by DGR News Service | Oct 11, 2014 | Education
Our planet is being murdered. Mountains are falling. The oceans are dying. The climate itself is bleeding out and it may be beyond repair. Industrial civilization has entered its thrashing endgame. Technology can’t fix it and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. And we are out of time.
The environmental movement has severely truncated its strategic thinking by insisting on education, consumer choices, and legislative initiatives as the only options for action. None of these can address the scale of the emergency facing our planet.
To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Authors Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith with filmmaker Carson Wright are producing a film that will make the case for that movement. On the Side of the Living starts where the environmental movement leaves off: civilization can never be sustainable and is ultimately incompatible with life. People of courage and conscience are now stranded between moral agony and moral agency: the only certainty is that our one and only home will soon be a bare rock if we do nothing. Within that terrible urgency, the film confronts the possibility—and possible necessity—of principled, militant resistance.
$10,000 will see On the Side of the Living to completion. Go to https://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/0c27882b to find out more and donate. If you love this planet, please give what you can. Your contributions will help us with film equipment, design, and production costs, as well as transportation expenses so we can deliver aesthetically striking footage with interviews from the movement’s most charismatic leaders.
Those in power are using their control over the culture industry to churn out story after story, book after book, film after film seducing us to forget and encouraging the masses to snuggle back into the warm illusion of civilization. On the Side of the Living combats the lies of those in power. Your support will help us spread our message to a greater audience.
A film supporting principled, militant resistant movement will probably not be overwhelmingly popular with the mainstream population. On the Side of the Living’s message will most likely prevent it from receiving material support from traditional sources of funding like corporations or government grants. But, as so many resistance movements have proven – from the efforts of the women suffragists, to the IRA, and to the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta – a committed group of militant resisters can win.
Funding for On the Side of the Living will be provided by grassroots supporters like you. Support for a serious resistance movement is growing and your support for this film will speed the momentum.
What can you do
– Donate money to make it happen
– share with your networks
– share on social media
– share promotional posters and other media
– organise a fundraiser
Go to https://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/0c27882b to find out more.
by DGR News Service | Aug 4, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Lobbying
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance San Diego
There’s a common joke I’ve heard many indigenous people tell. It goes like this: “What did indigenous peoples call this land before Europeans arrived? OURS.”
This joke – or truth – reflects many of the problems inhering to the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent ruling in Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44. From my radical view, the Tsilhqot’in decision leaves much to worry about. In this article, I examine the decision written by Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin to show why the decision is not as helpful it would seem and I anticipate how the government and corporations will bend the decision to their goals.
For me, the term “radical” denotes going to the roots of the problem. First Nations are suffering under the yoke of colonialism. Colonialism is the problem. To undermine colonialism, we must understand the processes making colonialism possible. One of the most powerful institutions perpetuating colonialism is the Canadian government and the Canadian court system as a branch of the Canadian government. It is my view that – for now – we must read the Tsilhqot’in decision not so much as a victory, but as another step down the long road of insidious colonialism.
First, there’s the general and underlying defeat that comes with the fact that colonialism has been so dominant in Canada that First Nations must submit to decisions made by Canadian courts. My second problem with the decision involves facing that there can be no true ownership of land when a dominated people must ask the courts of their conquerors for validation of their right to their own homelands. Placing the burden on First Nations to prove their land claims is another act of arbitrary power that works against cultural survival. Finally, I am deeply anxious about how clearly the Court spells out just what kind of governmental projects would be the type that the Court would sign off on. These projects include mining, forestry, agriculture, and the “general economic development of the interior of British Columbia.”
What Appealing to the Legal System Means
When celebrating what we view as a “good” decision by an imperial court it is easy to forget that the goal is to dismantle the power that gives the court its authority. We must not begin to view the so-called justice system as something like a benevolent paternal figure to appeal to when big-bad corporations come to destroy the land.
We must never forget that there will never be true justice in the courts of the oppressors because the courts of the oppressors are designed to protect the oppressors. Private property laws are the perfect example of this. What happens if you’re starving, walk into Walmart, take a loaf of bread, and are caught? You will be charged with transgressing property laws, dragged into court, and punished by the court for your transgression. Walmart’s right to a loaf of bread trumps your right to eat.
