Editor’s note: “Birds and Offshore Wind: Developing the Offshore Wind that Birds Need”. – 2025 National Audubon Society
With up to a million birds currently being killed each year directly(which does not include indirect causes from mining and manufacturing) by wind turbines in the US, why would an organization dedicated to protecting birds say such a thing? Add on the fact that Wind facilities also require relatively large areas of land and sea. Facility development fragments and otherwise alters habitat in ways that make it unsuitable for species that have historically been present.
Report: “Conflicts of Interest” – Environmental Organizations(Audubon among them) Take Offshore Wind Industry Money
“These offshore projects, which could decimate hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, will be built by some of the largest international oil and gas companies in the world,” the group said. “Our findings take on suspended belief when one considers Ørsted’s involvement with the New Jersey Audubon Society.” The Danish company is the official sponsor of the New Jersey Audubon Society’s fundraiser, the World Series of Birding where funds are raised to support bird conservation.
Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, reassessed around half of the 254 species of shorebirds the organization currently monitors, for 2024, according to Ian Burfield, BirdLife International’s global science coordinator.
The reassessment was prompted by a study published last year that showed steep declines in many shorebird species in North America, Burfield told Mongabay via email.
“[B]ut as it only covered part of their global populations, we had to source equivalent data from elsewhere … to produce a global picture, before applying the IUCN Red List criteria to reassess their status,” Burfield said. “Most species did not need recategorizing, but of those that did, virtually all have deteriorated.”
After the latest reassessment, seven of the 16 shorebird species were categorized as “near threatened” and nine are now “vulnerable” to extinction as they experienced global population declines of 20-40% over three generations.
BirdLife International said in a statement that migratory birds are especially at risk as they follow specific migration flyways or routes and stop along the way to rest and feed at certain sites that now face threats like habitat loss and climate change impacts.
“While many of these shorebirds remain numerous and are still commonly encountered along their flyways, new analyses of data from long-term monitoring schemes reveal that the global populations of some species have declined by more than a third in recent decades,” Burfield said in the statement.
Among those that have now been moved into a higher “threatened” category of vulnerable are the gray plover(Pluvialis squatarola)and the curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea), both of which breed in various parts of the Arctic and migrate globally during their nonbreeding seasons. They both face threats from habitat loss and degradation, hunting, and climate change impacts.
The Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica), a large shorebird that breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and migrates to South America during its nonbreeding months, is also now considered vulnerable. The IUCN notes in its assessment of the species that the bird’s population is seeing a “significant decline … most severely noted in numbers recorded at migratory sites in North America.”
BirdLife International said in its statement that protecting shorebirds is also important for the coastal communities that depend on the same habitats as the birds.
‘The perilous declines of migratory birds are a sign that the integrity of flyways is deteriorating,” Burfield said. “Losing the network of habitats that migratory birds depend on to rest and feed during their long journeys could have severe consequences for the millions of people that rely on these sites, as well as the birds.’’
Kristine Sabillo is a wire reporter for Mongabay. She has been a multimedia journalist for more than a decade and has produced political, science and environment content for the online, print, television and radio newsrooms of leading media organizations in the Philippines. Feedback: Use this form to send a message to this author. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the article page.
Editor’s note: Civilization is in free fall, and most people do not accept that. Humans will have to use a lot less energy. That future is hard for people to grasp. They will need to adjust their expectations of how reality is going to look. This will require going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining(excuses), depression, and acceptance. We can still create social relations that can improve the world through policy and interactions. Rememberthe win is always in the movements struggling together with others toward those victories, the fighting against the fascism of industrial civilization.
By Paul Mobbs, The ‘Meta-Blog’, issue no.14, 7th May 2020
Being ‘well known’ in eco-circles, you sometimes get strange, often unsolicited stuff arriving in your inbox. This, however, was something I’d been hoping for: A chance to view, and thus review, ‘Bright Green Lies’ – Julia Barnes’ new documentary about the environmental movement and its support for renewable energy.
‘Planet of the Humans’ (PotH) was entertaining. At a general level, it was factual, albeit a polemic expression of those points. But its protracted period of production meant that it lacked coherence, and thus left itself open to easy criticism.
Those criticisms when they came, however, fell directly into the lap of the central argument of the film: That mainstream environmentalists distort facts to promote an erroneous vision of the measures necessary to ‘save the planet’.
