User Reviews

"Gosh, I wonder how humans have survived for the past 200,000 years without electricity? Could it be that we really don't need electricity?" says the filmmaker whose filmmaking equipment probably uses electricity. Or, maybe it runs on algae.

"Electricity is a convenience, it is a luxury," says the guy with an electric light burning away right next to him during his interview.

The film presents some interesting information that the so-called "green" industry (solar power, wind turbines, "biomas") are not as "green" as they purport. I don't doubt this. Industries exist to make money. Also, the "green" industry is going to have a reasonably big carbon footprint in these early stages because it's in its infancy, and the oldschool, polluting industries are the only ones that can mine and fabricate the components. But this is not near good enough for the purists behind this film. From the absurdity that electricity is merely a "convenience" -- tell that to people who underwent life-saving surgery today, keeping our COVID-19 vaccine doses temperature-controlled, or simply working jobs to support their families.

The documentary is certainly worth watching. No doubt there is hypocrisy in the green industry, but these filmmakers are pretty stark examples of letting "'perfect' be the enemy of 'good'". They are also caricatures of what most people think of as "environmentalists" -- who get choked up over the birds that are killed each year by wind turbines, cats, and sky scrapers (as it turns out, wind turbines kill the fewest of the three, it turns out -- but still receives heavy scowls and deep disapproval from those who love the earth).

People are entitled to their beliefs, but the filmmakers open themselves up to charges of hypocrisy with their rigidness and purity. Electricity cannot be dismissed as merely a "luxury", as something people could probably live without and be happier for it. That is the kind of mind behind this film. I mean, when you tie the solar power industry in with the Holocaust, explaining what a "claim to virtue" is, there is something drastically wrong with your argument.

Watching this doc, I learned about the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which was fascinating.

In the abstract, many of the ideas voiced by the filmmakers are correct. Capitalism is destroying the parts of earth that sustain human life. Technology isn't the answer to every problem. Often, it's the source of the problem, or exacerbates problems that already exist.

At one point, one of the filmmakers asks "What does the earth need?"

The honest answer is: drastically fewer human beings.

Thing is, that's not going to happen.

For anyone that is not aware of what it takes to produce solar panels and wind turbines this movie is definitely going to be an eye opener. A lot of people will have a hard time listening to the ecocentric argument made here, the first 10 minutes are probably the hardest. But this is to be expected since "radical environmentalists" are among the least understood of all contemporary opposition movements. But as Dr. Seuss wrote: "I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues..."

The problem once again is that the environmentalists being interviewed do not pose any workable solutions. All of them are anti-establishment some even revolutionists, these convictions make people hard to take serious. There is also a lot of one-sided portrayal of the facts and framing is the modus operandi. A good documentary should provide the viewer with complete and unbiased information, this documentary does not do so.

This was laughably nonsense at points, especially when they said "we've done without electricity for 100s of thousands of years so why do we need it now". Try saying that when you've hurt yourself and youre at the hospital and there's no power for the life support machine! The point of renewables is that while they're not perfect they're better than fossil fuels and once they are in mainstream use their processes and technologies will be refined and improved to make them steadily more sustainable and efficient. Everything ever invented starts in a crude form and gets slowly more refined if people adopt it and renewables are no different! The only real thing worth listening to in this film in my opinion was the notion of ridiculously high levels of consumption which is the fundamental unsustainable aspect of our world and which is driving our problems. I found these documentary makers, although passionate, had an overly negative and defeatist mindset and muddled a number of issues together into one when they needed to beak down and analyse them separately.

Their views on the deceit that is most renewables options (solar, wind and biomas) is accurate regarding their manufacturing, their carbon foot prints, their consumption of the earths minerals and resources. The point they make is that we are using too much electricity and food generation and consumerism are to blame. On hydro, they are frankly wrong. There are no no-impact electrical energy options.

Then it gets into the real point of the documentary. A lot less industrialization, a lot less use of the soil for food, a lot less consumerism. Not a single references to some of the wild facts they state. Basically an Extinction Rebellion type argument.

Where it really falls down is in the lack of "real" solutions presented. How to feed the current number of people on earth, no solutions provided. We know that if we massively moved to a plant based diet then the planet would be worse that it is now for example. How to heat homes without electricity, no solutions provided. Employment or should I say unemployment, well lets not go there. Power generation from nuclear, they don't even discuss that option.

What I ultimately took from this film is that all we need to do to heal the planet is to take away modern medicine, stop mass production of food, take away transportation and get rid of the current buildings that people live in, then the planet will heal itself. I am not sure what the alternatives they were trying to convey, other than one person strongly suggesting that the solution is: "I want to bring down civilisation and that will make it so people who are reliant upon modern medicines will die" It seemed to me his justification for this belief was ok because he would be one of those people.

While I recognised the basic message they were trying to convey and in some way agree with some of the things the film highlighted. I am not sure that the solution strongly hinted at and in one case blatantly stated will be very popular.

