Courts Urged to Block ‘Illegally Approved’ Lithium Mine

Courts Urged to Block ‘Illegally Approved’ Lithium Mine

by | Feb 25, 2023 | ANALYSIS, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling

Editor’s note: The Thacker Pass lithium mine project reflects more than one injustices in the world: greenwashing mines, denying U.S. atrocities against indigenous tribes, grabbing indigenous land against their will, ecocide. This article highlights some of these injustices.

By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

A coalition of conservation groups on Tuesday joined Native American tribes in launching legal challenges to a proposed lithium mine in northern Nevada that critics say was “illegally approved” and will “irreparably damage” the delicate desert ecosystem and land where Indigenous peoples are seeking federal historical recognition of a genocidal massacre perpetrated by U.S. colonizers.

Members of the Western Watersheds Project filed an emergency motion in federal court Tuesday seeking an injunction against the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in Humboldt County pending action by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure the project—which would tap into the largest known source of lithium in the United States and was approved during the final days of the Trump administration—complies with federal law.

“This mine should not be allowed to destroy public land unless and until the 9th Circuit has determined whether it was legally approved,” Western Watersheds Project staff attorney Talasi Brooks said in a statement announcing the filing.

“There’s no evidence that Lithium Nevada will be able to establish valid mining claims to lands it plans to bury in waste rock and tailings, but the damage will be done regardless,” Brooks added, referring to the subsidiary of Canada-based Lithium Americas that is seeking to build the mine. Lithium is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, cellphones, and laptops.

The emergency motion follows a lawsuit filed last week by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Burns Paiute Tribe, and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe in response to U.S. District Judge Miranda Du’s earlier ruling that largely favored Lithium Americas and rejected opponents’ claims that the project would cause “unnecessary and undue degradation” to the environment and wildlife.

“When the decision was made public on the previous lawsuit last week, we said we would continue to advocate for our sacred site PeeHee Mu’Huh. A place where prior to colonization, all our Paiute and Shoshone ancestors lived for countless generations,” Arlan Melendez, chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, said in a statement.

“It’s a place where all Paiute and Shoshone people continue to pray, gather medicines and food, honor our nonhuman relatives, honor our water, honor our way of life, honor our ancestors,” Melendez added.

All three tribes call Thacker Pass PeeHee Mu’Huh, which means “rotten moon”—a name given to honor the dozens and perhaps scores of Northern Paiute men, women, and children who were massacred by Nevada Cavalry on September 12, 1865.

According to an account by one participant:

Daylight was just breaking when we came in sight of the Indian camp. All were asleep. We unslung our carbines, loosened our six-shooters, and started into that camp of savages at a gallop, shooting through their wickiups as we came. In a second, sleepy-eyed squaws and bucks and little children were darting about, dazed with the sudden onslaught, but they were shot before they came to their waking senses…

We dismounted to make a closer examination. In one wickiup we found two little papooses still alive. One soldier said, “Make a cleanup. Nits make lice.”

The three tribes assert that all of Thacker Pass should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“While Americans tend to focus on only the proud moments of American history, the shameful history of genocide perpetrated by the American government against Native Americas is nevertheless a broad pattern running throughout American history,” Michon Eben, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony’s cultural resource manager, wrote in a 2022 letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Eben added that the tribe “considers the destruction of its traditional cultural properties for another mine another act of genocide in the broad pattern running throughout American history.”

Indigenous advocates argue that victims of the 1865 massacre were never properly buried, that human remains and artifacts are still being discovered in Thacker Pass, and that federal authorities failed to properly consult tribes on the mine project in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act.

“Part of the federal government’s responsibility is to determine if a proposed mining project may adversely affect historic properties. Historic properties include Native American massacre sites,” Eben told Nevada Current. “The BLM failed in its trust responsibility to tribes and now our ancestors’ final resting place is currently being destroyed at PeeHee Mu’huh.”

“The BLM failed in its trust responsibility to tribes and now our ancestors’ final resting place is currently being destroyed.”

Will Falk, attorney for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass—which set up a protest camp on the site of the proposed mine—accused BLM officials of lying about the massacre site being located outside the project area.

“The Biden administration and [Interior] Secretary Deb Haaland keep paying lip service to tribal rights and respect for Native Americans,” Falk told Last Real Indians last year. “Well, now three federally recognized tribes are saying that BLM Winnemucca did not respect tribal rights. It’s time that BLM halts this project so the tribes can be heard.”

