Climate Crisis: Our Ecological Dysfunction Has a Marketing Problem (and it’s not Michael Moore)

I think the big crisis of our times is that our minds have been manipulated to give power to illusions. — Vandana Shiva

Thousands of cars sit at The Port of Los Angeles

I first heard of Jeff Gibbs’ contentious film Planet of the Humans (POH) sometime last year. Like millions of others, I viewed it just recently. Over the past week, the scathingly negative reviews I discovered disheartened but did not surprise me. While the film may present outdated statistics about so-called renewable energy technologies (which should have been revised to reflect current trends), while it may clumsily cobble together disparate aspects of the ecological effects of our species on the planet, and while it utilizes what may be characterized as calculating imagery to evoke emotional resonance (as all films do), the crux of Gibbs’ argument should not be discarded and deserves discussion: that we cannot achieve ecological sustainability without addressing the role of humanity’s overproduction and overconsumption.

It seems to me that people who watch this film project onto it what they want to see, much like they did with Advertising Age's Marketer of the Year, President Obama, during his 2008 campaign. Rather than view the film for what it is, they see it through their personal lens. My lens is, at my core, that of a biologist, which means what I see concerns life and the preservation of life on this planet. What I see is that our ecological dysfunction is not merely one of climate crisis, but of the totality of human disruptions that impair the health of all organisms and ecosystems.

                                                          

Compartmentalization and reductionism: “To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail”

Some critics of the film are proving to be as disingenuous as they purport the filmmakers to be. The film may be facile at times, but so are many of the critiques. Myopia on the topics of renewables and population (which I will discuss further down) overlook the heart of the film: that we cannot continue to increase our economic growth and resource use on a finite planet; that we are leaving a morass of waste and pollution in our wake that is killing all life on the planet, including us; that our high-tech solutions to maintain our over-consumptive way of life have not done any good in terms of mitigating our colossal environmental emergencies; and that overexploitation of natural resources is a major problem that we refuse to address.

On the May 1st edition of Rising, filmmaker Josh Fox, who called for an all-out ban of POH, stated, “The IPPC is telling us that we have to reduce our emissions by 50%, OK, 50% in the next ten years. That means we have to replace 50% of the fossil fuel technology in the world – or more than that – with renewable energy.” This is circular logic that assumes only one possible solution: replacement of energy sources rather than reduction of energy use. Both are possible.

Critics like Josh quibble about the inaccuracies with the carbon budgets and carbon accounting of so-called green energy because they say that the renewable energy technologies explored in the film are now much more cost-effective and efficient than what the films claims. True enough.  Yet there is so much more to the picture, which is why many of these reductive scientific analyses do not suffice in terms of overall ecological sustainability. Most look at carbon and little else within the life cycle analysis (LCA) of technologies. This is partially because there do not exist clear comprehensive metrics through which to quantify ecology, though researchers continually try. I know from my own experience conducting LCAs that pertinent variables are frequently omitted, either by design (they are not the variable of interest) or because the variable does not have reliable data or cannot be numerically quantified. Thus, LCAs do not necessarily reflect a complete picture of the whole ecological footprint of the technology. Moreover, sometimes qualitative issues are more important than quantitative. (See addendum for example.)

Solar Array in the California desert

Critics of POH rarely if ever mention ecological and environmental health, toxic pollutants, and general resource use, perhaps because a good number of them originate from high-tech and engineering fields. They do not account for the entire diverse ecosystem, with all of its flora and fauna, that was decimated to create that mirrored solar array in the California desert, as shown in the film. Land use, habitat loss, and toxic contamination are primary drivers of our biodiversity crisis. In creating that solar playground, we might win in terms of non-fossil fuel energy, but we lose in a number of other ways that are unaccounted for. They also do not consider the socioeconomic, political, and public health costs of our continually increasing resource extraction and industrial lifestyle, nor the human rights and environmental justice issues therein.

Conflating and usurping the environment with climate

We have multiple other concurrent environmental crises that are only tangentially related to fossil fuel use and energy use. But you do not get that perspective from critics who are merely focused on energy and climate. Sustainability consists of more than just carbon budgets. Reductionist science in only one field of inquiry does not suffice when it comes to realistic sustainability.

When I was in graduate school (in the fields of Earth System Science and Policy, then Environment and Resources), my research focused on environmental risk and scientific uncertainty in the realm of sustainability (a term I do not necessarily like, but will use for lack of a better alternative). My foremost interest was ecological and environmental health. Yet, what I found in all of my highly interdisciplinary programs was an overwhelming concentration on climate change. That is not to say that the climate crisis does not warrant tremendous attention; it is to say that the attention tended to be at the expense of many other relevant and associated issues.