What does it mean, for example, that the Tsilhqot’in had to ask the courts to give them a right to land that they have lived on for thousands of years? Can a people ever truly own their land if they have to ask an occupying court to recognize their claims to land? The court protected the Tsilhqot’in after twenty-five years of deliberation, but what happens to the next aboriginal group that appeals to the courts and loses?
How is Aboriginal Title Established?
First, the Court lays out the process for establishing Aboriginal title. The burden falls on the Aboriginal group claiming title to prove its title. This means that a First Nation existing on its land for thousands of years must pay lawyers and subject its people to the stress of a legal proceeding – in courts established by settlers with access to First Nations land through centuries of genocide – to prove that the land is, in fact, theirs.
Aboriginal title is based on an Aboriginal group’s occupation of a certain tract of land prior to assertion of European sovereignty. A group claiming Aboriginal title must prove three characteristics about their occupation of a certain tract of land. First, they must prove their occupation is sufficient. Second, they must prove their occupation was continuous. Third, they must prove exclusive historic occupation. (¶ 50)
Proving Sufficient Occupation
To prove sufficiency of occupation, an Aboriginal group must demonstrate that they occupied the land in question from both an Aboriginal perspective and a common law perspective.
The Aboriginal perspective “focuses on law, practices, customs, and traditions of the group” claiming title. In considering this perspective for the purpose of Aboriginal title, the court “must take into account the group’s size, manner of life, material resources, and technological abilities, and the character of the lands claimed.” (¶ 35)
The common law perspective comes from the European tradition of property law and requires Aboriginal groups to prove they possessed and controlled the lands in question. As the Court explains, “At common law, possession extends beyond sites that are physically occupied, like a house, to surrounding lands that are used and over which effective control is exercised.” (¶ 36)
Simply put, proving sufficiency of occupation requires that the group claiming Aboriginal title were involved with the land in question more deeply than just using it in passing.
Proving Continuity of Occupation
Proving a continuity of occupation “simply means that for evidence of present occupation to establish an inference of pre-sovereignty occupation, the present occupation must be rooted in pre-sovereignty times.” So, the group claiming Aboriginal title must provide evidence that they were on the land in question in pre-sovereignty times. (¶ 46)
Exclusivity of Occupation
The last of the three general requirements for establishing Aboriginal title burdens a group with proving they have had the intention and capacity to retain exclusive control over the lands in question. As with sufficiency of occupation, the exclusivity element requires that the court view the evidence from both the Aboriginal and common law perspectives. According to the Court, “Exclusivity can be established by proof that others were excluded from the land, or by proof that others were only allowed access to the land with the permission of the claimant group. The fact that permission was requested and granted or refused, or that treaties were made with other groups, may show intention and capacity to control the land.” (¶ 48)
What Rights Does Aboriginal Title Confer?
This is one of the most important issues addressed by the Court in Tsilhqot’in – for what it says and what it does not say. The important thing to know here is that Aboriginal title does not provide Aboriginal groups with complete control of their own land. It may be common sense to assume that once an Aboriginal group gains Aboriginal title to their ancestral lands they are free to use their land how they see fit free of government interference. This simply is not true. And the Court is very clear to explain that this is not true.
According to the Court, “Aboriginal title confers ownership rights similar to those associated with fee simple, including: the right to decide how the land will be used; the right of enjoyment and occupancy of the land; the right to possess the land; the right to the economic benefits of the land; and the right to pro-actively use and manage the land.” (¶73)
In the English common law, “fee simple” refers to the highest form of ownership of land. Traditional rights associated with “fee simple” are the ones mentioned in the quote above. As the Court explains, “Analogies to other forms of property ownership – for example, fee simple – may help us understand aspects of Aboriginal title. But they cannot dictate what it is and what it is not.” (¶72) The Court quotes Delgamuukw, “Aboriginal title is not equated with fee simple ownership; nor can it be described with reference to traditional property law concepts.”(¶72)
It is important to note, of course, that Aboriginal title does not actually give Aboriginal groups full ownership of their own land. Aboriginal title has some key restrictions.
