There is probably no contemporary filmmaker who is more associated with advocacy for trade unions and workers than documentarian Michael Moore.

His 1989 breakout documentary, Roger & Me, takes us from the Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike of 1936 that led to the formation of the United Auto Workers through to the deindustrialization of the ’80s that devastated his hometown and so many other communities. His cheeky, innovative 1990 docuseries TV Nation, which exposed episode after episode of jaw-dropping corporate malfeasance, developed the Roger concept further and laid down a format that has been emulated ever since. Every film he has ever made furiously, humorously, humanistically sides with the many and not the few.

The same can’t be said for his most recent work. Planet of the Humans — this time produced by Moore and directed by Jeff Gibbs (switching their roles from Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine) — concludes that climate change solutions such as wind, solar, and electric vehicles do not live up to their hype. They reckon that from global warming and biodiversity loss to freshwater scarcity and soil fertility depletion, there are no technological or political solutions up to the task, and the only solution to environmental challenges is for there to be not so many of the many. Moore and Gibbs may not have embraced the few, but they certainly do want fewer.