Here is a familiar fact to many people across the United States and the world: the Redwoods of Northern California are the tallest trees in the world at nearly 400 feet.
This is both true and false. It’s true because right now the redwoods are the tallest trees. But it’s false because not long ago, that wasn’t the case.
The tallest known redwood is 379 feet tall. But historical accounts are full of references to Douglas Fir trees 400 feet tall and more. One tree in the lower North Fork of the Nooksack River Valley is thought to have been 465 feet tall, probably the largest known tree ever recorded anywhere on the planet. And it wasn’t alone.
Micah Ewers of Portland writes, “If this was just a freak occurrence, I would write it off. But I’ve collected 90 to 100 reports of 300- to 400-foot Douglas firs. A hundred years ago, trees rivaling the height of the redwoods were fairly common. The whole Puget Sound was just filled with giant trees.”
His research found references to many trees that would be considered world record holders today on the sites of current downtown Seattle and downtown Vancouver in British Columbia.
So if you find yourself among the skyscrapers of Seattle or Vancouver, or wandering through the neighborhoods and suburbs or young woodlands of the territory in between, take some time to reflect that where you are walking was not that long ago full of the largest trees on the planet, trees who were killed for profit, for greed, for colonization, for capitalism, for growth, for progress.
Followup:
Micah Ewers responded to this post with an extensive comment below. We’re copying the text here. Thanks Micah!
Thanks for the mention. Yeah the size of forest that was growing in Seattle was astounding. 250 – 300 foot trees were common back then. I am trying to follow up on an old report of a 412 footer said to have been logged around Tacoma, and another big tree 17.8 feet in diameter east of Seattle was reported in 1909 at over 400 feet, the tree was so big that the Puget Sound railroad had to be built around it. Another fir tree reported in Chehalis County in 1893 was measured with survey instruments at over 400 feet, and 17 feet diameter. There were even reports of 300 foot cedars, and 400 ft Sitka Spruce, 20 ft in diameter in Washington and Oregon 100 years ago.
If you look up “Ravenna Park” in a google image search you can find old post cards which give the size of some of the trees that used to grow in Seattle’s most treasured city Park,… Before they were all cut down for quick cash between the 1910’s – 1920’s… the excuse was that the trees were dying and needed to come down, which may have been true for one, but not the whole stand. Those fantastic trees were listed on the post cards as from 270 to about 400 feet in height and 10 to 12, even 14 feet in diameter. Age estimates were between 1,000 and 2,000 years for the oldest of them. Just imagine these massive old beasts jutting out of the little creek and valley near the University district.
Same story in Vancouver, only at least Stanley Park was preserved and wind had blown down the last of the 325 footers in the park in 1926. Portland Also had some 300 – 330 footers in its vicinity, the last of them logged in the 1910’s – 20’s.
I think the redwoods and Douglas fir were actually tied for tallest tree, only that the tallest reported Redwoods I have discovered were up to 424 foot circa. 1886, while the highest reports for Douglas fir is 465. I actually heard a story from a guy in a Gardenweb forum who claimed his father had felled a 480 foot fir in the Black Hills, near Bordeaux, Washington around 1930– although, this is second hand, so it remains an unsubstantiated claim, but the 2008 study on theoretical limits of Douglas fir height by Oregon State University came up with a range of 99 – 145 meters as the possible limits for Doug fir (325 – 475 ft), whereas a 2004 study on Coast Redwoods yielded a slightly smaller limit of 400 – 430 ft.. So it may well be that Douglas fir was the supreme master of stature after all! Redwood holds the title for now, although it wouldn’t surprise me if a few hidden giant Douglas fir, over 350 feet high, still exist hidden in some valley awaiting discovery.
The last real big fir that has survived into modernity (which has been publicly reported anyways) was the “Mt. Pilchuck giant”, fir tree cut down on October 22, 1952 near the small town of Verlot, Washington. The big tree, 700 years old, was reported to be over 350 foot high, 11 ft 6 inches diameter and 30,000 board feet. From that point on, records are few for the big trees over that height range, except of course, the redwoods in California which have about 300 trees alive today of that height. (Impressive, considering 96% of old growth Coast Redwood has been clear-cut).