The Court explains: Aboriginal title “is collective title held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. This means it cannot be alienated except to the Crown or encumbered in ways that would prevent future generations of the group from using and enjoying it. Nor can the land be developed or misused in a way that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land. Some changes – even permanent changes – to the land may be possible. Whether a particular use is irreconcilable with the ability of succeeding generations from the land will be a matter to be determined when the issue arises.” (¶74)
So, once Aboriginal title is established, Aboriginal groups can only sell or give their land back to the Crown. On top of this, the Court creates open doors for future litigation with all the restrictions. Aboriginal groups will be subject to defending their decisions from accusations that they do not know how to manage their own lands for the benefit of future generations. Forcing Aboriginal groups to defend their actions in Canadian courts is a statement that the courts know how to manage Aboriginal lands better than Aboriginal peoples.
Finally, through Tsilhqot’in, Aboriginal title is subject to being over-ridden by governments and other groups on the basis of the broader public good – which often spells disaster for First Nations and natural communities.
Infringing on Aboriginal Title
Government and other groups may infringe on Aboriginal title – or use Aboriginal lands against the wishes of aboriginal peoples – on the basis of the broader public good if it “shows (1) that it discharged its duty to consult and accommodate, (2) that its actions were backed by a compelling and substantial objective, and (3) that the governmental action is consistent with the Crown’s fiduciary obligation to the group.” (¶ 77)
The Duty to Consult
The Court predicates the duty to consult on what it calls the “honour of the Crown” and says that the “reason d’etre” of the duty to consult is the “process of reconciling Aboriginal interests with the broader interests of society as a whole.” (¶77 and 82)
It sets up a sliding scale for adjudicating just how hard the government or other groups must try to consult Aboriginal groups. The duty to consult is strongest where Aboriginal title is proven and weaker where the title is unproven. The Court quotes the Haida decision, “In general, the level of consultation and accommodation required is proportionate to the strength of the claim and the seriousness of the adverse impact the contemplated governmental action would have on the claimed right. The required level of consultation and accommodation is greatest where title has been established.” (¶ 79)
Nowhere does the Court say that a government or other group must literally accommodate the wishes of Aboriginal groups. Yes, the government has a duty to consult. But, the government is not charged with an absolute duty to respect the wishes of an Aboriginal group with title to land the government wants. No never actually means no when the government is concerned.
Compelling and Substantial Objectives
The Court is very careful to articulate that there are compelling and substantial objectives that would justify infringement on Aboriginal title. Just like we saw with the duty to consult, the Court will view what objectives will justify infringement through a desire to reconcile Aboriginal interests with the broader interests of society as a whole.
On its surface, this sounds great, but then the Court quotes the Delgamuukw decision to illustrate just exactly what kinds of activities might qualify as a compelling and substantial objectives (when reading this list, keep in mind the kinds of projects we are fighting against right now): “The development of agriculture, forestry, mining, and hydroelectric power, the general economic development of the interior of British Columbia, protection of the environment or endangered species, the building infrastructure and the settlement of foreign populations to support those aims, are the kinds of objectives that are consistent with this purpose and, in principle, can justify the infringement of aboriginal title.” (¶ 83)
We have to recognize how dangerous this language is. Enbridge has long anticipated the language. You could pick any number of prominent quotes from Enbridge’s Northern Gateway website www.gatewayfacts.ca to see how Enbridge is already spinning rhetoric to match the Court’s Tsilhqot’in ruling.
Take this one, for example, under the heading, “A boost for our economy,” “Northern Gateway will bring significant and long-lasting fiscal and economic benefits. Economically, the project represents more than $300 billion in additional GDP over 30 years, to the benefit of Canadians from every province.”
Or this one under the heading “Building communities with well-paying jobs,” “The pipeline sector creates thousands of jobs across the country. In B.C. alone, Northern Gateway will help create 3,000 new construction jobs and 560 new long-term jobs. The $32 million per year earned in salaries will directly benefit the families and economies of these communities.”
This is exactly the type of governmental objective that the Court in Tsilhqot’in suggests is compelling and substantive enough to pass constitutional muster.
It is important to understand how easy it is to be misled by our desire for good news in the fight to defend the land and First Nations communities. While there are helpful aspects of the Tsilhqot’in ruling on Aboriginal title, the Court is a long way from giving First Nations total control over their own lands. It may be safer for land defenders to assume that nothing really has changed. Yes, Aboriginal title has been defined, but how meaningful is that title if governments and corporations can override title by pointing to the “general economic development of the interior of British Columbia”?