This was a good documentary and gave the listener both sides of the debate (by letting other types of enviromentalists have a say...even though 2 of them were, one blatantly lying and the other one was being a rude smug prick) thats being going on for a long time. It has a lot in it so it doesn't give you a great deal of information in depth but what you do get is enough to make you sit up and take notice. Not everyone will agree with the things said but many of those are the people who sit in the camp of, "Do absolutely frak all about anything ever; either because they want someone else to do the hard work or, they are just part of the many who think they know about things but actually don't know a damn thing about anything!" There was a lot of things the viewer was not informed about as regards Solar Energy (especially the part about panels needing need Silver to be built and silver is in short supply in these current days). The wind Turbine farms and the Solar Panel farms deteriorate at a very quick rate and many around the world are not being rebuilt/repared because of the huge costs involved.

Instead of some of the smug arrogant clever clog remarks being made by some people in their reviews, they should investigate a whole lot more before giving their 10 cents worth of dumb ass nothing. The world has been told it needs to wake up and its been told to be kinder to mother earth but, the large majority of humans are by nature greedy, pompous, arrogant and think they know best. So there really is only one thing to put nature back on course of self healing to fully repair itself.

THE ANSWER TO THE WILFUL DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET is... "If you want a beautiful home planet of health and peace, you have to clean out the human infestation that is killing it!"

The question I had going into this was whether it was coming from a right or left perspective. It's the left, but likely the left being financed and co-opted by the right. These are people who are against renewables because they're afraid renewables will hurt the sand. Their view seems to be that wind turbines will kill birds and when it's explained that buildings kill birds, they want to tear down the buildings.

There are some interesting ideas raised here. Climate change is certainly a bigger problem then it's usually presented as and we need more than recycling a few plastic bottles. The thing is that human existence doesn't really mean anything if human beings are left to live in teepees and mud huts which is what the documentarians here are proposing.

Cognitive dissonance strikes again.

A 5.7 rating with a 4.0 rating from the top 1000 people. That is absurd. This documentary is just about the same as every other documentary on this site that has a 7. It has the same acting, editing, cinematography, narration, script, etc. There is no reason for it to be rated as low as it is being rated except for dislike of the message.

The message is simple. Most green technology is far from green.

Intuitively we all know this as we know steel, concrete, aluminium and lithium are not made in a sustainable, eco-friendly manner. Aside from the mining to create the materials to make solar panels and windmills they rely on batteries and we've been told all our lives how destructive batteries are.

So the response to hearing what amounts to simple, easy-to-deduce facts is to trash the messenger.

Everyone should watch this to learn the facts instead of remaining brainwashed by those who don't want you to know them.

A decent documentary about the true and harmful nature of renewable energy and the ignorance of the mainstream green movement. It may be construed as anti capitalist, truthfully it's more anti industrialist, but mostly it's deeply depressing. The credits are the only thing that bring a smile to your face.

Critical thinking from millennials - unfortunately, we don't see that very often these days. They also make time available for opposing opinions for the viewer to assess, like true scientists should - another extreme rarity in these types of documentaries.

I don't agree with absolutely everything the hosts express, but they have certainly presented a valid thought provoking discussion, and present facts with citations. Well done!

Obviously paid by the big gas companies... keyword is renewable.. yes initially all materials used are being produced using fossil fuels .. ITS because most energy providers are still using Fossil based energy..

This might not be what people want to hear, but it is honest, which cannot be said for most environmental films these days that tend to delude the audience with feel-good messages. Ultimately, false hope doesn't help the planet.

Bright Green Lies gives us the harsh reality. It gives us solutions. And the solution starts with being honest with ourselves.

This documentary exposes and explains false beliefs about environmental virtues. It does so with help from advocates of those virtues (Suzuki and Jacobson). In the process, it provides some surprising facts. For example, wind turbines kill birds not by striking them but by creating pressure differences in the air that are great enough to explode the lungs of birds that fly through that air. The general lesson is that the mere conversion of energy production from fossil fuels to supposedly renewable sources would do far too little good to save life on Earth.

So far, so good. It is helpful to question widely held beliefs.

But the implications are only hinted at. They seem to include a conclusion that life is doomed unless human beings abolish cities, eliminate electricity, stop manufacturing things (including medicines), and cease planting seeds in the earth. How to do that is left unsaid. Maybe by decreasing the human population, but by how much, and how fast? How could people be taught to feed, clothe, house, and heal themselves in new (i.e., old) non-destructive ways? We are left to guess.

Instead of transitioning to green energy, which still requires fossil fuels,Big Oil wants us to do absolutely nothing. Just keep using as much oil as possible. Don't conserve any of our finite resources. Don't create any sustainable infrastructure that isn't dependent on massive oil distribution. They don't want anyone to have energy independence. They don't want anyone to be self-sustainable.

The documentary did a good job of discrediting the greenness of renewable energy, and of explaining the destructive nature of our modern industrial civilization.

