This is the first in a series of articles reflecting on a recent study which predicts collapse of industrial society within a few decades. By destroying the ecological foundation on which all life depends, civilization makes collapse inevitable. Max Wilbert describes the destruction caused by the industrial civilization, and what we can do for a just transition to a more sustainable way of life.
The report, published on May 6th by Dr. Gerardo Aquino, a research associate at the Alan Turing Institute in London, and Professor Mauro Bologna of the Depratment of Electronic Engineering at the University of Tarapacá in Chile, uses statistical and logistical modeling to look at destruction of the planet, and specifically focuses on deforestation and population growth.
By plugging in statistics and trends in resource consumption and running thousands of model-runs with different assumptions, Aquio and Bologna predict the most likely course of future human society.
The researchers conclude that civilization has a “very low probability, less than 10% in the optimistic estimate, to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse.”
On top of this, civilization (and it’s modern form, industrial civilization) is causing a global mass extinction event, changing the composition of the atmosphere and instigating global climate change, polluting the highest mountains and deepest ocean trenches with industrial chemicals and plastics, desertifying and eroding vast portions of the planet’s soils via agriculture, and fragmenting and shattering what habitat does remain intact via networks of roads and urbanization.
Most people perceive collapse as a terrible thing, and indeed a global collapse will result in a great deal of suffering, disease, and death. But the reality is, a vast amount of suffering is happening now, caused by the continued functioning of industrial civilization. A full forty percent of all human deaths are caused by air, water, and soil pollution according to Cornell research. The CoViD-19 pandemic is a direct result of civilization and the destruction of forests.
On top of this, collapse at this point may be inevitable. As the book Deep Green Resistance explains, “We are in overshoot as a species. A significant portion of the people now alive may have to die before we are back under carrying capacity, and that disparity is growing. Every day carrying capacity is driven down by hundreds of thousands of humans, and every day the human population increases by more than 200,000. The people added to the overshoot each day are needless, pointless deaths. Delaying collapse, they argue, is itself a form of mass murder.”
If you are concerned about this, as I am, as we all should be, you should be working to relocalize food production and smooth the transition away from industrial agriculture. Collapse has both positive aspects (declines in pollution, reduction in logging, end of international shipping, reduction in energy consumption, etc.) and negative aspects (collapse of social structures, medical systems, increased demands on local forests, etc.). These need to be managed and prepared for.
In the long-term, collapse will benefit both humans and nature by stopping industrial civilization and its pollution, global warming, desertification, and so on. Another physicist, Tim Garrett from the University of Utah, has conducted research into global warming and concluded that “only complete economic collapse will prevent runaway global climate change.”
There are over 400 oceanic dead zones created by fertilizer and nutrient runoff from industrial farms. Only one has recovered: the dead zone in the Black Sea, which healed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crash of industrial farming in the area. The area is now home to healthy wildlife and fish populations which support a stronger local economy.
Ultimately, our health and success as human beings is inseparable from the health of the planet. To destroy the Earth for temporary enrichment a slow form of suicide. But deeper than that, it is matricide, patricide, fratricide. It is the murder of one’s own family. We will only thrive when the natural world, our kin, are thriving as well. Human beings are not doomed to destroy the planet. We can live in other ways, and indeed, that is our only hope.
Featured image by the author.
Our next piece will discuss how a Dyson sphere (one of the proposed “solutions” in the original article) will not save us from a collapse.
Max Wilbert is a third-generation organizer who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He is a co-founder of the group Deep Green Resistance and longtime board member of Fertile Ground, a small, grassroots environmental non-profit with no employees and no corporate funding. His first book, a collection of pro-feminist and environmental essays, was recently released. It’s called We Choose to Speak, and Other Essays.
He is also the co-author of the forthcoming book “Bright Green Lies” (with Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith) which looks at the problems with mainstream so-called “solutions” such as solar panels, electric cars, recycling, and green cities. The book makes the case that these approaches fail to protect the planet and aim at protecting empire from the effects of peak oil and ecological collapse.