Editor’s Note: this piece was originally published in 2015, and is being republished here with a few minor edits.
By Max Wilbert / Image by Pierre Markuse, CC BY 2.0, shows 2019 melt ponds across the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet)
Official temperature records for July 2019 show that it was the hottest July and hottest single month ever recorded globally, at 1.2°C hotter than the pre-industrial average.
This comes after a June that was the hottest June every recorded, and a January, February, March, April, and May that were all in the top four hottest months every recorded.
Greenland: 12.5 Billion Tons of Ice Lost in 24 Hours
On August 1st, more than 12.5 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland as temperatures reached 30 degrees above average. Video here. This level of melting is consistent with what some climate models were predicting—for the year 2070.
The last four years, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 are the four hottest years on record globally, but 2019 may break the new record for the hottest year ever recorded.
As we recently noted, climate chaos is accelerating. Industrial civilization and the global capitalist economy are wreaking havok on the planet. And as Christian Parenti has written, “Climate change arrives in a world primed for crisis. The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of poverty and violence. I call this collision of political, economic, and environmental disasters “the catastrophic convergence.”
The Unfolding Climate Chaos
The scale of unfolding catastrophe is almost unimaginable. One report concluded that “The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised.”
William R. Freudenburg, and professor of Environmental Sociology, released a report in 2010 finding that new scientific findings almost always underestimate the severity and speed of global warming.
“Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate ‘other side’ is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date,” he said.
Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Deep Green Resistance does not believe that climate marches will save the planet. This has been happening for decades, and no progress has been made. Emissions are higher than ever. The U.S. is now the world’s leading oil producer and mainstream climate movements have had zero success in stopping this.
Instead, we advocate for organized militant resistance, including coordinated sabotage against the industrial system. We don’t believe the ruling class will stop the murder of the planet unless they are literally forced to stop.
Here is an excerpt from the Deep Green Resistance book:
Historians now believe that Allied reluctance to attack early in the war may have cost many millions of civilian lives. By failing to stop Germany early, they made a prolonged and bloody conflict inevitable. General Alfred Jodl, the German Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, said as much during his war crimes trial at Nuremburg….
[In this future scenario,] Resisters aimed to reduce consumption and industrial activity, so it didn’t matter to them that some facilities had backup generators or that states engaged in conservation and rationing. They celebrated nationwide oil conservation and factories running on reduced power. They remembered that in the whole of its history, the mainstream environmental movement never even stopped the growth of fossil fuel consumption. To actually reduce it was unprecedented… Targeting energy networks was a high priority to resisters. Many electrical grids were already operating near capacity, and were expensive to expand. They became more important as highly portable forms of energy like fossil fuels were partially replaced by less portable forms of energy. Resisters recognized that energy networks often depend on a few major continent-spanning trunks, which were very vulnerable to disruption.”
In this series of videos, DGR cadre Will Falk and Max Wilbert discuss the moral issues surrounding the Deep Green Resistance strategy, which calls for dismantling the global industrial economy by any means necessary, as rapidly as possible.
“Stand with me. Stand and fight. I am one, and we would be two. Two more might join and we would be four. When four more join we will be eight. We will be eight people fighting whom others will join. And then more people. And more. Stand and fight.” —Derrick Jensen
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Deep Green Resistance is a radical environmental movement, dedicated to shifting activists towards strategies that have a real chance to stop the murder of the planet. Our allegiance is first and foremost to the land around us; we fight for the salmon, the pine trees, and the songbirds, not the solar panels and space shuttles so many ‘environmentalists’ have fallen in love with. We in DGR don’t want a more sustainable nightmare. We want a living world.
Deep Green Resistance recognizes that industrial civilization is incompatible with life on this planet – and when our way of living conflicts with the needs of the land, our way of living must go. This transition to a healthy and just relationship with the natural world is a massive undertaking, one that won’t be achieved with individual lifestyle changes and a green coat of paint on the latest mountain-killing mining rig. Real change will take a revolutionary heart. Anything less is a recipe for failure.
