Bright Green Lies

I'm here outside Bend, Oregon.

Uh...

and there's a big old solar facility right here.

"High voltage. Keep out. Authorized personnel."

What's going on back here?

They don't want you breaking into these places,

but I'm in the facility now, so you can see this up close.

You'll notice this is all dusty.

So, these... these things have to be cleaned pretty regularly.

So, most people don't realize that solar panels

and solar power facilities are actually huge water users.

Um, and they like to install them in desert areas,

where water use is already a big problem.

Um, these elements are made of silicon, which is mined and refined,

using extremely high temperature destructive processes.

Then they're mounted on these big steel pipes here.

Look at this. I mean, this is just an industrial energy production facility.

It... it has nothing to do with saving the planet whatsoever.

Uh, it may have a slightly lar...

lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels,

but of course, this all requires fossil fuels to create.

Um, the steel was all made using coal.

All this material was trucked here using diesel... diesel trucks,

extracted all over the world using massive mining trucks, powered by diesel.

Uh, smelted using fossil fuels.

Assembled at plants likely powered by fossil fuels.

And, uh... And all of this destroys the planet,

no matter where the power comes from.

So, this shit ain't green.

We are told that we can have our cake and eat it too.

That we can maintain a high energy lifestyle,

without destroying the planet.

We are told that solar, wind, hydro and biomass

are clean, green and sustainable.

What they don't talk about, are the unseen harms

caused by these technologies.

The processes which take place out of sight.

People rarely question the solutions they are taught to embrace.

But with all the world at stake,

we must start asking the right questions.

There is a push for a 100% renewable world.

And after the research I've done for this documentary,

I want no part of it.

I did not become an environmentalist

to protect my way of life,

or the civilization in which I live.

I did it because I am in love with life on this planet,

and because the world I love is under assault.

This film is for those whose allegiance

is with the living world.

Those who would do whatever it takes to defend it.

The environmental movement used to be

a very impassioned group of people who cared deeply

about the places we loved and the creatures we loved.

What's happened, though, in my lifetime is that,

this movement that was so honorable and so impassioned

has turned into something completely different.

And now it's about protecting a destructive way of life...

while it destroys the creatures and the places that we love.

It's all become, "How do we continue to fuel this destruction?"

As if the only problem, was the fact that we were using oil and gas?

You will have hundreds of thousands of people

marching in the streets of Washington or New York or Paris.

And if you ask those individuals, "Why are you marching?"

They will say, "We want to save the planet."

And if you ask them for their demands, they will say,

"We want subsidies for the wind and solar industries."

That's extraordinary.

I can't think of any time in history,

when any mass movement has been so completely captured...

and turned into lobbyists for an industry.

Frankly, solar, hydro, all them,

do a great big fuck all to stop global warming.

But what they do is, they make us think

we are accomplishing something,

while certain sectors of industry... get rich.

The natural world isn't really part of the conversation anymore.

You know, Kumi Naidoo, the former head of Greenpeace,

I was watching him being interviewed the other day

and he was saying, you know, "Look, the planet's going to survive,

the oceans are going to survive, forests are going to survive.

It's really about, 'Can we save ourselves or not?'"

And I just saw that and I'm thinking, "What the hell are you saying?"

This is somebody who is considered to be,

you know, one of the top environmentalists in the world and he's saying,

"We don't have to worry about the forest or the oceans."

I mean, to me, that just betrays a complete lack of empathy

and connection to the natural world.

I don't know how you could possibly say that,

when we're in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction.

And it's being caused by industrial culture.

It's being caused by the same institutions,

the same economies, the same systems, the same raw materials.

The same extractive mindset

that is being used for these renewable energy technologies.

Bright Green environmentalism is founded on the notion that

technology will solve environmental problems

and that you can, through 100% recycling,

through wind and solar power

have an industrial economy that does not harm the planet.

Deep ecology is the belief that we need to radically change

the way society functions, in order to be sustainable.

I'm in New Hampshire,

getting ready to film a clear-cut.

The activist I'm meeting sent footage he captured,

of animals who live in the forest.

All these creatures who live here...

their homes are being destroyed,

to provide so-called "green energy,"

in the form of biomass.

Biomass is one of the big, dirty secrets

of the Bright Green movement.

What biomass is, is simply a fancy word for burning stuff.

What they're doing is, they are cutting down forests all over the world,

and burning them and calling this biomass,

calling this renewable, calling this carbon neutral.

They will talk about how, "Oh, renewables are growing X percent every year."

But what they never talk about is that, for example,

in their German miracle, majority of the increase

in so called renewables is biomass.

It's not wind and solar, like they talk about.

That's because they don't really want to talk about

the fact that their so-called "renewable energy"

is simply cutting down forests.

- So they sell these timber sales? - Yep.

Last year, they got revenue

- of about $550,000. - Okay.

Their timber program costs at least

three million dollars to implement.

Not only are they removing our trees,

not only are they removing the only thing we have

to sequester carbon on this Earth...

- but we pay for it. - Wow!

- That's insane. - It is insane.

It's completely insane.

And people don't...

You t... explain that... you tell people that,

and they're like, "No..." Yeah! Absolutely.

- We... we, the US taxpayers... -

...subsidize these guys, to kill trees.

The problem we have right now, and... and the thing I always

fight these guys on is that,

- we have a carbon problem right now. - Yeah.

- You know, we're at 400 parts per million or whatever it is. - Yeah.

So, you know, that... and they'll say, "Well,

yeah, but that tree will regrow."

Yeah, but that's 100 years from now.

- Mm-hmm. - Where are we going to be then?

- 600 parts per million? I don't know. - Yeah.

But if you leave that tree there,

that tree is going to continue,

not only to sequester the carbon that's in it right now...

- Mm-hmm. - ...but the carbon that, in the next 100 years...

- Right. - ...that it would have taken to rep...

you know, 100 plus years to replace that tree.

- It's sequestering that much more carbon in that one tree. - Mm-hmm.

- Yeah. Just totally sets you back to remove it. - So...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's what...

that's what makes... you know, so then you go

to the whole thing of whole-tree harvesting,

where not only do they take the bole of the tree,

they take everything, you know, that's removing everything

from the... from the... the equation.

Yeah, and then you burn it for biomass.

- And then and then you burn it and it goes poof! -

And all that carbon is instant released

into the atmosphere that's already overloaded with carbon.

It's kind of like a spider web.

You have all these trails going off.

That's the beginning of the clear-cut.

I mean, you walk out the thing

and... and it's going to hit you in the face.

An old forest has carbon as part of the trees.

The soil, the branches.

That's all carbon that is... is currently sequestered

and is not going out into the atmosphere.

You cut that tree down.

Not only does it stop sequestering carbon,

but it actually starts emitting carbon from the soil that's left,

because the soil has been disturbed.

To generate a unit of electricity,

biomass will release more carbon than coal will...

and coal's plenty dirty enough.

We're looking at the aftermath of a 245 acre...

whole-tree harvest liquidation cut,

where effectively, they removed all of the above ground biomass.

Almost all the trees. They left a couple of pine here and there,

uh, one or two little patches that they didn't cut,

but effectively, it's a 245 acre clear-cut.

To call it carbon neutral,

you have to do some pretty dishonest accounting.

For instance, the European Union...

doesn't count the carbon it released in its burning

in its calculations, whereas the American forests

that are supplying the carbon

don't count the carbon they're releasing during the harvesting.

Now, the justification is, we don't want to count it twice,

so we don't count it at all. And now it's carbon neutral.

We got to count at once, folks. And when you count at once,

it doesn't matter whether it's the carbon released