I’m not a Leninist, but I think it’s worth reading Lenin and all those famous revolutionaries throughout history, I think it’s very worth studying and reading their work even if you disagree with large portions of it, even all of it depending on who you are, but Lenin talked about revolution as not being something that people make happen. Ultimately, revolution comes about more or less organically because of those interactions between people, and society, and environment, and that whole socio-political, ecological context gives rise to these revolutionary conditions, and whether or not there is a revolution that depends on people’s ability to harness and change the situation in some way. This whole conversation I’m always thinking of this quote of James Connolly who was an Irish Republican around the early 1900s, active around the 1900s in the independence movement in Ireland, and James Conolly said “revolution is never practical until the hour the revolution strikes, then it alone is practical and all the efforts of the conservatives and compromisers become the most futile, unvisionary of human imaginings, and the whole idea of revolution to me is fascinating because in this context that we find ourselves in today, so many people have trouble imagining, you talked about this in your work Derrick, so many people have trouble imagining another way of life. People can imagine the end of the world, the collapse of the biosphere, the end of all human life and perhaps, most non-human life as well before they can actually imagine living a different way of life or living without the conveniences, and the consumption, and the high energy lifestyle of modern civilization. So, I think part of revolution, part of building towards revolution is how do we envision a future world that is better than the one we live now, and then how do we concretely begin to work for that world in here and now, and be prepared for those revolutionary moments that we know are coming, because that’s the truth as we know these revolutionary fractures in society are coming, and if you were in Paradise California when that fire came through, as the James Connolly quote talked about, all the efforts of the conservatives and compromisers were the most futile, unvisionary of human imaginings in that moment when the inferno is sweeping through your town and the climate apocalypse is upon you, and that is just a small taste of what’s coming. This collapse has been an on-going process for a long time, but it’s getting so intense as the ecology of this planet really has taken such a hammering over the last hundreds and thousands of years, but specially in the last hundred years and the last decades as this culture’s hyper powered on so much fossil fuels, and so much energy that is destroying and extracting the last of all the resources of the planet, blowing up as many mountains as it can and exploiting everything, right? In that context we need to begin to build the seeds of the future and I think it has to combine that imagination, that ability to imagine a different future with like a very hard-headed, a very practical organizing mindset.
Browse all of my Resistance Radio interviews here.
PLAYLIST
0:11 – Introduction 1:22 – The Need for Change in Large-Scale Social and Environmental Movement Approaches 6:59 – Reform Can Be Very Helpful but Doesn’t Address the Fundamental Problem 12:26 – Revolution as a Consequence of Ecological Collapse 18:26 – Deep Green Resistance: Luck is Where Preparation Meets Opportunity 24:34 – We Can’t Out-muscle the Empire, We Have to Be Able to Out-think It 29:19 – Strategy and Organization is How We Build Power 35:06 – Where Does the Power to Exploit Comes From? 41:01 – Dismantling is Scary and Difficult Yet We’re Not Alone 44:05 – Pre-revolutionary Phases and How to Reach Out
In this article, Salonika and Max expose how the Covid-19 pandemic has enforced suppression of political dissent in the Philippines due to a bill known as the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 which places resistance movements in a pinch. You can also read this piece on the increased surveillance during the CoVid crisis.
Deep Green Resistance condemns draconian laws that stifle the political rights of citizens. We stand in solidarity with the resistance against this law.
In an event unprecedented in the history of industrial civilization, most humans have been confined, for the past few months, to their homes battling their fear and desperation. Meanwhile, states have used this unexpected opportunity to move closer to their dream of authoritarianism. Victor Orban has usurped power to suspend and decree laws under the pretext of the pandemic. Narendra Modi has used a time when courts are suspended to persecute peaceful protesters under terrorism charges. We have, in an earlier article, highlighted the increase in surveillance during the last few months.
Repression under Duterte.
The government of the Philippines has been hellbent on repressing any and all opposition for many years. President Rodrigo Duterte announced a “War on Drugs” months after his election. This ‘war’ gave authorization to the police to kill any person involved in the drug trade without due process. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the span of four years, with near total impunity for the killers.