Tim Crowley, vice president of government affairs and community relations for Lithium Nevada, argued in a statement that “since we began this project more than a decade ago, we have been committed to doing things right,” and that Du’s ruling “definitively supported the BLM’s consultation process, and we are confident the ruling will be upheld.”

While global demand for lithium is surging, extraction of the metal can have devastating consequences, including destruction of lands and ecosystems and water contamination.

“Global warming is a serious problem and we cannot continue burning fossil fuels, but destroying mountains for lithium is just as bad as destroying mountains for coal,” contends Max Wilbert of Protect Thacker Pass. “You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green.”

Please donate to support the case and fund legal costs!

DONATE: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/donations-and-funding/

Thacker Pass Sacred Sites Are Already Being Damaged

Thacker Pass Sacred Sites Are Already Being Damaged

by | Jan 2, 2023 | ACTION, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling

Tribal Chairman: “It’s Our Responsibility to Protect Sacred Sites”

RENO, NV — The Thacker Pass Lithium Mine in northern Nevada is headed back to Federal Court on January 5th as the lawsuits against the project near completion, but project opponents are raising the alarm that Lithium Nevada Corporation has already begun work on the proposed mine.

Lithium Nevada’s workers at Thacker Pass have begun digging test pits, bore holes, dumping gravel, building fencing, and installing security cameras where Native Americans often conduct ceremonies. Lithium Nevada also conducted “bulk sampling” earlier this year, and may be planning to dig dozens of new test pits across Thacker Pass. They’re claiming this work is legal under previous permits issued over a decade ago. But Tribes and mine opponents, including the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, disagree.

They point to language in the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine that says “authorization of [the mine] will terminate the [earlier permits].” The Federal permit for Thacker Pass was approved on January 15th, 2021.

Will Falk, attorney for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, explains: “Lithium Nevada told the government and the American public that it would terminate the older permits upon BLM’s approval of the Thacker Pass Project. Now they are going back on their word, it appears they are lying to get a headstart on building the Thacker Pass mine, and the BLM is allowing them to get away with it.”

Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, is a sacred site to regional tribes whose ancestors lived in the area for thousands of years, and were massacred there on at least two occasions.

Michon Eben, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer at Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, says the site is incredibly important to Native American history. “Peehee Mu’huh is a sacred place where our ancestors lived and died. We still go there to pray, gather food and medicine, hunt, and teach our youth about the history of our people.” Eben and the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony are currently hosting an exhibit on the impacts of mining on Native people of Nevada.

Tribal members have stated in court filings that, because of the history of battles and massacres on the site, Thacker Pass is as significant to their culture as a site like Pearl Harbor is to American history. Arlan Melendez, Chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, understands the importance of battle and massacre sites as both a Native American and as a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

“As tribal leaders, it’s our responsibility to protect and honor our sacred places,” says Melendez. “Throughout US history, tribes have always been set up to lose in the US legal system against BLM. This Lithium Mine stands in the way of our roots and it’s violating the religious freedoms of our elders, our people.”

Falk, the Tribal attorney, says that Lithium Nevada’s construction activities at Thacker Pass are also violating tribal consultation rights.

“The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe are still engaged in consultation with the BLM about the September 12, 1865 massacre site, a site that will be completely destroyed by Lithium Nevada’s mine if this project is built,” Falk says. “It’s hard to believe a government agency is consulting in good faith when they are already allowing the site to be harmed.”

Shelley Harjo, a tribal member from the Fort McDermitt Shoshone Paiute Tribe and an employee of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, has called the planned destruction of Thacker Pass “the biggest desecration and rape of a known Native American massacre site in our area.”

The upcoming January 5th hearing in Reno’s Federal Courthouse will be the final oral argument in the ongoing lawsuits against the Thacker Pass mine. Mine opponents are planning a march and rally outside. Plaintiffs, including the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Burns Paiute Tribe, four environmental organizations, and local rancher Edward Bartell, have alleged numerous violations of the law, and Judge Miranda Du is expected to issue her opinion in the case within days or weeks of the January 5th hearing.

“No matter what happens in court on January 5th, Thacker Pass is being destroyed right now and that threat will be ongoing,” says Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass. “We have to stop that.”