The Crown’s Fiduciary Duty
The final hurdle a government or other group must clear in infringing on Aboriginal title is proving that the proposed action is consistent with the Crown’s fiduciary duty to the Aboriginal group. This fiduciary duty supposedly requires the Crown to act solely in Aboriginal groups best interests. The problem, of course, is that it is the courts that decide what is in an Aboriginal groups best interest.
The Court explains that the Crown’s fiduciary duty impacts the infringement justification process in two ways. “First, the Crown’s fiduciary duty means that the government must act in a way that respects the fact that Aboriginal title is a group interest that inheres in present and future generations…This means that incursions on Aboriginal title cannot be justified if they would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” (¶ 86)
The second way it impacts the infringement process is by imposing an obligation of proportionality into the justification process where the government’s proposed infringement must be rationally connected to the government’s stated goal, where the government’s proposed action must minimally impair Aboriginal title, and where the benefits the government expects to accrue from the proposed action are not outweighed by adverse effects on Aboriginal communities. (¶ 87)
Another glimpse at the Enbridge’s Northern Gateway website (http://www.gatewayfacts.ca/benefits/economic-benefits/) demonstrates how Enbridge anticipates the Court’s ruling. Under a heading titled “Aboriginal inclusion” the website reads, “First Nations and Metis communities were offered to become equity partners providing them a 10% stake in the project. With the $300 million in estimated employment and contracts, it adds up to $1 billion in total long-term benefits for Aboriginal communities.”
I do not think it is a stretch to expect that Canadian courts will rule that Aboriginal groups denying projects like the Northern Gateway are working contrary to their own best interests. But, this isn’t even really the point. The point is, for all the progressiveness we want the Tsilhqot’in decision to stand for, it still allows the courts to decide what the best interest of First Nations is and not First Nations themselves. The longer this system remains intact, the longer First Nations communities will be in danger.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 27, 2013 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Listening to the Land
By Derrick Jensen, for Orion
Last night a host of nonhuman neighbors paid me a visit. First, two gray foxes sauntered up, including an older female who lost her tail to a leghold trap six or seven years ago. They trotted back into a thicker part of the forest, and a few minutes later a raccoon ambled forward. After he left I saw the two foxes again. Later, they went around the right side of a redwood tree as a black bear approached around the left. He sat on the porch for a while, and then walked off into the night. Then the foxes returned, hung out, and, when I looked away for a moment then looked back, they were gone. It wasn’t too long before the bear returned to lie on the porch. After a brief nap, he went away. The raccoon came back and brought two friends. When they left the foxes returned, and after the foxes came the bear. The evening was like a French farce: As one character exited stage left, another entered stage right.
Although I see some of these nonhuman neighbors daily, I was entranced and delighted to see so many of them over the span of just one evening. I remained delighted until sometime the next day, when I remembered reading that, prior to conquest by the Europeans, people in this region could expect to see a grizzly bear every 15 minutes.
This phenomenon is something we all encounter daily, even if some of us rarely notice it. It happens often enough to have a name: declining baselines. The phrase describes the process of becoming accustomed to and accepting as normal worsening conditions. Along with normalization can come a forgetting that things were not always this way. And this can lead to further acceptance and further normalization, which leads to further amnesia, and so on. Meanwhile the world is killed, species by species, biome by biome. And we are happy when we see the ever-dwindling number of survivors.
I’ve gone on the salmon-spawning tours that local environmentalists give, and I’m not the only person who by the end is openly weeping. If we’re lucky, we see 15 fish. Prior to conquest there were so many fish the rivers were described as “black and roiling.” And it’s not just salmon. Only five years ago, whenever I’d pick up a piece of firewood, I’d have to take off a half-dozen sowbugs. It’s taken me all winter this year to see as many. And I used to go on spider patrol before I took a shower, in order to remove them to safety before the deluge. I still go on spider patrol, but now it’s mostly pro forma. The spiders are gone. My mother used to put up five hummingbird feeders, and the birds would fight over those. Now she puts up two, and as often as not the sugar ferments before anyone eats it. I used to routinely see bats in the summer. Last year I saw one.
You can transpose this story to wherever you live and whatever members of the nonhuman community live there with you. I was horrified a few years ago to read that many songbird populations on the Atlantic Seaboard have collapsed by up to 80 percent over the last 40 years. But, and this is precisely the point, I was even more horrified when I realized that Silent Spring came out more than 40 years ago, so this 80 percent decline followed an already huge decline caused by pesticides, which followed another undoubtedly huge decline caused by the deforestation, conversion to agriculture, and urbanization that followed conquest.