Irrespective of one’s loathing of the drug trade, an inherent flaw in this plan must be visible to anyone. Any law along these lines can and will be used to stifle any form of political dissent. This is precisely what has happened in Philippines.
Philippines Government Response to the Pandemic.
The government’s response to the pandemic has continuously reinforced the economic and political hierarchy in the country. A controversy arose in the first months of the pandemic: Duterte and his cronies were tested for the corona-virus in violation of the criteria set by Department of Health, while actual patients were not receiving access to the testing kits. Local Government Units have taken actions to ease the suffering of general people, some of which have been stunted by the central government.
The situation in the Philippines has been accompanied by a rising suppression of journalism. On June 15th, 2020, a Manila court convicted Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. of cyber libel in a case widely decried as a political witch hunt. The persecution of journalists has always been a tool used by authoritarian regimes for repressing the democratic voices of dissent. Since this case is considered “the most high-profile case” against individual journalists, it is bound to set a precedence for similar persecutions in the future.
Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020
Now, Duterte is set to take another leap towards authoritarianism using the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 also known as Republic Act No. 11479. The bill cleared the Senate in February, passed the House of Representatives in June, and was signed by the president in early July.
The most contentious provisions include the warrant-less arrest and 14-day detentions of suspected “terrorists”, and the creation of an anti-terror council that would determine what is terrorism and order arrests without a warrant – a function usually reserved for the courts. –Al Jazeera report
The Act has broadened the definition of terrorism. Among other things, it includes any act intended to “destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, economic and social structures of the country.” The power lies with the anti-terrorism council to label any person inside or outside the Philippines a terrorist and arrest citizens at random.
The Act allows the Duterte regime to subject suspects to surveillance, warrant-less arrest and detention for up to 24 days. The Human Security Act of 2007 used to have a safeguard against wrongful detention in order to maintain accountability among the state actors. It monetarily compensated anyone who was imprisoned but later proven to be innocent. This protection has now been completely removed.
In short, the new law allows the state to target, pursue, anyone who poses a threat to the autocratic regime and to unfettered capitalist exploitation. The implications are clear; as one human rights activist commented, “even the mildest government critics can be labelled terrorists.” It is expected that government officials will use this law to chill free speech by suppressing speeches, proclamations, banners, and writings.
A member of House of Representatives has remarked that the act would not include activists and that safeguards prevent abuse of the act. Nonetheless, judging by the history of draconian laws (including the War on Drugs), it would be reasonable to estimate that the law will be used to suppress any form of political dissent, not only ‘terrorism’. Even the vice-president has remarked that the act gives the state the power to call anyone a terrorist.
Nationwide, protesters had moved to the streets to raise their voice against the bill. Duterte’s government has used the restrictive laws of the pandemic as an excuse to deploy armed police in the areas of protests. Opposition activists are disappearing. They are being thrown in jail. The violent crackdowns on resistance have already begun to escalate. Laws like this leave resistance movements with little choice but to become more clandestine.
Salonika is an organizer at DGR South Asia based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
Max Wilbert is an organizer, writer, and wilderness guide who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He is a longtime member of Deep Green Resistance. Max is the author of two books: the forthcoming Bright Green Lies, and We Choose to Speak, a collection of essays released in 2018.
This letter was sent to a publisher with whom we signed a contract for our book Bright Green Lies. After the contract was signed by all parties the publisher unilaterally voided on the contract. The publisher voided the contract because we refuse to deny physical reality, that is, we refuse to say that male human beings can “identify” their way into becoming women. The book has nothing to do with that question, but is about how high technology will not stop global warming or the destruction of the planet.
This is the cult-like behavior of the postmodern left: if you disagree with any of the Holy Commandments of postmodernism/queer theory/transgender ideology, you must be silenced on not only that but on every other subject. Welcome to the death of discourse, brought to you by the postmodern left.
