I feel related to Jeff Gibbs not only by a shared sense of
humor while facing serious matters, but also through a sense of love and
respect for trees. As a non-native speaker of English, the term tree-hugger is
anything but derogatory to me. It sounds
so loving and something to be proud of
so I too am a tree-hugger. Yet, I also learned
thanks to this documentary that some cute-sounding-words can serve as a veil to
cover the evil (e.g., woodchip).
I am a writer whose academic background is in literature and
women studies; therefore, when it comes to viewing and reviewing POH, I am just
a lay person with a trust and sympathy toward the name Michael Moore since 2004
(as a legal alien from Turkey at the time, I was one of the victims of post-9/11
during my naturalization process but
it’s another story).
This introduction is also to say that I have no conflict of
interest to declare, although receiving a documentary as a gift from the team
on the 50th Anniversary of the Earth Day through YouTube was special.
POH is a collective gift that I want to share with others by forwarding the
link and by my writing.
POH begins with some history including a footage that says
clean and green energy was the talk of the town in 1970 already! The document
pays tribute to the early green movements, initiatives, and activists in the
U.S. before revealing the duplicities of the recent events (mimicking flower power
era) in Vermont and elsewhere. Even the Earth Day events can be funded by the
companies which have been destroying forests, mountains, and indigenous
people’s habitats. Short and basic questions are posed by Gibbs to expose the
hypocrisies that the respondents are being complicit to. The audience can
clearly see the shrugs, the expressions or the averted eyes (hopefully with
some embarrassment!) of the organizers, the technicians or the salespeople
while acknowledging the truth and facing lies. While some big and familiar
names (CEOs, NGO leaders, and politicians) claim confidently that their
facilities run on 100% renewable energy (solar, wind or biomass) you/the
audience are shocked by how people are being fed lies all along while making
decisions of consumption or attending an event. A cheerful male voice of the
ads ‘informs’ that solar panels are made of sand while a scholar (Ozzie Zehner)
is showing HQ quartz and coal pieces that the panels are made of (by being
melted!)
As a professor of literature, I have been very conscious of
the power of narratives. One part of me may feel and act like Doña Quixote
at times but in fact, I remain suspicious of what I am being fed through words
and images. Knowledge making and distribution mechanisms are suspects so I keep
rolling my eyes and shaking my head throughout the documentary but the other
half in me whispers: “It has always been like this around the world, not just
America, not just now.” Probably I am not be the only one feeling fragmented
and cheated, but I do welcome other narratives besides POH as well. That
is why I have read several (some were quite harsh) criticism and attacks against
the film already, and nevertheless, decided to add my share to the debates.
While keeping on breeding and consuming at the same time and
at this pace today, it is futile and irresponsible to expect a miracle emerging
out of a lab in the Bay Area. My image of a savior is far from elephant
poop, crocodile fat, or sea moss; rather, it is a self-restraint, altruistic
human being with a strong will.
A tongue-twister when I was learning English was “How much
wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood?” My dislike with Bill McKibben has grown as he talked of the “incredibly
beautiful” woodchip’s use as if he was giving a salad recipe: “We can toss it in
there if we can chip it down to the right size.” I began repeating an alternative twister to
divert my anger from a person to a thing/money: “How many bills would a
woodchip chuck if a woodchip could chuck bills?” It worked, I am pretty calm as
I am typing this review.
Although POH is mainly criticizing a narrative that is
constructed and sold in the U.S., I think it can still capture a wider
audience. The non-American viewer may not know 350 and Sierra Club’s “beyond
coal” campaign but the whole game is still very intriguing, and unfortunately
can be applied to their own countries under different names and brands. “The System” in my title refers to the monstrous capitalism and
the blood for feeding it is drawn across the whole planet (also see the
documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch) so everyone needs to be super
aware! We can no longer afford the time or money on lies thinking that we are
acting “green” while shopping! POH’s message is clear: There is no such thing.
Cut the population growth and consumption, and just stop there before reaching
out to your credit card.
Gibbs begins and ends POH with a question, and poses more in
between. I want to add mine to the list:
Why can’t we just buy less and instead reuse things, and move less in
4-wheeled-vehicles and instead move more on two legs or leg-powered-vehicles?
Fly less? Adopt or foster children instead of making them?[ii]
Why can’t we train our willpower be a better version of ourselves?(now that it
is the fasting month/Ramadan for millions, why can’t consider practicing different
versions of fasting?)
I consider POH as an engaging lecture since I learned a lot
about the intricate connections among the environmentalist groups, companies,
and politicians. We can include POH in our syllabus regardless of the country
we are teaching, it falls right under environmental or ecological humanities. I
also got informed on the science and terminology behind all these debates: How
biomass plants can serve as euphemism for a solid-waste incinerator like in
Michigan or how the super(!) green Tesla Gigafactory in fact pollutes
the desert with radioactive waste disposal and is still hooked up to the city
grid like the Apple in North Carolina. All these striking examples will
affect the young minds who aspire to be the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs in any
developing country. The documentary clearly shows that it is high time to look
for and look up to other role models who are more honest and earth-friendly,
even tree-huggers!
[i] From
the documentary.
[ii] I
completely disagree with Leah C. Stokes who thinks that POH's “pushing
population control is completely disrespectful of women’s reproductive autonomy”
although I also realized that the number of the white male experts featured exceeds the women
in the film. It is a big risk to take as three white men (the team) to point
fingers at overpopulation (but of course they are risk takers or else they would be no such
film) but as a naturalized non-white, non-privileged woman, I have advocated the
very same idea for years. In fact, if I could, I would have passed a law for prospective parents (of any sexual orientation or race) to take a test before they make babies, similar to a driver’s license. https://www.vox.com/2020/4/28/21238597/michael-moore-planet-of-the-humans-climate-change
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