It wasn’t just Josh Fox, backed by green entrepreneurs, engaging in a cavalier reshaping of facts and quotations to blacken the name of the film. Our own George Monbiot engaged in his own well-honed distortion of fact and quotation via The Guardian (symbolic of a number of their recent failures) in order to try and prevent people from watching the film on this side of the pond.
‘Bright Green Lies’ is very different: Like PotH, once again it presents the personal viewpoint of the director, Julia Barnes. Unlike PotH, though, it has a very different tone, building upon the immediacy and well-researched content of the eponymous book by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert – all of whom appear in the film.
You get the core of the film’s argument over the first five minutes, as the four main protagonists set out their respective take on the ‘bright green’ position [time index in the film is shown in brackets]:
Barnes: “People rarely question the solutions they are taught to embrace, but with all the world at stake we must start asking the right questions. There is a push for a 100% renewable world, and after the research I’ve done for this documentary, I want no part of it. I did not become an environmentalist to protect my way of life or the civilization in which I live. I did it because I am in love with life on this planet and because the world I love is under assault. This film is for those whose allegiance is with the living world. Those who would do whatever it takes to defend it.”[02:26]
Jensen: “You will have hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets of Washington, or New York, or Paris; and, if you ask those individuals ‘why are you marching?’, they will say, ‘we wanna save the planet’. And if you ask them for their demands they will say, ‘We want subsidies for the wind and solar industry’. That’s extraordinary. I can’t think of any time in history when any mass movement has been so completely captured and turned into lobbyists for an industry.”[03:49]
Keith: “The environmental movement used to be a very impassioned group of people who cared very deeply about the places we loved and the creatures we loved. What happened, though, in my lifetime, was that this movement which was so honorable and impassioned, it turned into something completely different. And now it’s about protecting a destructive way of life, while it destroys the creatures and the places we love. It’s all become, ‘how do we continue to fuel this destruction?’ as if the only problem was that we were using oil and gas.”[03:16]
Wilbert: “The natural world isn’t really part of the conversation anymore. Kumi Naidoo, the former head of Greenpeace, I was watching him being interviewed the other day. He was saying, ‘The planet’s going to survive, the oceans are going to survive, the forests are going to survive, it’s really about can we save ourselves or not’. And I just saw that and I’m thinking, what the hell are you saying? … This is someone who’s considered to be one of the top environmentalists in the world and he’s say- ing we don’t have to worry about the forests or the oceans? I mean, that just betrays a complete lack of empathy and connection to the natural world. I don’t know how you could possibly say that when we’re in the midst of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction, and it’s being caused by industrial culture. It’s being caused by the same institutions, the same economies, the same systems, the same raw materials, the same extractive mindset, that is being used for these renewable energy technologies.”[04:36]
Environmentalism is a ‘class’ issue
My introduction to ‘environmentalism’ started before I’d seriously heard the word; growing up in a semi-rural working-class family who grew their own food, kept chickens, and foraged. Likewise, coming into contact with ‘mainstream’ environmentalism in the mid-1980s introduced me to the concept of ‘bright green’ before I’d heard that term either.
If there’s one general criticism I have (in part because the book, too, glosses over it), it is the failure to explore the class bias of environmentalism. It is dominated by the middle class (and in the UK, led by the upper-middle class); and so the economically ‘aspirational’ middle-class values suffuse its agenda. That’s overlooked in the film.
That this movement should innately favor individualist materialist values, over communal or spiritual ones, should therefore be of no surprise. That does not condemn these groups, or render them incapable of change. What it makes them do is reflect a narrow focus on both concerns and solutions. More importantly, in a mass political society, it makes it difficult for them to have empathy with a large majority of the public – and that hampers their ability to make change.
That bias towards affluence informs their ideological values, which in turn have come to dominate contemporary environmentalism. As said in the film:
“Bright Green Environmentalism is founded on the notion that technology will solve environmental problems; and that you can, through 100% recycling, through wind and solar power, have an industrial economy that does not harm the planet. Deep ecology is the belief that we need to radically change the way society functions in order to be sustainable.”[05:30]
The spectre of this early ideological differentiation has haunted the movement. Just as Keith outlines, for me it became evident around 1988 to 1990. Figures such as Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin sought to divest the movement of its ‘hairshirt’ image and put it on a ‘professional’ footing. As a self-acknowledged ‘fundo’ (the pejorative term used for deep green ‘fundamentalists’ in the Green Party at that time) that didn’t enthuse me one bit.
That ‘professionalised’ approach (for which, read compromise with neoliberal values) would slowly percolate through the movement over the next decade. And with it, the compromise that has stalled more radical responses to ecological issues ever since. That failure has, in part, only escalated these historic internal tensions – tensions that this film, almost certainly, will inflame.