We are profoundly disappointed that you chose to void the contract. That’s not particularly professional or ethical. Nor is it what we expected from a press that bills itself as an alternative to the corporate model of publishing.
You asked for our views on “gender,” and then didn’t even bother to wait for an answer before voiding the contract. Again, not what we expected from a press that seems to pride itself on communication.
Here are our views on “gender.”
We are part of a global, multi-generational feminist struggle that is critical of gender. There are many aspects to this political tradition, one of which is criticism of modern gender identity politics.
To make clear our position:
We believe that physical reality is real. This includes biological sex.
We believe that women–adult human females–have been oppressed under patriarchy for several thousand years.
We believe that sex stereotypes–aka gender–are social constructions. There is nothing biological that drives women to wear high heels and makeup, and drives men to fail to show emotions. Those are created by society to keep men on top and women subordinate. Sure, it’s perfectly fine if men want to wear makeup and high heels, but a desire to do so does not make them women.
We believe that people should be allowed to dress however they want, love whomever they want, have whatever interests and personalities they want. And of course they shouldn’t be discriminated against or subjected to harassment or violence. But these fashion choices, sexual preferences, and personality characteristics do not change anyone’s sex. Insisting that they do is reactionary. The whole point of feminism was that both women and men have full human capacities and shouldn’t be constrained to half of our human potential. The catchphrase of the seventies “free to be you and me” has become its polar opposite, where a little girl who likes trucks must really be a boy and hence may be subject to profound and life-changing medical alteration.
We believe that the modern gender identity movement is resulting in concrete and widespread harm, such as via dismantling hard-won protections like Title IX, private bathrooms, separate prisons, women’s sports, changing rooms, scholarship programs for women, women’s events and groups, etc. And of course it is causing harm through the destruction of discourse by the systematic silencing of anyone who disagrees with any portion of the gender identity movement.
We believe, as did Andrea Dworkin, that “Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying.” We believe the same holds true for publishers. Or used to. Or should.
We believe that there is a crisis in publishing and in public discourse, brought on by what has been named “the regressive left.” This movement bears no relation to the historic left that has spent decades fighting for a just and sustainable world. The historic left believed in the power of education and the free exchange of ideas as the foundations of democracy and as bulwarks against authoritarianism. The regressive left has instead based itself on harassing, threatening, deplatforming, and/or assaulting–that is, silencing–anyone who dares to disagree with any of its dogma. We are certainly not alone in noticing this. It has been remarked on by everyone from Noam Chomsky to Ricky Gervais. This regressive left has embraced authoritarianism, and has empowered both petty tyrants and smug cowards. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are deeply chilled by the regressive left’s rise to power. The values necessary for civic society to function and the institutions whose job is to embody and protect those ideals are eroding, and, with a few brave exceptions [for example, the above mentioned Chomsky, Gervais, various comedians, various old-school lefties like Chris Hedges; as well as The Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago, FIRE, Heterodox Academy, and Bret Weinstein], not enough people seem willing to stand and fight. Probably because when we do, regressive lefties threaten our careers, our livelihoods, and our very lives. They deplatform us. They get us fired. They void our contracts. Many threaten to rape and kill the women, and to kill the men. This has become routine. The new orthodoxy is anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and fundamentalist in its mindset. Its tactics of bullying, deplatforming, stalking, severe social censure, and violence will never create a just and sustainable world. It will only create autocrats, self-righteous quislings, and in the case of gender identity, a generation of children who have been sterilized and surgically altered. Children are already being harmed by this project. Some of those young people are speaking out, and we urge you to listen to them:
If no one is allowed to disagree with any one particular group of people–whether they be capitalists or Christians or Muslims or those who support (or oppose) Israel or those who identify as transgender–then there can be no reasonable discourse. Allowing any group to hold discourse hostage is the death knell for pluralistic society. It leads to fundamentalism. It is a fundamentalism. It’s a classic trick used by despots and pocket despots everywhere: to ensure agreement with your position, make certain that all other positions are literally unspeakable. For the religiously minded, the epithet of choice has often been blasphemy. For the patriot, it’s traitor. For the capitalist, it’s commie. And for the liberal regressive leftist, it’s oppressor, or in our case, transphobe.