Deep Green Resistance has a roadmap for that revolution. We call it Decisive Ecological Warfare. We’ve studied the most successful movements in history, from the Irish Republicans to Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, and applied the lessons they can teach us to the fight for Earth liberation. Our goal as aboveground activists is to promote this strategic resistance, with the goal of triggering cascading systems failure within industrial infrastructure. In this mission, we are guided by a strict code of conduct, a steering committee of seasoned revolutionaries, and, most of all, an unwavering dedication to the land on which we live.
HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED?
In the midst of all this destruction, it’s easy to feel hopeless. But there’s one nice thing about living in such dark times – anywhere you look, there’s great work to be done. Deep Green Resistance isn’t afraid to make the connections between open-pit mining and police brutality, between rape and deforestation, between acidified oceans and settler colonialism. We are proud anti-capitalists, anti-racists, and radical feminists, with members working on everything from pornography and prostitution to indigenous land rights and prison reform.
Whether on the front lines or behind the scenes, there is room for you in this war. So get in touch! We have members across the globe and resources in multiple languages. Head to our website, check our Facebook, or send us an email and introduce yourself. We’ll help you learn more about DGR, find opportunities for volunteering, and apply for greater involvement. You’ll also be able to download a free ebook copy of the Deep Green Resistance book.
DGR is working to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary. In order to succeed, we’ll need teachers, healers, warriors, and workers. If you’re tired of the false solutions and the feel-good failures, Deep Green Resistance is for you, whatever your skills. In a fight like this, we need it all.
Remember: Deep Green Resistance is an aboveground organization, meaning we don’t engage in violence or property destruction. If you feel your talents would best be put to use in more militant actions, please do not contact us. This will keep you safer, and help us be more effective. We will not answer any questions related to any underground that may or may not exist.
“Our best hope will never lie in individual survivalism. Nor does it lie in small groups doing their best to prepare for the worst. Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear.”
It wasn’t until the 1940’s that what we think of as the “commando” or special forces units were standardized by the British Army. With the goal of disrupting German forces in western France and later in the Mediterranean and North Africa, the first commando units were modeled on small groups of Arab fighters who had great success pinning down much larger British Army units during the uprisings in Palestine in the 1930’s.
These units proved to be very effective during World War II and have since become a staple of modern warfare. Today, the U.S. empire largely projects military force through targeted special forces operations and bombing campaigns, rather than outright warfare and traditional military maneuvers.
The Case for Ecological Commandos
Our planet is on the verge of total ecological collapse. Nothing is getting better. Governments and corporations continue business as usual while every day, carbon dioxide levels rise, forests are cut down, and 200 species are driven extinct. Forty percent of all human deaths can be attributed to pollution. Ocean fish may not exist by 2050.
Even in ecological preserves, life is suffering; there has been an 85% decline in mammals in West Africa’s parks. Major dams continue to be built. Environmentalists being are murdered around the world. African lions are in precipitous decline, as are tigers, leopards, elephants, polar bears, rhino, and countless other species. Most of the species who are driven extinct haven’t even ever been described by western science; they slip into extinction with barely a ripple.
Our few, hard-won victories are temporary. Protections can be (and are) revoked. Ground can be lost. Despite all we have done, life on this planet is slipping away.
Small forces of ecological commandos could reverse this trend by targeting the fundamental sources of power that are destroying the planet. We have seen examples of this. In Nigeria, commando forces have been fighting a guerrilla war of sabotage against Shell Oil Corporation for decades. At times, they have reduced oil output by more than 60%.
No environmental group has ever had that level of success. Not even close.
In the U.S., clandestine ecological resistance has been relatively minimal. However, isolated incidents have taken place. A 2013 attack on an electrical station in central California inflicted millions of dollars in damage to difficult-to-replace components used simple hunting rifles. The action took a total of 19 minutes, displaying the sort of discipline, speed, and tactical acumen required for special forces operations.