Lithium Nevada claims that its lithium mine will be essential to producing batteries for combating global warming, and the Biden administration has previously indicated some support for Thacker Pass. Opponents of the project have called this “greenwashing,” arguing that the project would harm important wildlife habitat and create significant pollution. They say that electric cars are still harmful to the planet.

Timeline

January 15, 2021 — Due to “fast-tracked” permitting under the Trump Administration, the Bureau of Land Management releases a Record of Decision approving the Thacker Pass mine less than a year after beginning the Environmental Impact Statement process. On the same day, Max Wilbert and Will Falk established the Protect Thacker Pass camp.

February 11, 2021 — Local rancher Edward Bartell files a lawsuit (Case No. 3:21-cv-00080-MMD-CLB) in U.S. District Court alleging the proposed mine violates the Endangered Species Act by harming Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, and would cause irreparable harm to springs, wet meadows, and water tables.

February 26, 2021 — Four environmental organizations (Basin and Range Watch, Great Basin Resource Watch, Wildlands Defense, and Western Watersheds Project) file another lawsuit (Case No. 3:21-cv-00103-MMD-CLB) in U.S. District Court, alleging that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy Management Act, and other laws in permitting the Thacker Pass mine.

June 24, 2021 — The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the oldest and largest national organization of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments, calls on the Department of the Interior to rescind the permits for the Thacker Pass project.

Spring and Summer 2021 — Rallies, protests, and prayer runs take place in Orovada, Winnemucca, Reno, Carson City, and at Thacker Pass. More than 100 mine opponents gather at Thacker Pass to commemorate the 156-year anniversary of a September 12, 1865 massacre of at least 31 Northern Paiute men, women, and children committed by the 1st Nevada Cavalry. Thousands of people visit the site.

July 19, 2021 — The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Atsa koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) files a successful motion to intervene in Federal District Court (Case No. 3:21-cv-00080-MMD-CLB) alleging that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in permitting the planned lithium mine.

August 2, 2021 — Burns Paiute Tribe files a motion to intervene on the side of tribal plaintiffs (Case No. 3:21-cv-00080-MMD-CLB).

September 15, 2021 — Bureau of Land Management accuses Will Falk and Max Wilbert of trespass for providing bathrooms to native elders at Thacker Pass, fining them $49,890.13.

October 8, 2021 — Eighteen native elders from three regional tribes request a BLM permit for their ceremonial camp. The BLM does not respond.

November 29, 2021 — The Reno-Sparks Indian Colony files an amended complaint in federal court alleging major previously unknown violations of the law. In January, Judge Miranda Du rejects the amended complaint because she wants to make a final decision on the case within a few months (note that the case has now continued for another calendar year).

February 11th, 2022 — Winnemucca Indian Colony files a motion to intervene in the lawsuit on the side of plaintiffs, claiming that BLM’s contention that they consulted with the Tribe is completely false. Judge Du rejects this motion shortly afterwards with the same reasoning used above.

April 4th, 2022 — Reno-Sparks Indian Colony files a Motion for Discovery Sanctions alleging that the BLM has been disobeying court orders and making “reckless, false statements” in a deliberate attempt to abuse the justice system and limit judicial oversight. Judge Du agrees with RSIC, but rejects the motion on a technicality.

August 2022 — BLM “discovers” five new historic sites at Thacker Pass and for the first time acknowledges the September 12, 1865 massacre took place, but continues to reject tribal expertise.

September 2022 — Lithium Nevada Corporation begins digging up portions of Thacker Pass for “bulk sampling” despite consultation still being ongoing between the Bureau of Land Management and regional tribes over cultural sites.

October 2022 — Dozens of mining activists from four continents visit Thacker Pass as part of the Western Mining Action Network biennial conference.

Contact:
Will Falk, Attorney for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute Tribe
Bethany Sam, Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Media Relations
Max Wilbert, Protect Thacker Pass

Events: FiLiA 2022 and Global Extraction Film Festival 2022

Events: FiLiA 2022 and Global Extraction Film Festival 2022

by | Oct 12, 2022 | ACTION, Movement Building & Support

Editor’s note: Neither of the events are being organized by DGR. We stand in solidarity with both of these and encourage our readers to get involved in these if possible.