Here are some questions. These questions aren’t rhetorical. If you’re going to break our contract and not publish us based on internet slander, on an issue that has nothing to do with the book at hand, and apparently without bothering to find out our actual positions, we think you owe us the courtesy of at least honestly considering these questions.
Do you believe that a little boy who likes to dance and play with dolls should be put on puberty blockers and possibly have his genitals removed; or do you think that a little boy who loves to dance and play with dolls should be loved precisely for who he is, which is a little boy who loves to dance and play with dolls? Likewise, do you believe that a little girl who likes to play football and fix bicycles should be put on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and then have her reproductive organs surgically removed; or do you think she should be loved precisely for who she is, which is a little girl who loves to play football and fix bicycles? If you think there is nothing wrong with these children, and they should not be put on dangerous drugs, then you will be called a bigot, and publishers will refuse to publish your book about stopping the murder of the planet.
Do you believe that women, including those who have been sexually assaulted by men, should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men? This has happened in spaces like homeless shelters, women’s prisons, and battered women’s shelters. As a result of unquestioning acceptance of the idea that men can simply identify as women, women have been raped. Women have been assaulted. We have spoken up about this. How many women have to be raped before it will be acceptable for someone who stands in solidarity with women to publish books on any other subject in the world, including stopping the murder of the planet? If you believe that women should not be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then many on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women who have been sexually assaulted and call a rape crisis center should be forced to talk to a man? This has happened. The Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter operates a crisis hotline and was sued in Canadian courts by a trans-identified male who wanted to “man” the phone lines. The crisis center organizers fought back on the basis that a male voice answering the phone would create problems for women in crisis. They eventually won their case, but have since been under assault, including having funding taken away because they refuse to force women who have been raped to talk to men. If you believe that women who have been sexually assaulted by men should not be forced to speak with men when they call a rape crisis center, then those on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women in prison should be forced to share their cells with male prisoners who have been found guilty of rape? This has happened numerous times, and has led to the rape of women by these men. See, for example, Karen White in the UK. See, for example, any number of cases in the US. If you believe that women in prison should not be forced to share their cells with men, then those on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women should be allowed to compete in women-only sports leagues? Or do you believe that women should be forced to compete against males? Men who identify as transgender are already taking medals, money, and scholarships from girls and women, as, for example, in this case, in which a white male millionaire who identifies as transgender cost an indigenous Samoan woman who overcame childhood sexual abuse her gold medal. How can the regressive left rationalize supporting this? But they do. We are the ones called bigots for protesting this. This is an appalling statement of how demented, and regressive, the left has become. Women are being harmed by this–economically, socially, morally. If you believe in Title IX, and believe that women athletes should be allowed a level playing field, then you will be called a bigot and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women should be compelled by law to touch men’s genitals, or risk being hauled before a human rights tribunal? This is happening right now, as a trans-identified male named “Jessica Yaniv” is suing poor immigrant women of color in British Columbia because they refuse to wax his genitals. Yaniv has already forced several of these women out of business. If you do not believe that women should be forced to handle his genitals, you will be labeled a bigot and publishers will refuse to publish your work.
Do you believe that lesbians who do not want to have sex with men are bigots and should be shamed into having unwanted sex with men? This is common in modern lesbian communities. In fact it is happening right now to an entire generation of young lesbians. In any other circumstances, we would call this what it has always been called, which is “corrective rape.” But now the regressive left promotes it, and vilifies those who oppose it. If you do not believe that lesbians should be shamed into having sex with men, then you will be called a bigot and publishers will break their contracts with you.
If you don’t believe women should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then we are baffled by your position. Our book is not about that issue, and our position on that issue has nothing to do with this book. Are you simply afraid of the backlash?