My great-grandmother grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. When she was a tiny girl—in other words, only four human generations ago—there were still enough wild bison on the Plains that she was afraid lightning storms would spook them and they would trample her home. Who in Nebraska today worries about being trampled by bison? For that matter, who in Nebraska today even thinks about bison on a monthly, much less daily, basis?
This state of affairs is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s harder to fight for what you don’t love than for what you do, and it’s hard to love what you don’t know you’re missing. It’s harder still to fight an injustice you do not perceive as an injustice but rather as just the way things are. How can you fight an injustice you never think about because it never occurs to you that things have ever been any different?
Declining baselines apply not only to the environment but to many fields. Take surveillance. Back in the 1930s, there were people who freaked out at the notion of being assigned a Social Security number, as it was “a number that will follow you from cradle to grave.” But since 9/11, according to former National Security Agency official William Binney, the U.S. government has been retaining every email sent, in case any of us ever does anything the government doesn’t like. How many people complain about that? And it’s not just the government. I received spam birthday greetings this year from all sorts of commercial websites. How and why does ESPN.com have my birth date? And remember the fight about GMOs? They were perceived as scary (because they are), and now they’re all over the place, but most people don’t know or don’t care. The same goes for nanotechnology.
Yesterday I ate a strawberry. Or rather, I ate a strawberry-shaped object that didn’t have much taste. When did we stop noticing that strawberries/plums/tomatoes no longer taste like what they resemble? In my 20s I rented a house where a previous resident’s cat had pooped all over the dirt basement, which happened to be where the air intakes for the furnace were located. The house smelled like cat feces. After I’d been there a few months, I wrote to a friend, “At first the smell really got to me, but then, as with everything, I got used to the stench and it just doesn’t bother me anymore.”
This is a process we need to stop. Milan Kundera famously wrote, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Everything in this culture is aimed at helping to distract us from—or better, help us to forget—the injustices, the pain. And it is completely normal for us to want to be distracted from or to forget pain. Pain hurts. Which is why on every level from somatic reflex to socially constructed means of denial we have pathways to avoid it.
But here is what I want you to do: I want you to go outside. I want you to listen to the (disappearing) frogs, to watch the (disappearing) fireflies. Even if you’re in a city—especially if you’re in a city—I want you to picture the land as it was before the land was built over. I want you to research who lived there. I want you to feel how it was then, feel how it wants to be. I want you to begin keeping a calendar of who you see and when: the first day each year you see buttercups, the first day frogs start singing, the last day you see robins in the fall, the first day for grasshoppers. In short, I want you to pay attention.
If you do this, your baseline will stop declining, because you’ll have a record of what’s being lost.
Do not go numb in the face of this data. Do not turn away. I want you to feel the pain. Keep it like a coal inside your coat, a coal that burns and burns. I want all of us to do this, because we should all want the pain of injustice to stop. We should want this pain to stop not because we get used to it and it just doesn’t bother us anymore, but because we stop the injustices and destruction that are causing the pain in the first place. I want us to feel how awful the destruction is, and then act from this feeling.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 1, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Indigenous Autonomy
By Derrick Jensen
The term Anthropocene not only doesn’t help us stop this culture from killing the planet – it contributes directly to the problems it purports to address.
First, it’s grossly misleading. Humans aren’t the ones “transforming” – read, killing – the planet. Civilized humans are. There’s a difference. It’s the difference between old growth forests and New York City, the difference between 60 million bison on a vast plain and pesticide- and herbicide-laden fields of genetically modified corn. It’s the difference between rivers full of salmon and rivers killed by hydroelectric dams. It’s the difference between cultures whose members recognize themselves as one among many and members of this culture, who convert everything to their own use.
To be clear, the Tolowa Indians lived where I now live for at least 12,500 years, and when the first of the civilized arrived the place was a paradise. Now, 170 years later, the salmon are being driven extinct, redwoods have been reduced to 2 percent of their range, and the fields (formerly forests) are full of toxins.
