Ketan Joshi.

Green Voices is an interview series produced by A greener life, a greener world. In this first episode, we speak to Ketan Joshi, a clean energy expert and commentator about Planet of the Humans and the clean energy industry.

By Anders Lorenzen

Ketan Joshi is a clean energy expert and communicator with a background in the clean energy industry.

He was one of the first to thoroughly debunk the facts in the film ‘Planet of the Humans’, Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s controversial documentary which labels renewables as fraudulent and his opinions were shared widely on social media by climate change, scientists and energy experts alike.

I caught up with Ketan on Zoom, to talk further about his views on the documentary, you can watch the full conversation here. 

Joshi was keen to make the point he felt it was a great shame that the filmmakers set out to create an essentially deceptive film when they had a chance to do something important for the environment.

He explained that although he already had low expectations of the film before he watched it he was surprised by just how bad it was and how incorrect the facts were. He acknowledged that there was a valid point around how the renewable energy industry could do a better job of maintaining sites at the end of life shelf for solar and wind farms. 

He shared his view that the filmmakers had rushed to put the film together without adequate fact-checking to launch a product during the COVID-19 lockdown period, to take advantage of, essentially, captive audience. This was further evidenced, he said, by interviews with them in which they had called for a ‘youth climate movement’ to rise up to combat climate change, which of course is something that has been taking place for several years now, suggesting that they were very out of touch with current affairs.

Our conversation touches on the hypocrisy of several of the narratives propagated by Gibbs, including him calling for a reduction in consumption, driving and travelling, whilst its plain to see that in the film he himself is driving around in a large gas-guzzling car.

Joshi also pointed out that despite the film showcasing outdated renewables technology which was less efficient than current versions of the same technology, the data the filmmakers used and subsequent verdict on the industry was still bad and incorrect 

Of course, our conversation also included the status quo of the clean energy transition and what the issues and challenges are there.

You can find the full conversation below, connect with Joshi on Twitter and find the writings he refers to here and here.