If, on the other hand, you do believe that women should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then we are still baffled by your position. You publish lots of stuff we disagree with. Who cares? We came to you to publish a book on whether industrial wind and solar will save the planet. Your views on whether women should be forced to share their spaces with men are irrelevant to us and to that book. We are not fundamentalists, we are not afraid of open discourse, and we are not afraid of being somehow “contaminated” by contact with those who hold positions with which we disagree. But then again, we are not part of the new regressive left.
By the standards of our detractors, we have committed blasphemy and are now unclean. Our loyalty to women has rendered every other position we take on any subject to literally be unspeakable.
Welcome to the current state of discourse on the regressive left.
After 31 years of resistance including contributions from Deep Green Resistance, Las Vegas has abandoned a water extraction project on indigenous lands in Nevada.
On May 21st, after a series of legal defeats stretching over years, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) began to withdraw its remaining federal and state applications to build a $10 billion water pipeline.
For three decades, SNWA (the water agency for the Las Vegas area) has worked towards building a 300-mile pipeline and dozens of wells to pump vast amounts of groundwater from Goshute, Paiute, and Shoshone indigenous land in eastern Nevada.
Deep Green Resistance began fighting the SNWA water grab in 2013, organizing a series of annual ecology and resistance gatherings in Spring Valley that continued through 2018, participating in lawsuits, elevating voices of the land, and supporting community organizers on the ground. We cannot and will not take credit for this victory, but we are happy today to see this news.
When I first visited the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation in 2013, the building bore a stark message: “SNWA: Sucks Native’s Water Away.” The tribe has stated that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.”
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. Water is life.
There is a place on the floor of the “Sacred Water Valley” or Bahsahwahbee, more commonly known as Spring Valley, where there grows an ecologically unique grove of Rocky Mountain Juniper Trees, where violets bloom and springs bubbling pure water from the Earth.
My friend Delaine Spilsbury, a board member of the Great Basin Water Network and Newe indigenous elder, writes:
“Bahsahwahbee is not just a piece of tribal history. It is American history and a harbinger of the future of indigenous communities. Military officials and vigilantes murdered Newe people there during three massacres between 1850 and 1900. Victims included women, children and elders whose bodies were viciously mutilated. Because it was such a violent event, the spirits of those desecrated are believed to remain in the shallow-rooted Rocky Mountain Juniper trees, referred to as Swamp Cedars. We Shoshone people still visit this location to show our respect for our Elders. To this day, Bahsahwahbee remains a place of mourning for my people.
My grandmother, Laurene Mamie Swallow, survived the Bahsahwahbee massacre of 1897. Oral histories that she and other tribal elders shared, along with documentation from military officials, have served as the historical basis for what we know about the site today.
Despite that information, it is important to note that Bahsahwahbee is more than a place in history. The Swamp Cedars would be lost forever if large-scale pumping were to occur at the site. And, therefore, the ability for indigenous people to practice their spiritual beliefs would be gone too.”
Today, the spirits in the Swamp Cedars can, perhaps, rest a bit easier. But only for now. There still remain countless threats to the Great Basin. Mining is devastating the region. The destruction of Pinyon-Juniper forests continues. Urban sprawl continues to metastasize into the desert, and countless species are on the brink of extinction. Nuclear waste continues to impact indigenous communities. As global warming melts snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado River shrinks, cities like Las Vegas will continue to hunt for water—potentially leading to new water grab projects.
The pure springs of these valleys are not safe, and nor are the Swamp Cedars. While land protectors focus on climate change and the Amazon rainforest, countless other parts of our living planet face destruction without appreciation. We must protect all of this world, and that means challenging every water extraction project, every logging plan, every new mine, every factory—even to the fundamental pillars of industrial civilization itself.
For life on this planet to continue, industrial civilization must come to an end. So rejoice, because the water grab is dead. And then get back to the struggle.
Prayer walk for sacred water in the Mojave desert, home to numerous indigenous nations, a wide array of biodiversity, springs, wildflowers, ungulates, tortoises, lizards, birds, and some of the more remote lands in North America. The Mojave’s most serious threats come from the military, urban sprawl, and industrial solar development.