To be even more clear: Humans don’t destroy landbases. Civilized humans destroy landbases, and they have been doing so since the beginning of civilization. One of the first written myths is of Gilgamesh deforesting what is now Iraq – cutting down cedar forests so thick the sunlight never touched the ground, all so he could make a great city and, more to the point, so he could make a great name for himself.
All of this is crucial, because perpetrators of atrocity so often attempt to convince themselves and everyone else that what they’re doing is natural or right. The word “Anthropocene” attempts to naturalize the murder of the planet by pretending the problem is “man,” and not a specific type of man connected to this particular culture.
The name also manifests the supreme narcissism that has characterized this culture from the beginning. Of course members of this culture would present their behavior as representing “man” as a whole. The other cultures have never really existed anyway, except as lesser breeds who are simply in the way of getting access to resources.
Using the term Anthropocene feeds into that narcissism. Gilgamesh destroyed a forest and made a name for himself. This culture destroys a planet and names a geologic age after itself. What a surprise.
They say one sign of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. Well, members of this culture must not be very smart. We’ve had 6,000 years to recognize the pattern of genocide and ecocide fueled by this culture’s narcissism and sociopathy, and the behavior is simply getting worse. Members of this culture have had 6,000 years to recognize that the cultures they’re conquering have often been sustainable. And still they come up with this name that attempts to include all humanity in their own despicable behavior.
The narcissism extends beyond disbelieving that other cultures exist. It includes believing that nothing else on the planet fully exists, either. It’s like the bumper sticker says: “We’re not the only species on Earth: We just act like it.” I recently heard an astronomer trying to explain why it’s important to explore Mars. The exploration will, he said, “answer that most important question of all: Are we all alone?” On a planet brimming with beautiful life (for now), he asks this question? I have a more important question. Is he insane? The answer is yes. He’s a narcissist, and a sociopath.
Of course members of this culture, who have named themselves with no shred of irony or humility Homo sapiens, would, as they murder the planet, declare this the age of man.
The Anthropocene gives no hint of the horrors this culture is inflicting. “The Age of Man”? Oh, that’s nice. We’re number one, right? Instead, the name must be horrific, it must produce shock and shame and outrage commensurate with this atrocity of killing the planet. It must call us to differentiate ourselves from this culture, to show that this label and this behavior do not belong to us. It must call us to show that we do not deserve it. It must call us to say and mean, “Not one more Indigenous culture driven from its land, and not one more species driven extinct!”
If we’re going to name this age, let’s at least be honest and accurate. Can I suggest, “The Age of the Sociopath”?
From Earth Island Journal: http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/age_of_the_sociopath/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 7, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Mining & Drilling, Strategy & Analysis, Toxification
By Derrick Jensen, for Orion Magazine
There isn’t a chance in hell that something like the original Wilderness Act could be passed today. Environmentalists today are too much on the defensive. Sure, there have been green platforms and policy papers, but nothing I’ve read matches the urgency of this moment. So I decided to draft a declaration. It goes like this:
We, the citizens of the United States of America, hold these truths to be self-evident: that a rapid decline in living conditions is taking place all around us; that compromise is no longer an adequate way forward (and perhaps never was); that more drastic measures must be taken immediately in order to preserve a livable planet. From these beliefs springs the following list of demands:
We demand that the United States Constitution be rewritten to explicitly prohibit the privatization of profits and the externalization of costs by the wealthy, and to immediately grant both human and nonhuman communities full legal and moral rights. Corporations should no longer be considered persons under the law. Limited liability corporations must be immediately stripped of their limited liability protection. Those whose economic activities cause great harm—including great harm to the real, physical world—should be punished. Environmental Crimes Tribunals must be immediately put in place to try those who have significantly harmed the real, physical world. These tribunals should have the force of law and should be expected to impose punishment commensurate with the harm caused to the public and to the planet.
We demand the immediate, explicit, and legally binding recognition that perpetual growth is incompatible with life on a finite planet. Economic growth must stop, and economies must begin to contract. We demand acknowledgment that if we don’t begin this contraction voluntarily, it will take place against our will, and will cause untold misery.
We demand that overconsumption and overpopulation be addressed through bold and serious measures, but not by approaches that are racist, colonialist, or misogynist. Right now, more than 50 percent of the children who are born into this world are unwanted. We demand that all children be wanted. The single most effective strategy for making certain that all children are wanted is the liberation of women. Therefore we demand that women be given absolute economic, sexual, and reproductive freedom, and that all forms of reproductive control become freely available to all.