FiLiA 2022

FiLiA is a UK-based women-led volunteer women-only organization. It runs the largest annual grassroots conference in Europe, with the aims of a) building sisterhood and solidarity, b) amplifying the voices of women, particularly those less often heard or purposefully silenced, and c) defending women’s human rights. Every year since 2013, the FiLiA conference is organized in a different part of UK and brings women together in listening to and building relationship with other women. Women share their experiences with patriarchy and their efforts to tackle the challenges they have faced.

This year the event is being held in Cardiff, Wales from October 22 to October 24. Find more information for the speakers this year. Listen to the spokeswoman for FiLiA talk about the conference in an interview.

Note: You need to register for the event.

#FiLiA2022

film

Global Extraction Film Festival (GEFF) 2022

The Global Extraction Film Festival (GEFF) 2022 will be streamed worldwide for free from October 26-30, 2022. The third edition of this online festival will present 250+ documentaries and urgent shorts from 50+ countries highlighting the destructive impacts of extractive industries. Founded in 2020 by Jamaican environmental filmmaker and activist Esther Figueroa (]Vagabond Media) and postcolonial film scholar-practitioner Emiel Martens (University of Amsterdam, Caribbean Creativity), GEFF aims to bring attention to the destructive impacts of extractive industries and to highlight communities across the world who are bravely defending against annihilation while creating livable futures.

GEFF2022 features 6 programs with over 250 documentaries and urgent shorts from over 50 countries, with a wide range of compelling topics that people around the world need to think about. Where, how and by whom is the food we eat, water we drink, clothes we wear, materials in our technology, the energy that powers our lives produced and transported? What are we to do with the billions of tons of waste we create daily? What is our relationship to other species and all life on the planet? Extraction and extractivism have caused the anthropocene, the climate crisis is real and cannot be wished away or solved by magical technologies based on extraction.

#GlobalExtractionAction #GEFF2022

Featured Image by Alex Motoc on Unsplash

 

The truth is
It is not enough to know the truth.
It is not enough to accept the truth,
to embrace the truth, to be saved by the truth.
It is not even enough to cling to the truth
when no one else will.
The truth rails at being trapped
in the blood flooded chambers
of the human heart.
She detests being chained within
the hard, bony walls of thick human skulls.
The truth is a restless being.
Broken bodies, shattered souls,
and the willful ignorance
that break and shatter them
make her scream
and boil the fuel from her spleen
until she liquefies like natural gas
looking for just one match
to explode and burn all the lies down.
She will not be denied.
Banish her from your thoughts
and she will microwave your mind
until the molecules you use as excuses
vibrate with nuclear radiation
and all that’s left of your self-respect
is a billowing mushroom cloud.
It’s not that the truth doesn’t want to be used.
She does. She wants your heart
to burn like a furnace. She wants you
to shovel her like coal
into the engines driving your axles.
She doesn’t care if you object
to the industrial metaphors, if you cringe
at being compared to common appliances.
She doesn’t care because the truth is
your blood runs full of plastic,
mother’s milk is now carcinogenic,
and when you spend more time
with machines than trees, the stars,
or your own warm lover,
it’s hard to distinguish between machines
and those who serve them.
So the truth demands more.
She demands more than recognition,
more than acceptance,
more than the smugness that comes
with telling everyone what the truth is.
She demands more. She demands the truth.
And the truth is,
the truth is action

Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance. https://www.facebook.com/willfalk35

First Voices Radio: “Protect Thacker Pass” with Author, Attorney, and Activist Will Falk

First Voices Radio: “Protect Thacker Pass” with Author, Attorney, and Activist Will Falk

by | Aug 8, 2022 | ACTION, Obstruction & Occupation

Editor’s note: Today’s post is an interview with Will Falk discussing his work on the Protect Thacker Pass campaign with Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), host of First Voices Radio. Falk co-founded Protect Thacker Pass with Max Wilbert and is representing the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony in a Federal court case alleging violations of tribal consultation laws.

By First Voices Radio

Tiokasin’s guest is Will Falk, who gives an update on Thacker Pass in northern Nevada. In January 2021, Will and Max Wilbert launched an occupation of a proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass. Will is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today.

Activism has taken Will to the Unist’ot’en Camp — an Indigenous cultural center and pipeline blockade on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory in so-called British Columbia, Canada, to a construction blockade on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, and to endangered pinyon-juniper forests in the Great Basin.