First ‘green consumerism’, and then ‘sustainability’, foundered on the reality that the movement’s role as a ‘stakeholder’ in government and industry programs produced little change. Today, the issue at the heart of this internecine contention is renewable energy – and whether it is a realistic response to the Climate Emergency or just another distracting ruse.
I think this film is a good contribution to that contemporary debate. If only to make many people aware that this debate exists, and so cause people to look at the academic research in more detail.
As Barnes succinctly put it: “We are told that we can have our cake and eat it too.”[01:59] And yes, this really is all about cutting the ‘cake’ of affluence. But the film’s criticism of consumerism was couched in a generic “we”, and therein lies its failing.
When it comes to consumption it is not an issue of ‘we’. It is about how an extremely narrow social and economic elite exploit the majority by giving them the ‘illusion of affluence’. Albeit one that is today precariously founded upon deepening debt and doubtful economics (a ‘deep’ issue in-and-of itself).
By not making the case that it is a highly privileged minority causing/benefiting from ecological destruction (see graph below), the film and book miss the opportunity to state arguments such as:
The most affluent 10% of the global population (OK, that’s mostly us!) cause half the pollution;
But even within these most affluent states, national inequality means wealthy households emit far more pollution than the poorest;
Hence pollution is absolutely associated with economic inequality and consumption; and,
That this skew means the most affluent states must reduce consumption by perhaps 90%!
In a situation where – both globally but also in the most polluting states – it is a minority which is causing these problems, that redefines its political ‘reality’ in different terms. To be fair, Barnes strays into this issue at points:
“The ocean is the foundation of life on this planet. The fact that we’re losing it at the rate we are is alarming. I think part of the reason we’re failing is that we ask what is politically possible more often than we ask what is necessary.”[41:37]
Simple logic demands that this minority urgently change their lifestyle, lest the majority, threatened by ecological breakdown, seek to rest it from them. It is how they do this which is another live issue. Frankly, that’s not going too well right now:
Currently, Western states are seeking to repress protests against the climate emergency, to forestall calls for more radical change; While at the same time, billionaires create bunkers in remote locations to survive any future backlash from the dispossessed majority. This creates a powerful incentive for the ‘impoverished majority’ to rest control away from the economic elite driving ecological breakdown. The reality is, though, neither Greenpeace, WWF, nor even Extinction Rebellion, are likely to pick up that banner any time soon. Their failure to recognise affluence as a driver for ecological destruction negates their ability to act to stop it. Instead tokenis- tic measures, like renewable energy, supplant calls for meaningful systemic change.
Economics versus ecological limits
About halfway through, Max Wilbert elucidates a truth that doesn’t get nearly enough exposure:
“When people talk about 100% renewable energy transition to save the planet, to save civilization, what they’re actually talking about is sustaining modern high-energy ways of life, at the expense of the natural world.”[26:38]
I’m sure a number will recognise that from many of my previous workshops. In fact, I’ve just had a Facebook post blocked for, ‘violating community standards’. The offense? It linked to a summary of the research making this same point, and it’s not the first time that’s happened. It’s a touchy subject!
In 2005, my own book, ‘Energy Beyond Oil’, visited many of the issues explored in the film/book. In far less detail though, as there was nowhere near the quantity of research evidence available back then. What that also highlights, though, is how over the interim: ‘Bright green’ environmentalism has been unable to comprehend the message from this new research; while at the same time deliberately deflecting people’s attention towards points of view which have a questionable basis for support.
On that point, I think Max Wilbert gives a most eloquent view for how mainstream environmental- ism sold itself on the altar of green consumerism:
“They want us to believe that consumer choices are the only way we can change things. But if we accept that then it means that they’ve won because we’re defining ourselves as consumers…I have to buy things within this culture to survive, and that is not something that defines me or my power as an actor in this world. I would say much more fundamentally I am an animal. I have hands. I have feet. And I can walk places. And I can do things. And I have a voice. And I have the ability to speak with people and build a relationship with people. And I have the ability to organise. And I have the ability to fight if need be. These are all much more important than my ability to buy or not buy something.”[48:28]
Since ‘Planet of the Humans’, many on the ‘bright green’ side of the aisle have learned a lesson. Their hysterical condemnation of the film, to the point of calling for it to be banned, only served to feed it greater publicity, ensuring more would see it.