Characteristics of Special Forces Units
Physical Fitness
Mobility and secrecy are critical to the success of special forces. Therefore, physical fitness, as well as the use of appropriate aids, such as helicopters, bicycles, or pack animals, is essential. Commandos must be prepared to climb barriers, crawl, swim, carry heavy objects, endure long distance travel, maintain stillness, and so on.
Training in Infantry Weapons
Competency in firearms, knives, explosives, unarmed combat, and other handheld weapons are essential to these types of missions.
Focused on Stealth
Commandos must be capable of evading superior forces. This means they must have the ability to move silently and swiftly, and to hide in a variety of terrain. They should also be capable of killing or capturing opponents quickly and silently. However, stealth—the ability to avoid enemies—is more important than combat; fighting should only occur as a last resort. According to the book Deep Green Resistance, thus far the definitive resource on environmental sabotage, ecological commandos should seek to avoid causing casualties to avoid alienating the public further.
Comfortable Operating in Darkness and All Weather Conditions
Darkness is the element of choice for special forces units. Adverse weather can provide additional cover and opportunity. Therefore, units should train to operate in such conditions.
Capable of Operating on Water
Objectives often will be more accessible via water.
Flexible and Self-Directed
Communications during operations may be impossible, and comms equipment is always subject to failure. Special forces must be prepared with a plan. However, they should have a good understanding of mission objectives and be prepared to improvise.
Small Units
Unlike traditional military forces, commando units typically form small squads of 2-12 individuals. Multiple squads may come together for some operations, but small unit size allows faster reaction time and greater operational flexibility—critical in asymmetrical conflict. Special forces engaged in sabotage often split into two forces: one focused on demolitions, the second on covering the demolition force. Units in the field are supported by medical teams, researchers, supply officers, and other support staff at secure positions.
Proper Target Selection
Traditional military units operate by seizing and holding territory. Since special forces rely on tactical rather than strategic advantages, a different approach is needed. Commandos generally focus on high-value targets like supply lines, fuel depots, communications hubs, important propaganda targets, unprepared foes, and so on. Attacking such targets can destroy the enemy’s ability to fight. Clandestine units are always focused on attack, and not defense.
Intelligence Driven
The success of special forces operations depends largely on good intelligence. Gathering information about target locations, defenses, surveillance, cover, enemy reinforcements, escape routes, transportation options, weather, and so on is essential.
Doing What it Takes to Halt Empire
Our situation is desperate. Things continue to get worse. False solutions, greenwashing, corporate co-optation, and rollbacks of previous victories are relentless. Resistance communities are fractured, isolated, and disempowered. However, the centralized, industrialized, and computerized nature of global empire means that the system is vulnerable. Power is mostly concentrated and projected via a few systems that are vulnerable.
Even powerful empires can be defeated. But those victories won’t happen if we engage on their terms. Ecological special forces provide a method and means for decisive operations that deal significant damage to the functioning of global capitalism and industrialism. With enough coordination, these sorts of attacks could deal death blows to entire industrial economies, and perhaps (with the help of aboveground movements, ecological limits, and so on) to industrialism as a whole.
Implementation of this strategy will require highly motivated, dedicated, and skilled individuals. Serious consideration of security, anonymity, and tactics will be required. But this system was built by human beings; we can take it apart as well.
Good luck.
Originally published as Ecological Special Forces on the DGR blog.
Editors note: this text was written as an introduction to a French-language translation of the Earth First! Direct Action Manual. It has been slightly edited for publication here.
by Max Wilbert
The term “direct action” was first widely used by the revolutionary union IWW, or the Industrial Workers of the World, in 1910. It refers to the practice of working directly to achieve social change, rather than using politically-mediated methods such as voting or petitions.
A liberal approach to solving social and ecological problems calls for education, lobbying, and voting. In contrast, direct action calls for people to take matters into their own hands.
