund Freedom House, a DC-based NGO
which supported the failed coup to oust Nicaraguas elected leftist
government in 2018. For its part, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has
supported The Syria Campaign, a public relations outfit that clamored for US
military intervention to remove the UN-recognized government of Syria.
In 2011, when Klein was appointed to 350.orgs board of directors, she
joined forces with an environmental organization incubated by the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund and supported by the Ford Foundation. As 350.org
founder Bill McKibben puts it: unless we go after the money pollution, no
campaign against real pollution stands a chance, Klein wrote at the time.
Kleins 2015 book and documentary film on climate change, This Changes
Everything, was initially launched as a project called The Message. It
was supported with hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from a whos
who of major family foundations that help sustain McKibbens political
apparatus.
In one of several grants to the book and film project, the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund contributed $50,000 to The Message via a non-profit
pass-through called the Sustainable Markets Foundation. [PDF]
Susan Rockefeller served as a co-executive producer of the documentary
version of This Changes Everything. Her husband, David Rockefeller Jr. is
the son of tycoon David Rockefeller, a US government-linked cold warrior who
co-founded the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and helped back the US-managed coup
that put Pinochet and the Chicago Boys in power in Chile. Rockefeller Jr., a
major supporter of conservationist causes, is a former chairman of the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund and board member of Rockefeller Financial
Services.
In 2014, the Ford Foundation chipped in with $250,000 to Kleins project.
[PDF]
Kleins The Message also benefited from $140,000 in support from the
Schmidt Family Foundation of Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy.
The Schmidt Family Foundation is an ongoing contributor to McKibbens
350.org, kicking in $200,000 in 2018 [PDF].
In April 2019, Klein released A Message From The Future, a video
collaboration with Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and artist and
pundit Molly Crabapple, which promoted the Green New Deal as a pathway to a
renewable-powered economic utopia.
Crabapple, a vehement supporter of Washingtons campaign for regime change
in Syria, is an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation,
a Democratic Party-linked think tank substantially funded by Googles
Schmidt, the Ford Foundation and the US State Department.
In a recent The Intercept column, Klein took aim at Schmidt, describing him
as one of the billionaires exploiting a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine
to begin building a high tech dystopia. She noted that Schmidt is closely
aligned with the national security state as chair of the Defense Innovation
Board, which consults for the Pentagon on the militarys application of
artificial intelligence.
Schmidt also happens to be a proponent of a smart energy grid, which he
says will modernize the electric grid to make it look more like the
Internet. Such a model would not only benefit tech companies like Google
which make their money buying and selling data, but the U.S. national
security state, whose partnerships with big tech companies increase the
capacity of its surveillance apparatus.
The Senate version of the Green New Deal calls for the construction of
smart power grids almost exactly like those Schmidt imagined. Klein and
other high-profile Green New Deal proponents have neglected to mention that
this seeming benign component of the well-intentioned plan could represent a
giant step on the way to the high tech dystopia of Silicon Valley barons
and their national security state partners.
In May 2018, Klein became the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture
and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. The position was created
following a three-year, $3 million campaign
including a dozen foundations.
Among the early and path breaking contributors, according to Rutgers, was
the Ford Foundation.
Gloria Steinem (L) and Naomi Klein at the 2018 Rutgers ceremony inaugurating
Steinems endowed chair
Contributions also poured in for the endowment from tycoons like Sheryl
Sandberg, the billionaire chief operating officer of Facebook and advocate
of corporate Lean In feminism; and Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul
who was sentenced this March to 23 years in prison for first degree criminal
sexual assault. According to Rutgers, Weinstein provided a gift of $100,000
in honor of his late mother, who shared Gloria Steinems hopes for female
equality.
I had hoped to have a conversation with Klein, a former colleague at the
Nation Institute, about her reflexive opposition to a documentary that
advanced many of the same arguments that appeared in her past writings. Was
the exclusive focus on carbon emissions by professional climate warriors not
a blinkered approach that ignored the environmental damage inherent in
producing still-unproven renewable technology? Did cleantech tycoons not
have a vested interest in advancing a global transition to the renewable
products their companies manufactured? And when she had clearly articulated
the problems with billionaire-backed Big Green advocacy, why had Klein cast
her lot with a political network that seemed to epitomize it?