Likewise, since the early-mid 2000s, all so-called environmentalism and environmental movements have been largely focused on climate. In fact, in the press, you will find the climate crisis constantly conflated with other environmental emergencies. So the question is, do we really just want to address carbon dioxide or do we want to address ecology? Because in our quest to immediately reduce carbon dioxide concentrations with merely technological solutions, the collateral damage may just do us in instead.

False assumptions and prescribed solutions: Win-win

In addition to the outweighed attention to climate and energy, academic circles (as activist ones) tend to hold certain assumptions that are not founded on objective truth. One such assumption involves the inevitability of consumerism, taking for granted that our consumption will remain at current levels and/or grow. My peers and I posed the idea of reducing consumption to our professors about a decade and a half ago; it was summarily dismissed as an option. Of course, when we talked about reducing consumption, we were not talking about imposing austerity on those already in need. We were implying that most in the Western world consume to extravagant excess, and our ecological (not just carbon) footprints could be extraordinarily reduced, all while we attempt to help provide at least the basic necessities to those in the world who lack them.

Other questions and potential solutions were discouraged in my academic studies. For example:

• In terms of food insecurity, the focus was on increasing yield, not eliminating waste
• In terms of composting, the focus was on large-scale municipal infrastructures rather than localized use
• In terms of reducing or eliminating the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the focus was on reducing industrial runoff rather than breaking up and replacing industrial agriculture with small-scale organic farming (now, agroecology)

This occurred even when peer-reviewed articles and scientific reports presented evidence that supported the alternatives we presented.

Much scientific inquiry assumes that our solutions will always involve producing, consuming, and replacing products and technologies, never eliminating the need for them, in part or altogether. This presumption stems from the fact that market mechanisms and the profit motive rule our society. There are no solutions allowed if there is no money to be made from them. The only acceptable solutions that are allowed in the public realm are "win-win" solutions aligning corporate capitalism and the environment, even though their purposes conflict. There is no "win-win." Who always wins the cost/benefit or risk/benefit assessment? Not the environment. Not public health. Always money.

Similarly, how often do media reports mention passive solar design as a home heating alternative to both fossil fuel and renewable energy? Rarely, if ever; it does not jibe with green consumerism.

Herman and Chomsky’s media propaganda model suggests that the corporatization of mass media has limited the range of acceptable media discourse. Corporate economic interests have correspondingly limited the realm of scientific possibilities.

Science is not monolithic; uncertainly reigns supreme

Many of the accounts above help explicate what occurred during a seminar about women in science at a non-academic environmental conference I attended a dozen years ago. For some reason, what ended up happening was woman after woman, most from biological and related health disciplines, came up to the microphone to discuss their personal experiences. So many women had left or never entered the scientific profession that they spent years studying and training for because they could not abide its co-option by industry. They felt that precaution, prevention, and open-ended scientific observation was no longer acceptable in the field. Rather, science appeared to be beholden to industry, technology, and capitalism, and they not participate in it.

This phenomenon that some of those women experienced speaks to the differences between upstream science and downstream science. Science is not monolithic and does not agree on all facts. Science is always evolving and requires clarity, transparency, lack of conflicts of interest, and reproducibility to come to even provisional conclusions. Upstream scientists (those who produce technologies, like biotechnologists and engineers) and downstream scientists (those who examine the health and environmental effects of technologies, like ecologists and toxicologists) may approach scientific questions with very different perspectives and may arrive at very different conclusions. It holds that many women in science may be inclined to pursue the latter types of downstream scientific fields, which may clarify what was demonstrated that day in that seminar. But the point is not that science is misogynistic (which some people may claim and may be true); the point is more that you have to carefully examine from where, from whom, from what field, and from what perspective scientific research emanates, rather than find some peer reviewed research that suits your own bias.

Moreover, statistical bias, even with the most objective science, is inherent in risk/benefit analyses, such as those that determine use of technologies toward specific goals. Scientific uncertainty permeates these assessments. Scientists always overestimate the benefits of technologies and underestimate the risks. (Two volumes were written by the European Environment Agency that touch upon that subject: 1 and 2.)

Thus, it is a gross oversimplification for climate activists to say that the science is settled about the technological solutions to the climate crisis, let alone to the whole of environmental sustainability.

Population

One of the major sore spots for critics of the POH film involved the topic of overpopulation. The term “eco-fascism” has been bandied around by critics regarding the mere mention of the issue. This hyperbole is a straw-man. Critical and thoughtful adults should be able to discuss human population without the use of such invectives. From what I saw, the film made no implications as to the whos, whats, whys, or hows of the topic. It simply mentioned that human population has exploded, which it has.