The power of direct action lies in its ability to get results. As the saying goes, “direct action gets the goods.” But this is an oversimplification. In any given campaign, a range of different actions could be considered ‘direct action.’ Some people use the term to refer purely to non-violent direct action, mostly various methods of blockades, disruptions, and sit-ins.
But people’s history is a long chronicle of direct action—most of it much more radical and militant than modern conceptions of direct action.
Instead of only railing against slavery in rhetoric, John Brown gathered comrades, took up arms, and carried out the raid on Harper’s Ferry.
After failing to win change for decades through aboveground organization, Nelson Mandela and the ANC took up arms and began to sabotage the Apartheid economy and assassinate its foot soldiers.
With the total failure of political change would save their land, Vietnamese communists organized to fight and win against French and then American military aggression.
The UK movement for women’s suffrage, following decades of inaction, escalated to arson and sabotage.
From the famous bus boycotts that skyrocketed Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement to prominence, to the mass direct action occupation at La Zad and Hambach Forest, to the Zapatistas and the Bolsheviks and the revolution in Rojava, our movements have largely been defined by direct action.
Therefore, for any book to present itself as a “direct action manual” is something of a misnomer. It’s impossible to encompass all of what direct action is in one book. However, this book is valuable, which is why I am writing this introduction.
The main power of direct action is its potential effectiveness. But another secret of direct action’s success lies in its ability to empower people. Modern society is profoundly alienating, and the democracies that dominate the world are participatory in name only. Global empire is ruled by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and the average person has little power. Edward Ross wrote in 1905 that “Nowadays the water main is my well, the trolley car my carriage, the banker’s safe my old stocking, the policeman’s billy club my fist.” Our autonomy, our sense of individual and collective power, has been systematically undermined and destroyed.
One of the few places we can begin to find a sense of our own power is when we rise up—like the angry Black youth who rose up in Ferguson, MO in 2014, or the Yellow Vest movement in France. Action can beget action.
But we also must be cautious about direct action. Spontaneity has limited utility within our movements. Revolutions generally succeed because individuals plan, organize, and train for them. Then, these people are able to take advantage of breaks in normality. To rely on direct action as some sort of superior tactic, without considering when and where and how it must be applied, and for what goal, is to simply waste time. And too many believe that non-violent direct action will succeed without considering legal fees, lawyers, fundraising, and the fact that it’s hard to organize when you’re in jail. When direct action inevitably results in getting arrested, it gives up the initiative that is so critical to winning any conflict.
With that said, direct action can also be at its strongest when applied spontaneously. The 2011 documentary film Just Do It: A Tale of Modern Day Outlaws, represents a strong argument for the value this approach has for building movement capacity and individual bravery.
A variety of situations, methods, and approaches fall under the umbrella of direct action. Direct action is a broad term, with a divergent range of philosophies and tactics falling underneath it.
I emphasize the militant and revolutionary basis of direct action because there is a tendency to underplay this within mainstream social movements. Society glorifies the non-violent resistance of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Color Revolutions, while ignoring movements that have used force.
The modern Earth First! movement sometimes falls into reification of direct action for its own sake. In general, the movement doesn’t have a clear revolutionary strategy. While Earth First! gave birth to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), its modern incarnation tends to emphasize non-violence and defensive blockades.
The diversity of approaches our movement brings to direct action can be exploited. In 2013, there was a leak of documents from the private intelligence company STRATFOR, which has worked for the American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical, Northrup Grumman, Coca Cola, and so on.
The leaked documents revealed one part of STRATFOR’s strategy for fighting social movements. The propose dividing activists into four groups, then exploiting their differences to fracture movements.
“Radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists [are the four categories],” the leaked documents state. “The Opportunists are in it for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. The Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and we must settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. Radicals, who see the system as corrupt and needing transformation, need to be isolated and discredited, using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic.”
Through foundation funding, ideological hegemony, and various means of disruption and infiltration, popular mass movements are usually shaped by the ruling class in one way or another, usually in such a way to blunt their teeth.