Will’s first book, “How Dams Fall: Stories the Colorado River Told Me” was published in August, 2019 by Homebound Publications.

For more information, visit https://www.protectthackerpass.org/. Look for Will’s poetry on his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/willfalk35. For more information about Will, visit https://willfalk.org/

With Guest Will Falk

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW

Production Credits: Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer; Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer; Malcolm Burn, Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston, WKNY 1490 AM and 107.9 FM, Kingston, NY; Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor

Music Selections:

1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song); Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters; Album: Tahi (1993); Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand) (00:00:22)

2. Song Title: Mother Earth; Artist: Karliene; Single: Mother Earth (2019); Label: N/A (Available on YouTube) (00:24:40)

3. Song Title: Single Pride of Man; Artist: Quicksilver Messenger Service; Album: Quicksilver Messenger Service (1968); Label: Capitol Records (00:28:45)

4. Song Title: Revolution; Artist: SOJA; Album: Peace in Time of War (2002); Label: DMV Records (00:32:34)

5. Song Title: Bo Bo’s Groove; Artist: Tom Principato Band; Album: Raising the Roof (2008); Label: Powerhouse Records (00:37:30)

6. Song Title: Mother Earth; Artist: SOJA; Album: Peace in Time of War (2002); Label: DMV Records (00:37:30)

7. Song Title: Through the Eyes of Love; Artist: Walter Trout and the Radicals; Album: Notodden Blues Festival – The Best of People and Blues – Nbf, Vol. 3 (2004); Label: Bluestown Records (00:46:45)

8. Song Title: American Dream; Artist: J.S. Ondara; Album: Tales of America (The Second Coming) (2019); Label: Verve Forecast / Universal Music Canada (00:55:00)

AKANTU INSTITUTE: Visit Akantu Institute, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuinstitute.org/ to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse.

Photo by Max Wilbert: Will Falk surveys native Pinyon-Juniper forests and BLM clearcuts near Ely, Nevada. To learn more, see https://pinyonjuniperforests.org.

An Ecological Basis for the Right to Abortion

An Ecological Basis for the Right to Abortion

by | Jul 18, 2022 | ANALYSIS

By Will Falk

(I recognize that I am a man. I will never confront a decision about abortion. I am not trying to tell women what to do with the following. I am, however, humbly trying to offer an argument for enforcing women’s rights to full reproductive freedom that is rooted in neither political or religious ideology, but in ecological reality.)

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” – Aldo Leopod, A Sand County Almanac

The global economy – the system that brings most humans the basic necessities of life (food, water, clothing, shelter) – is based on, and would collapse very quickly without, the ever-growing consumption of non-renewable resources and the over-exploitation of renewable resources. Fossil fuel consumption is one example (though it is not by any means the only example). Most of the time when we think of fossil fuel consumption we think of tail-pipe emissions from personal automobiles because that is the most overt example of most individuals’ direct use of fossil fuels. But, fueling personal automobiles, of course, is only one way fossil fuels prop up the global economy.

Fossil fuels are essential to the global food supply, for example. The world’s topsoil is also essential to the global food supply and is another one of those non-renewable resources that the planet is rapidly running out of. Humans have postponed the worst effects of local and regional topsoil deficits through the use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers like nitrogen fixers. Fossil fuels are also essential for processes like transporting food from where it’s grown to places humans need that food, for the manufacture and operation of the machines needed to harvest crops supporting humans, etc.

We are depleting many nonrenewable resources like topsoil and fossil fuels at an intensifying pace. This consumption of resources is driven, if not primarily, at least significantly by a human population that is growing exponentially. Basic algebra teaches us that the infinite use of a finite resource, the ever-growing use of a non-renewable resource, leads to the total loss of that resource. In other words, topsoil, fossil fuels, and other non-renewables we are currently losing will not be replaced. (Topsoil takes thousands of years to regenerate. Perhaps it will regenerate in several millennia but that doesn’t help creatures alive and suffering on earth today or for the next several millennia. It certainly doesn’t help any unborn children for the next few thousand years.)

Human population has doubled since 1968 and has grown by 40% since 1987. It appears that human population growth might have slowed from 2% per year for the last 50 years to around 1% per year in recent years. However, all that means is the rate of growth is slowing. It does not mean human population is decreasing.