Their lack of response this time is perhaps also due to how well the film exposes the fragility of their arguments. One of the bright points in the film was the way in which ‘deep green’ criticisms were dove-tailed alongside interviews with those they criticised – amplifying the substance of the disagreement be- tween each side.
I think my favorite was the segment on Richard York’s research, showing that growing renewable energy actually displaces a very minimal level of fossil fuels. When York’s point was put to David Suzuki, his reply, which I too have often received, was, ”So what is the conclusion from an analysis like that, we shouldn’t do anything?”[24:08]
The film brilliantly explodes this false dilemma. When pushed, about needing to tackle things systemically rather than just trying to influence behavior, Suzuki’s response was, “Yeah, there’s no question our major impact on the planet now, not just in terms of energy, is consumption. And that was a deliberate program…”[24:26]
When it comes to the ‘liberal’ solutions to the climate crisis generally, I think Lierre Keith gives the most perceptive criticism of the simplistic, ‘bright green’ arguments for change[1:03:23]:
“[Capitalism] takes living communities, it converts those into dead commodities, and then those dead commodities are turned into private wealth. And a lot of people think, well, if we just make that into public wealth, we all could get an equal piece of the pie, that’s the solution. The problem is that’s not go- ing to be a solution because you’ve still got the first two parts of that equation. Why are we taking the living planet and turning it into dead commodities? That’s the problem…It’s the fact that rivers, and grasslands, and forests, and fish, have been turned into those dead commodities, that’s the problem.”
Jensen then bookends Keith’s point with another, straightforward invalidation of the basic premise of the bright green approach[1:04:33]:
“What do all the so-called, ‘solutions’, to global warming have in common? They all take industrial capitalism as a given, and so conform to industrial capitalism. They’ve switched the dependent and the independent variables. The world has to be primary, and the health of the world has to be primary because without a world you don’t have any economy whatsoever. And the bright greens are very explicit about this. What they’re trying to save is industrial capitalism, industrial civilization. And that’s my fundamental beef because what I’m trying to save is the real world.”
Climate inequality meets decolonialism
Jensen makes an interesting observation towards the end of the film:
“The thing that blows me away is the lengths that people will go to avoid looking at the problem. That they will create all these extraordinary fantasies in order to do something that’s not going to help the planet so they can avoid looking at the real issue. Which is that industrial civilization itself is what’s killing the planet.”[59:40]
Likewise, Barnes astutely characterises the basic block to progress toward the near end:
“Bright green environmentalism has gained popularity because it tells a lot of people what they want to hear. That you can have industrial civilization and a planet too. It allows people to feel good about maintaining this destructive way of living and to avoid asking hard questions about the depth of what must be changed.”[1:05:04]
For me, though, it was Keith’s discussion about what it is ‘civilization’ is based upon[1:00:02] which brought a long overdue argument into circulation: Criticism of the ‘resource island’ model for the modern city, and its inherent link to the global expropriation and exploitation of land. Driven by the wealthiest ‘city’ state’s need to maintain consumption, the inherent ‘neocolonial’ aspects of international climate negotiations are something the climate lobby too often overlook. Especially in relation to issues such as carbon offsets, the global allocation of carbon budgets, and their inherent global inequality.
At some point environmental groups must call ‘bullshit’ on these whole neocolonial proceedings, and start giving equal value to all humans, irrespective of their present-day privilege. More importantly, we have to give ecological capacity, currently occupied by human societies, back to natural organisms to allow them sufficient space to live too.
Before ‘Bright Green Lies’ turned up, I had just seen Raoul Peck’s excellent, ‘Exterminate All The Brutes’. Coming to the end of ‘Bright Green Lies’, what startled me was how the two films arrived at a very similar place. Both showed similar blocks toward acceptance of the radical change required, around both ecological change and decolonialism.
To understand Peck’s film it helps to have read, ‘Heart of Darkness’. In structuring the film around the characters in that book, and contrasting it to The Holocaust, Peck shows how indifference to European and US colonialism enabled The Holocaust to take place [Episode 4, 46:57 to 54:11]:
“It is not knowledge that is lacking… The educated general public has always largely known what atrocities have been committed and are being committed in the name of progress, civilization, socialism, democracy, and the market…At all times, it has also been profitable to deny or suppress such knowledge… And when what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe, no one recognized it. No one wished to admit what everyone knew.
Everywhere in the world, this knowledge is being suppressed. Knowledge that, if it were made known, would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves. Everywhere there, Heart of Darkness is being enacted…Black Elk, holy man of the Oglala Lakota people, said after the Wounded Knee Massacre, ‘I didn’t know then how much was ended… A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. The nation’s circle is broken and scattered. There is no centre any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.’”