Their main conclusion is that industrial civilization and agriculture must end, however they provided no hint of how that might be achieved while feeding 8 billion people.

They did not say a single word about the need for democratically supported rapid population reduction policies.

This is quite amazing because population reduction is key for BOTH the goal of deindustrialization, AND the opposing goal of retaining industrial civilization, as non-renewable resources deplete.

In other words, population reduction is the only wise path forward, no matter what lifestyle you desire.

Thank goodness for Ajit Varki's MORT theory which explains that humans exist because we evolved to deny unpleasant realities. I'd go insane without understanding why there are vanishingly few sane people on this planet. Even among well intentioned reasonably aware people like the producers of this documentary.

This movie and the preceding book by the same name is the answer to anyone who thinks renewable energy is the solution to climate change. There is no evidence showing renewable energy would replace fossil fuel energy, indeed it will only add to it. Extraction from the earth is extraction from the earth - whether mining precious metals for solar panels and wind turbines, or removing mountaintops for coal (Which renewable energy relies on). Environmentalists today ignore the facts of production of "renewable" technologies which are just as destructive as fossil fuel technologies. Industrial capitalism/civilization needs to stop. Our consumptive lifestyles are collectively and quickly killing the planet. Will we give up our conveniences and electrical addictions before it's too late?

The solutions presented by our society are gaslighting the hell out of everyone into believing all we have to do is transition from fossil fuels to renewables. This is absolutely false. It will take a fundamental shift in what we value, not electric powered industrial civilization, if we are going to avoid our own extinction. Time to sound the alarm and this film is helping to turn up the volume.

In theory, I mostly agree with people like Jensen, but found Planet Of The Humans (2019/2020) more convincing with the same basic themes.

Both of the above could have focused more on the land and ocean space wind & solar power occupy, set to grow radically if full schemes are approved. There's already a major assault on what's left of scenic open space. That angle could really get the attention of environmentalists who've swept the sprawl issue under the rug. It's an environmental tragedy as bad as AGW in many ways. Look up the Net-Zero America project's 2050 projections and prepare to be stunned by the scale they seek.

The thing that sticks out (literally) with "renewables" is the extremely large physical footprint of the end product, especially noticeable with industrial wind turbines. The director even implies that landscape damage is relatively "unseen," though they show various panoramas of wind and solar projects. It's just strange that the biggest thing about them isn't highlighted.

Instead, they emphasize mining as the main resource problem, which is only true in the specific context of water pollution, etc. You don't see mines all over the place at long distances. They should have emphasized why low energy-density machines need far more space than fossil fuels, which build and support them anyhow. Mining is a must for many human endeavors, not just energy infrastructure and batteries.

Nuclear power is a critical alternative to sprawling wind & solar but they write it off as more of the same and offer no real options but primitivism. A realistic view would admit we're stuck with large economies that can't simply be dismantled. One segment made the weird claim that electricity is a luxury item, and asked why we even need it! I only skimmed the rest after that scene, having read the book and agreeing with their main points on blind growth.

This film came off as too anarchistic and non-pragmatic to sway anyone on the fence. I'd recommend the book for its more thorough analysis of technical issues. The term "Bright Green Lies" is a memorable slogan, either way.

An eye-opener. Wonderful. I wish more people understood the reality of our predicament.

I would give II for I0 * (including the parallel "II" for (binary-coded) peace "(peace fingers sign)" beautifully expressed in the film - peace needed amongst humans socially II peace needed between humans and Nature) to remind of what seems to be the most underseen source of natural energy these days, the sun *, to the plants, and eventually our mouths to help energize our non-greedy, non-violent... best selves.

If Nature has a voice (that we have been conveniently ignoring), through humans to (you) humans, you can hear a lot of that from these extraordinary humans in this film.

Hope it does great work on people's underdeveloped awareness in an overdeveloped world.

"Within this culture, "production" is the conversion of the living to the dead." (like the solar panels of leaves to the solar panelsl

Sorry, but Lierre's explanation of annuals and perennials was enlightening (if not mind-blowing) to me.. Still want to read the book, but for right now, gonna watch some permaculture videos, like Geoff Lawton's YouTube video "Converting 70% of cropland to forest cover"

To the fantasy thinking of many who have no understanding. Thank you for the facts.

This movie shines a light into the deep hypocrisy of today's environmentalism. High tech/renewable tech will not do anything but ravage the living planet further. Ask yourself where the materials for the wind turbines, solar panels, solar arrays, hydro damns, trucks to log the forest to make "biomass", etc etc will come from. They come from mining and manufacturing. They come through chemical reactions, and they come from destroying our ecosystem. Tech will not save us. Only a living planet will save us, and we're astoundingly doing our best to kill our home at an ever-increasing pace.

Everyone should watch and consider everything pointed out. Amazing film!

Everyone needs to watch this movie. And the credits are amazing.