I watched the film when it came out.
Those who criticize this by saying that it’s not 100% accurate or that it’s a propaganda piece are missing the point. Of course it’s presenting a point of view. Of course it’s not accurate and attempting to present a particular view. “Documentaries” are just entertainment and designed to convince and persuade – not necessarily educate.
That said, I thought the film was crap. It was weak and could really have been better as a 10-minute summary called, “Look into the actual carbon and environmental costs of alternative energy.”
From what I understand, the film used some outdated stats on the carbon costs and technologies involved in alternative energy. And it apparently was misleading regarding some of the claims about electric vehicles and the need to have them pull their juice from coal plants. But the biomass criticisms were pretty valid.
However, they really should have just focused on what people do not see when they think of green energy. A healthy skepticism isn’t meant to dismiss the need for greener energy – it should drive us to find even more greener sources. But many people don’t understand the need for rare minerals, and the energy that goes into building green energy devices that have a limited life, etc. Scientist have models for understanding the energy trade-offs, and it may be better for the environment overall, but to gloss over these does nobody any good.
And what I wish they really went into was just how the need for rare minerals – whether it be the large batteries for electric cars or our phones – drives imperialism. A 90-minute documentary on global capital’s hunger for lithium and the 2019 Bolivian coup would have been good. The film did touch briefly on funding (Koch brothers, etc), but this is far more important, in my humble opinion, than some of the outdated scientific claims. A deep dive into how global capital works in consuming global resources is far more important.
I think the films worst weakness might have been its overall theme of inevitability. It seemed to provide a good reason to just shrug your shoulders and say “fuck it, we can’t do anything”. The blame seemed to be human species, and the solution seemed to be our demise. Instead of proposing that it is possible that we could combine far-better greener tech with economic systems that don’t depend on infinite growth and consumption, I get the feeling that the film was just an invitation to give up altogether.