Population IS an environmental issue, insofar as we have an exponentially growing population that is also consuming ever-increasing amounts of natural resources. Does that mean we demean the Global South, whose numbers and birth rates exceed that of the Global North, but whose consumption is far, far less? Of course not. It means that we look toward educating and empowering women in the Global South to have autonomy and control in their procreation decisions. It means that the Global South should be assisted in obtaining the basic necessities of life, rather than be re-colonized and exploited yet again to extract the natural resources required for “green” consumerist technologies of the Global North. It means that citizens in the Global North, who already have more control over their own procreation, should consider their choices more in the context of overconsumption, environmental sustainability, and global equity. It means that the Global North, whose ecological footprint is roughly four times the size per capita as that of the Global South, and whose citizens, on average, enjoy the majority of abundance of natural resource use,  be at the forefront of radical change.

Years ago, I worked in the House of Representatives and reported on a committee hearing about the problems with population control in China during the one-child per family policy era. A young Chinese woman recounted her and others’ experiences with forced abortions and sterilizations, infanticide, and other oppression the policy entailed. There was not a dry eye in the hearing room. Nevertheless, the horrors of authoritarian enforcement of population control do not mean that we should altogether abandon all talk of the issue.

To pretend that the issue of human overpopulation does not exist and to not discuss it because it is uncomfortable reminds me of my fellow teachers telling me I should not teach evolution - the foundational theory of biology - in my secondary school science class because it was too controversial. I did, and we should.

Marketing environmentalism

“The entire scientific community accepts that renewable energy works and it is our path forward. The whole Green New Deal is based on it. Almost all modern environmentalism and climate action is based on the idea that renewable energy is our path forward,” proclaimed filmmaker and POH critic Josh Fox. The first statement is patently false. The latter statements are only true because the proclaimed leaders of the modern environmental (really, climate) movement have virtually eliminated other options.

The main critics of POH appear to be big names in the climate movement. Powerful and influential, these celebrity leaders of the climate crisis, with huge social media and public followings, are aligned in their messages and talking points because they are engaged in a marketing campaign. They have something to sell. Their product may be a prescription of climate mitigation technologies and they may be marketing environmentalism, but it is marketing nonetheless, and as such, truth can sometimes be a casualty in the process.

Not only have they condescendingly decided that people do not need to know the full picture of our ecological emergency because it would be too overwhelming to bear, they peddle positivity and hopium to diminish the necessary discomfort that inspires critical thought and contemplation. They are fully committed to net-zero carbon emissions via alternative energy technologies as their sole mantra, despite refutations to the contrary. (NB: Much of net-zero carbon emissions are often achieved through carbon offsetting, which is an unsustainable scheme whose accounting is wonky at best.) They stay on message. Their message is renewable energy, fossil fuel divestment, and a Green New Deal, but not much else.

I don't think they are all corrupt or devious, but I do think they are acting in a patronizing and short-sighted manner. Furthermore, there is no question that their goals are compromised by corporate foundation funding. I have experience with these non-profits and foundations. They claim to invest in “green” corporations - which include the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Disney, and Starbucks. These companies and foundations influence framing and agenda setting in the climate movement and limit the discourse on acceptable potential solutions.

They prop toothless programs such as the Paris Climate Treaty as if they are meaningful and productive, but will not entertain large scale grass roots proposals to tackle reductions in global production and consumption. They deal only in top-down solutions rather than bottom-up, when in reality we need all of the above and then some (unlike Obama’s energy policy). They promote techno-utopian fantasies as if they are science.

The vitriol with which the critics of POH spew their accusations seems a bit unreasonable, until you view it in the realm of marketing. They are publicists for the Green New Deal, for sustainability^TM (i.e., climate), and for themselves. When you become a brand, you have to protect your brand rather than deal in nuance and inconvenient environmental truths.

I must add that I know a bit about the PR push from this realm because I experienced it first hand. Rather than tackle some of my very measured criticism about a certain prominent climate initiative, I was met with a sales pitch from its publicist. To add insult to injury, she suggested that I speak to the architects of the proposal so that they could school me about it, in the hopes that I would be educated for future pieces that I wrote. Of note, no one who composed this environmental initiative had any background in science, only politics and economics. When I responded offering my services and expertise to help sort out the deficiencies with the plan, I never heard back.

