Prosperity Marxism – Episode 9: Escape from Planet of the Humans

Michael Pelias, Peter Bratsis and John Clark discuss Planet of the Humans – a 2019 American environmental documentary film written, directed, by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore.

John Clark is a native of the Island of New Orleans, where his family has lived for twelve generations. He is Professor Emeritus at Loyola University, where he was formerly Gregory F. Curtin Distinguished Professor of Humane Letters and the Professions, Professor of Philosophy, and a member of the Environment Program. He is Coordinator of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology, (http://www.laterreinstitute.org/) which sponsors courses, projects and events in New Orleans and on eighty-seven acres on Bayou La Terre, near the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Its programs are aimed at social and ecological regeneration and the creation of a cooperative, non-dominating earth community. He also works with the Institute for the Radical Imagination in New York.

John Clark is the author of numerous books and articles including:

The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism

Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community

His website can be found at: www.johnpclark.info

Planet of the Humans: https://planetofthehumans.com/

A basic thesis of the film is that green energy cannot solve the problem of society’s expanding resource depletion, which is by definition unsustainable given that the Earth is finite. The film argues that green energy sources, including biomass energy, wind power, and solar energy, are not truly renewable or sustainable. The film has been criticized as outdated and misleading. The film was removed from YouTube on 25 May 2020 in response to a claim of copyright infringement. The filmmaker responded, “There is absolutely no copyright violation in my film. This is just another attempt by the film’s opponents to subvert the right to free speech.”