My emails were met with an auto-reply informing me Klein was off grid, and
referring me to her personal assistant.
According to Fox, high-profile climate warriors like McKibben and Klein had
no interest in speaking to me about their opposition to the film because
its like four months ago, man, everybodys moved on.
Seeing green in Biden
By August, members of the professional climate advocacy network that saw its
interests threatened by Planet of the Humans was preparing for a much more
elaborate on-screen production that promised new opportunities.
In the weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention, climate justice
organizations like the Sunrise Movement 501 c-4 which emerged in the shadow
of Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential run and condemned former Vice President
Joseph Biden as a tool of the establishment suddenly changed their tune.
Flush with dark money from Democratic Party-aligned billionaires, Sunrise
Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash stated on July 14 the day Biden
released his clean energy plan: Its no secret that weve been critical of
Vice Presidents Bidens plans and commitments in the past. Today, hes
responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and
urgency of investments
Our movement, alongside environmental justice
communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk.
While it brands itself as a grassroots movement that has organized
anti-establishment stunts putting centrist figures like Democratic Sen.
Dianne Feinstein on the spot, the Sunrise Movement was incubated with a
grant from the Sierra Club, the Mike Bloomberg-backed juggernaut of Big
Green organizing. Today, offices of the two organizations are located a
floor apart in the same building in downtown Washington DC.
Ahead of the DNC, the Biden campaign introduced a $2 trillion plan pledge to
invest heavily in renewable technology to achieve a carbon pollution-free
power sector by 2035. The plan promised to erect 500 million solar panels
in the next five years alongside 60,000 new wind turbines.
With the demand for solar plummeting due to the coronavirus pandemic, the
prospect of gigantic government subsidies was music to the ears of the
cleantech tycoons who sponsor Democratic Party-aligned climate advocacy
organizations.
Many of these green millionaires and billionaires had feasted at the trough
of Obamas stimulus package, which was directly responsible for powering the
rise of Americas solar industry. After promising upon his inauguration to
invest $150 billion in a new green energy business sector, Obama doled out
an eye-popping $4.9 billion in subsidies to Teslas Elon Musk and a $1.2
billion loan guarantee for Tom Dinwoodies SunPower US to construct the
California Valley Solar Ranch. In June 2019, an avian incident caused a
fire at the SunPower Solar Ranch project, impacting over 1200 acres and
knocking out 84% of generating capacity for several weeks.
Planet of the Humans presented viewers with the disturbing story of the
Ivanpah solar plant, a signature initiative in Obamas green energy plan
which was co-owned by Google. Gifted with $1.6 billion in loan guarantees
and $600 million in federal tax credits, Ivanpah was built on 5.6 square
miles of pristine public land close to Californias Mojave National
Preserve. In its first year, the massive plant produced less than half its
of its planned energy goal while burning over 6000 birds to death.
The Ivanpah solar thermal plant and its three power towers spans across the
Mojave Desert
Because of the intermittency inherent to solar power, the gargantuan energy
project has had to burn massive amounts of natural gas to keep the system
primed when the sun is not shining. Despite its dependence on fossil fuel,
Ivanpah still qualifies under state rules as a renewable plant.
The bottom line is the public didnt expect this project to consume this
much natural gas, David Lamfrom, California desert manager for the National
Parks Conservation Association, told the local Press-Enterprise. We did not
have full knowledge that this was what we were signing up for.
Even after the Obama administration poured billions of dollars into solar
projects, solar energy output increased between 2008 and 2016 by a mere .7%
as a total of American energy production.
Meanwhile, across the country, many new wind projects remain stalled due to
community concerns about land destruction. In the home state of Green New
Deal advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only remaining wind project was
canceled this January.
For raising questions about the efficacy and environmental cost of renewable
projects like these, and proposing an explicitly anti-capitalist solution to
the corporate destruction of the planet, the makers of Planet of the
Humans were steamrolled by a network of professional climate activists,
billionaire investors and industry insiders.
Now, with the Biden campaign promising a new flood of renewable subsidies
and tax breaks under the auspices of a clean energy plan, the public
remains in the dark about what it is signing up for. Even if the ambitious
agenda fails to deliver any substantial environmental good, it promises a
growing class of green investors another opportunity to do well.
