George Monbiot Debunks Moore's Planet of the Humans.

Richard Mellor

This is a good take down of the Michael Moore funded documentary, Planet of the Humans. Monbiot is correct in his criticism that Moore offers no way out, no solution other than overpopulation that has devastating consequences for the poor, for women and for the people's of the former colonial world.

This is a common weakness that muckrakers or social critics like Moore have. It was the same with his documentary, Roger and Me.  There was no solution and we are left disillusioned. If one does not see the working class as the force that can change society, or for most of them, a force to be reckoned with at all, there is no future. In this case we are left with a mass culling of the poor, and as Monbiot points out, the poor being non-white people's. The poor historically have many children as they will lose some and children offer a potential source of income and/or labor power. And the people of color of the third world will overwhelm what he calls rich white civilization.

I want to point out that this fear of the ruling class being overwhelmed applies to the poor in general. The English ruling class with regards to their own workers and peasantry and, coupled with racist attacks with regard to the Irish, inhabitants of England's/Britain's first colony who were extremely poor and tended to have large families. Being Catholics was also another reason to demonize them.

The blaming of the poor, aside from having dire consequences for them, is a way of avoiding the real problem, capitalism and the so-called free market. This is the most damaging aspect of all in this as if we do not transform society from a system based on commodity production and profit-----in which the ownership of the productive forces is in private hands-----to a system of production collectively owned managed and democratically planned by workers as producers and consumers, human society will not survive.