There is consensus among the scientific community that in order to prevent catastrophic climate change beyond what the industrial economy has already set in motion, net carbon emissions must be reduced by 80 percent as soon as possible. Because we wish to continue to live on a habitable planet, we demand a carbon reduction of 20 percent of current emissions per year over the next four years.
Dwayne Andreas, former CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, has said, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.” He’s right. Capitalism is based almost entirely on subsidies. For example, commercial fishing fleets worldwide receive more in subsidies than the entire value of their catch. Timber corporations, oil corporations, banks—all would collapse immediately without massive government subsidies and bailouts. Therefore, we demand that the United States government stop subsidizing environmentally and socially destructive activities, and shift those same subsidies into activities that restore biotic communities and that promote local self-sufficiency and vibrant local economies.
We demand an immediate and permanent halt to all extractive and destructive activities: fracking, mountaintop removal, tar sands production, nuclear power, and offshore drilling chief among them. The list of activities to be halted must also include the manufacture of photovoltaic panels, windmills, hybrid cars, and so on. We must find nondestructive ways of becoming a sustainable society.
We demand an immediate end to monocrop agriculture, one of the most destructive activities humans have ever perpetrated. All remaining native forests must be immediately and completely protected. We demand an end to clearcutting, “leave tree,” “seed tree,” “shelter tree,” and all other “even-aged management” techniques, no matter what they are called, and no matter what rationales are put forward by the timber industry and the government to justify them. Likewise, we demand that all remaining prairies and wetlands be permanently protected.
Further, we demand that all damaged lands be restored, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. Because soil is the basis of terrestrial life, no activities should be allowed that destroy topsoil. All properties over sixty acres must have soil surveys performed every ten years, and if they have suffered any decrease in health or depth of topsoil, the lands shall be confiscated and ownership transferred to those who will build up soil.
We demand that no activities that draw down aquifers be allowed, and that all polluted or compromised rivers and wetlands be restored. There are more than 2 million dams in the United States, more than 60,000 dams over thirteen feet tall and more than 70,000 dams over six and a half feet tall. If we removed one of these 70,000 dams each day, it would take 200 years to get rid of them all. Salmon don’t have that much time. Sturgeon don’t have that much time. Therefore, we demand that no more dams be built, and we demand the removal of five dams per day over the next forty years, beginning one year from today.
We demand that the United States make an annual survey of all endangered species to ascertain if they are increasing in number and range, and if they are not, we demand that steps be taken to make sure that they do. The U.S. government must be charged with the task of doing whatever is necessary to make sure that there are more migratory songbirds every year than the year before, that there are more native fish every year than the year before, more native reptiles and amphibians.
The United States must immediately withdraw from NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other so-called free trade agreements, because these agreements cause immeasurable and irreparable harm to working people, local economies. Likewise, we demand that the United States remove all support for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, because these organizations promote and support vast infrastructure projects such as highways, dams, thermal power projects, and mines that disrupt or destroy entire biomes and dispossess and immiserate hundreds of thousands of people (in India alone, 50 million people have been displaced by large “development” projects).
From this day forward, the only conditions under which the United States of America should go to war is by a direct vote of more than 50 percent of U.S. citizens. Furthermore, we demand immediate closure of all U.S. military bases on foreign soil. All U.S. military personnel should be brought home within two years. The U.S. military budget must be reduced by 20 percent per year, until it reaches 20 percent of its current size. This will provide the “peace dividend” politicians promised us back when the Soviet Union collapsed, will balance the U.S. budget, and will more than pay for all necessary domestic programs, starting with biome repair and including food, shelter, and medical care for all.
In addition to the aforementioned, we demand that the U.S. government itself undergo a significant transformation in recognition of the fact that it can only be of, by, and for the people if it is concurrently of, by, and for the earth. And no, the fact that the animals and plants and natural communities don’t speak English is not a valid excuse for failing to provide for their well-being.
Once these demands have been met, we will come up with more, and then more, until we are living in a sane, just, and sustainable culture. We believe that such a culture is our birthright, both as human beings with inalienable rights and as animals who love our home. We have not forgotten that the Declaration of Independence states that when a government becomes destructive of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
From Orion Magazine: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6916