There’s another aspect to the problem. The rate of resource consumption similarly appears to be increasing. Many mainstream studies estimate that while human population doubled in the last half-century, resource consumption quadrupled. So, each human today, on average, is using 4 times the amount of resources that each human was using in 1970. Right now there are more and more humans using more and more of the natural world that can never be replaced.

This reality means that humans who follow us (the population of which will only be made larger by making it more difficult for women to access abortions) will not only be part of a much larger population, those humans will use more resources than they are today – all while there will be less and less of those resources available.

A primary argument offered by anti-abortionists revolves around the right of a fetus to life. I should note that I am uncomfortable with the distinctions and hierarchies of life that many humans use to justify their position on abortion one way or the other. To me, this argument gets too close to arguments about why animals and other creatures should or should not have rights based on how closely they resemble adult humans. It gets too close to the arguments made by human supremacists seeking to justify the destruction of the natural world because, for them, only humans are truly alive.

So, I’ll take it as a given that a fetus is alive, a person even. Anti-abortionists then argue that a mother’s right to an abortion should not trump a fetus’ right to live. This of course ignores the danger pregnancy threatens a mother’s life with, too.

However, I’ll set that argument aside too because ecological reality undermines the anti-abortionist argument about a fetus’ right to life on its own terms. How?

Quite simply, the vast majority of humans alive today (and the vast majority of unborn fetuses that are not aborted tomorrow) survive by stealing from the future. The laws of ecology which are as immutable as the laws of physics illustrate how this is true.

Generally, whenever a population of any species overshoots the carrying capacity of that species’ habitat, a crash always follows. It is not a question of if a crash will follow, it is only a question of when. And, to make matters worse, when the carrying capacity of a certain habitat is overshot, carrying capacity is permanently eroded. The longer a population exists in overshoot, the more carrying capacity is destroyed. The inevitable crash happens. And, the population, whenever it stabilizes, will be far less than the carrying capacity that existed prior to overshoot.

Ecologists and other scientists have known for decades that human population has overshot Earth’s carrying capacity for humans. The Earth’s carrying capacity for humans is the maximum population of humans which the Earth can support indefinitely. Overshoot is the condition of having exceeded for the time being the permanent carrying capacity of Earth. Human overshoot has created a carrying capacity deficit, a condition where the Earth’s permanent ability to support human life is less than the quantity of humans already in existence. The Earth’s carrying capacity for humans has been temporarily extended by drawdown. Drawdown has been achieved by extracting resources necessary for human life that cannot be replaced. This drawdown will lead to a crash and a permanent carrying capacity deficit.

The harsh truth, for humans alive today, is that a population crash is coming. Meanwhile, more and more humans are being born who will depend on, and contribute to, the permanent destruction of resources that future humans require. These humans are more likely than we are to experience the horrors of that population crash. How horrific will that crash be? Mainstream estimates of the Earth’s carrying capacity for humans often range in the hundreds of millions. There are nearly 8 billion humans alive today. The die-off will likely be massive. 

The vast majority of humans alive and/or born today are quite literally stealing from the future. The vast majority of human fetuses that survive today are quite literally ensuring that many human fetuses in the future will not even have the opportunity to survive.

Ecological reality, therefore, undermines the argument that abortion infringes on the rights of unborn children because most children born today (especially in developed countries like the US) will consume and permanently destroy resources that future unborn children desperately need. Indeed, in industrialized countries most children born today reduce the number of children that can be supported in the future. Therefore, enforcing an unborn fetus’ right to life today comes at the costs of unborn fetuses right to life tomorrow.

Epilogue: My argument here focuses on effects to humans because I know most humans only care about humans. But, a biophilic reader, while reading my arguments, could (and should) point out that humans are destroying the Earth’s carrying capacity for everyone else we share this beautiful planet with. Right now, industrial humans aren’t just destroying countless other-than-human lives and species, industrial humans are rapidly destroying the very possibility that those creatures can exist in the future.

Author of How Dams Fall Will Falk is a biophilic essayist, poet, and lawyer. The natural world speaks, but rarely in English. Wind and water, soil and stone, fin, fur, and feather are only a few dialects. Will’s work is how he listens.

 

Mary Lou Singleton on Roe v. Wade, the abortion debate, and how we got here

Banner image: “Child Labor: Breaker Boys, Pittston, PA, USA, 1911.” by Kelly Short6 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.