Bright Green Lies Exposes the Lies Behind Green Technology

Having premiered on Earth Day, April 22nd, 2021, Bright Green Lies sheds light on the lies behind the so-called green technology. The screening of the environmental documentary will be followed by a discussion and a Q&A with filmmaker Julia Barnes and the authors of the book of the same name, Max Wilbert, Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith. The documentary has been available on Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube Movies and iTunes since April 23rd, 2021.

The hard-hitting documentary pulls apart the idea that drives the advances in green technology, namely that we can continue the current rate of human consumption. It also claims that solutions such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars are just a part of green washing, or deceptive marketing. For instance, in one scene we see a huge mine in China where the materials used in the production of solar panels come from. This is huge, since in the UK alone there are more than 500,000 solar units. Hailed as solutions to our environmental problem, these products are in fact contributing to it by selling us the illusion that by switching to them we will save the planet.

According to the documentary, the illusion painted by green technology only serves to speed up consumption by making us live in the imaginary world of green washing. “Over the past several decades, this ‘Bright Green environmentalism’ has become mainstream,” said the film’s award-winning director Julia Barnes. “There are an incredible number of claims being made about ‘green’ technologies that are frankly untrue. Words like ‘clean,’ ‘free,’ ‘safe,’ and ‘sustainable’ are often thrown around by bright green environmentalists. They act as if solar panels and wind turbines grow on trees,” she says. “So-called renewable energy both emerges from and supports the industrial system that is destroying life on the planet.”

Bright Green Lies presents a very different picture. One where the production process behind green technology actually contributes to environmental devastation. Produced on a mass scale, green technology goes hand-in-hand with habitat destruction, as well as an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, toxic waste and mining. According to the film, green technology does not even reduce fossil fuel consumption. In effect, green technology only produces energy that is simply adding to that that is already being consumed. 

While many environmentalists still campaign for green technology, the film clearly shows that this is not the solution to global warming, a disaster vividly depicted in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. “Tackling the most pressing issues of our time will require us to look beyond the mainstream technological solutions and ask deeper questions about what needs to change,” states the Bright Green Lies website.