Here’s another quote from the STRATFOR leaks that underlines this: “Most authorities will tolerate a certain amount of activism because it is seen as a way to let off steam. They appease the protesters by letting them think that they are making a difference — as long as the protesters do not pose a threat. But as protest movements grow, authorities will act more aggressively to neutralize the organizers.”
And that’s what we’ve seen.
The ideology of non-violence has been championed by people like Srdja Popovic, who rose to prominence as a leader of the Optor! Movement against Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. Optor! Is regularly championed as the perfect example of social movements—despite the fact that it operated alongside a U.S. bombing campaign and a full-scale civil war, and with perhaps $41 million is U.S. funding.
But there is even more to this story. Srdja Popovic’s wife worked for STRATFOR and Popovic himself has worked closely with the CIA to for example, attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez. Non-violence has become a key tool in the U.S. efforts to overthrow socialist nations and secure geopolitical power and access to resources such as oil. Popovic’s popularity and access to TED talks and Harvard faculty positions reflects this institutional support.
Popovic’s academic collaborator in this project is Erica Chenoweth, another Harvard University faculty member and leading researcher on non-violent resistance movements. Chenoweth has become prominent in social movement circles for co-publishing (with Maria J. Stephan of the U.S. State Department) a study on the efficacy of non-violent resistance. Her research has been championed by countless NGOs worldwide and forms the basis of strategic doctrine at organizations like Extinction Rebellion and 350.org.
Chenoweth’s study is overly simplistic. It does not define violence, and it doesn’t differentiate between campaigns against a colonial occupation and those fighting internal dictatorships. It doesn’t account for the vast majority of movements which incorporate both violent and non-violent wings. The existence of the “radical flank” complicates analysis of these issues. Chenowith fails to account for pre-revolutionary conditions, arguing instead that method (non-violent resistance) and mass participation are the main determinant of success.
To make a clear distinction between non-violence and violence is to miss the point completely. Social movements succeed or fail partially through the strength of their moral suation, but more importantly through their ability to effectively mobilize force, resist repression and co-optation, and strike effectively at strategic targets. Specific methods are less important than the big-picture strategy guiding our operations, and the firm will and organizational structure to resist distraction and compromise.
As Mik’maq warrior Sakej Ward tells us, “Don’t confuse the non-violent ‘peaceful warrior; with the wise warrior. The ‘non-violent peaceful warrior’ detests violence and conflict to the point of rejecting the teachings of war. The wise warrior knows conflict exist on a much broader spectrum than simply two ideas of peace and war. The wise warrior sees the vast ground between the two. That warrior understands conflict on multiple levels and can utilize many different paradigms, strategies, tactics and tools that exist between peace and war but is also wise enough to know that he/she must still master the ways of war.”
Even Gene Sharp, the CIA-funded non-violent theorist who Popovic learned from, describes non-violent resistance as a form of warfare, just as Clausewitz called war a “continuation of politics by other means.”
Only when liberals abandon the mythology of non-violence can they begin to grapple with the methods required to achieve our goals by any means necessary. In 1948, U.S. State Department Director of Policy Planning George Kennan wrote that “[The United States has] about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population… Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…”
This is the naked face of empire: violent, devious, cunning, relentless in pursuit of power and willingness to destroy the planet and exploit people. We must be equally cunning if we are to stand a chance of victory. This isn’t a time for amateurs. This historical moment is calling for us all to become skilled, to train, to study.
The Earth First! direct action manual is a starting point for this process. Study this book and learn its methods. Test them, as I have done (in the drawing on the front cover, I’m one of the people on top of the excavator at a disruptive direct action against the Utah Tar Sands project in 2013). And be prepared to escalate further. Time is short, and everything is heading in the wrong direction. Our future depends on our ability to become the people who are needed, and to take matters into our own hands.
Micah Ewers of Portland writes, “If this was just a freak occurrence, I would write it off. But I’ve collected 90 to 100 reports of 300- to 400-foot Douglas firs. A hundred years ago, trees rivaling the height of the redwoods were fairly common. The whole Puget Sound was just filled with giant trees.”