As for what people can do, the elite environmental influencers roll out two actions: raising awareness and protest, almost as ends in themselves. That is not to say that we should not protest, although recent history would suggest that the last meaningful protest in America may have been the battle in Seattle against the WTO in 1999 - over 20 years ago. Since then, protests without civil disobedience have been largely ineffectual. Meanwhile, awareness does absolutely zilch to abate the most serious existential emergency in human history.

Finally, we celebrated the 50^th Anniversary of Earth Day on April 22. What did the leaders of the major climate movements ask us all to do? Vote. Yes, vote. For whom, may I ask? Because I have not seen a politician who has made any significant progress on the environment since … Well, I’ll let you fill in the blank, but you won’t like the answer.

The problem with using the tools of marketing and advertising to promote an environmental movement is that you succumb to the vices of marketing and advertising. You oversimplify, you manipulate, you obfuscate, and you patronize. You rely on sound bites rather than sound reasoning. And those vices will come back to haunt you.

Ironically, the POH critics from the mainstream climate movement argue that is just what the film has done. That is not what I see. I see a film that bit off a bit more than it could chew. If you have read through to here, you see how much needs to be said to even attempt to address the myriad complexities of ecological sustainability, and my words are not even close to comprehensive. Perhaps POH wasn’t quite up to the task. But it does bring up some questions that certain critics do not seem to want people to hear.

Interior and Exterior of Facebook server farm (data center) near the Artctic

Big picture

Ecological dysfunction is difficult to discuss concisely because it literally involves everything we humans do - our entire way of life. It is also difficult for science to tackle because traditional scientific fields are limited to reductionism, compartmentalization, and quantification, which is not nearly sufficient in scrutinizing and providing solutions for our total ecological emergency.

I did not write this piece to defend the film Planet of the Humans. I wrote this piece to further discuss the topics left out of mainstream climate discourse. I wrote this because the topic of our entire ecological dysfunction deserves examination, beyond simply climate and energy. I wrote this because despite Josh Fox claiming, “Nobody’s arguing that simply renewable energy is the answer,” in fact. high-tech utopias based on renewable energy modalities are exactly what the big backers of the climate movement and the Green New Deal have been advertising. I have news for them. Smart cities and the internet of things are not sustainable. Neither are precious smartphones. New paradigms are not just warranted, but imperative.

Our utilization of fossil fuels may be a particularly potent problem right now because of its global reach and its immediacy. That is not in dispute. But it is not the only problem that imperils our lives and the lives of other species on the planet, and it does not operate in a vacuum. Even if we could transition to 100% renewable energy tomorrow, immensely reducing carbon dioxide emissions, we would still be using petroleum for countless toxic and polluting products (like plastics and pesticides) and we would still have an environmental cataclysm on our hands as a result of our land use, wildlife habitat destruction, toxic contamination, general waste, and overuse of resources. To achieve ecological sustainability, if it is even possible at this point, we need to look past our myopia on climate.

It comes down to this: historical societal collapses did not occur because of fossil fuel use. They occurred because of overexploitation of natural resources. If we do not attend to the root causes of all of our environmental problems, neither will we attend to their potential solutions.

It would be grand if we who care about the biosphere could stop talking past one another and at one another, if we could end the ad hominem attacks, and if we could engage in civil discourse to look toward a totality of solutions, rather than simplistic fixes that attempt to maintain our current profligate Western lifestyles. For that, we might need to abandon our careerism, our marketing madness, our social media status, and our hubris. In short, we need to get over ourselves and our way of life. Ironically, the perpetual busyness of that very lifestyle in service to societal success undermines our ability to envision the radical changes we so desperately need. But now might be just the perfect time for this kind of reflection and conversation.

For more on this topic, including an appendix of solutions, please see:

There's Nothing Radical About the Green New Deal

Eco-Crises: Gloom & Doom, Truth & Consequences

Dying of Consumption While Guzzling Snake Oil

Addendum:

Example of qualitative problem with Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs):

You could conduct an LCA comparing the carbon emissions from plastic versus paper grocery bags. One problem is that you might assume paper bags come from the pulp material from virgin forests, whereas it could come from the material from recycled and reclaimed paper. Regardless, in the end, paper is fully compostable and biodegradable, whereas plastic is toxic in itself, toxic substances adhere to it, and it takes thousands of years, if ever, to degrade. Qualitatively, there is no question about which is more sustainable. Paper wins. A quantitative assessment is not necessary. What might be necessary is determining ways to harvest and obtain the raw materials for paper in a more sustainable and less carbon intensive manner, or to use fewer paper bags by carrying a canvas bags instead and utilizing them throughout the decades or more of their lives.

Kristine Mattis holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources.

k_mattis@outlook.com @kristinemattis