There are uncomfortable parallels between Peck’s insights into Holocaust denial, the denial of the crimes of colonialism, and the everyday denial of the damage that affluence and material consumption are causing to the entire planet. From the horrors of resource mining to the devastation of the oceans by plastics, such evidence represents a constant ‘background noise’ in the modern media. A noise people have learned to ignore, in order to keep functioning amidst the cognitive dissonance of their everyday, disconnected lives.
As Peck says, “It is not knowledge that is lacking”. People are aware. The fact that they will not engage with the issue, as outlined in ‘Bright Green Lies’, is that people innately know the extent of their own complicity. To do so, ‘would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves’.
We do not need more ‘evidence’. The block to ecological change is not simply a lack of ‘knowledge’. It is that many all too well understand the reality of what stopping the ecological crisis would entail. Trapped by their subconscious fear of what that would mean personally, they cannot see a solution to the psychological dependency engendered by consumerism and industrial society.
Mainstream environmentalism, as the film outlines, is its own worst enemy. In advocating ephemeral, consumer-based solutions to tackling ecological breakdown, it creates its own certain failure. Unfortunately, unless the counter-point to that, the ‘deep green’ argument, is able to give people the confidence to accept and let go of industrial society, it will not make progress either. I think this film almost gets there; but we need to focus far more on the workable, existing examples of people living outside of that system to give people the confidence to make that internal, ‘leap of faith’. For those who want to follow this road, and perhaps provide those examples, this film is a good starting point to build from.
Released under the Creative Commons ‘BY-NC-SA’ 4.0 International License
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Deep Green Resistance, the News Service, or its staff.
“The climate crisis for example, has been framed as an environment issue and a technology issue, when it is actually a crisis of the human consciousness and psyche. This criminally negligent misdiagnosis, reframing and distortion of major existential crises into simple practical problems to be solved by technology, demonstrates how superficial and corrupted our very approach to problem-solving is. We are trying to solve the disasters of capitalism with more capitalism. This has never worked, and it never will. The very desire to profit out of these solutions, to “create jobs” and prosperity through Green New Deals, only demonstrates the level of delusion and persistent lack of any seriousness in dealing with a problem which is of apocalyptic proportions…..There are thousands of “environmental” organisations who are nothing but shopfronts for extractive capitalism in the form of renewable technology. Their very organisation and operating principles emulate capitalist ventures.” – George Tsakraklides
“Now they worry and they hurry and they fuss and they fret
They waste your nights and days
Them, I will forget
You, I’ll remember always”
– Bob Dylan, from “Workingman’s Blues #2”
”Crazy Horse
We Hear what you say
One Earth, one Mother
One does not sell the Earth
The people walk upon
We are the land
How do we sell our Mother?
How do we sell the stars?
How do we sell the air?”
– John Trudell “Crazy Horse”
Adults, teens and some kids got duped. The slick, climate confidence tricksters distracted people by fixating on CO2 air quality and temperatures at the expense of the very land you’re standing with.
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” they shouted, hurling numbers, measurements, and projections at the dart board of your mind so they could usher in a trendy era greenwash cash cow – buy now and save the planet! Their rewrite of Henny Penny more like the fox guarding the hen-house for an ugly penny i.e. billions. Fixating on the sky while habitats being mined and destroyed beneath the very land you’re standing with, but are you, too, yearning for a piece of that pie in the sky?
There’s an African saying, “No one shows a child the sky.” I interpret that as: Children naturally look to the sky, there is an innate knowing and rapport, they don’t need to be told. Yet if overly instructed, children can miss out on the wonder of finding out and experiencing for themselves. If manipulated, children and adults can be misled.
My proof of how all that seeps into the mainstream everyday society is via web-searching for a few days to find a corded weed trimmer because I don’t enjoy the gas fumes or noise from the old one; virtually every trimmer and other such gadgets, including vacuums, now use lithium batteries.
“As of February 29, 2024 an estimated 21,897 active, filed, and submitted placer claims, have been located in Nevada, presumably for lithium or lithium brine in 18 different hydrographic basins,” not to mention the rest of the world, and already destruction of sacred Native lands at Thacker Pass/Peehee Mu’huh in so-called Nevada. A case of destroy the land out west so the suburban east and elsewhere can feel good about greenwashed tools that are helping to protect the environment by destroying it! By the way, the cost of trimmer and electric cord was much less expensive than the others.
The sky story (not to diminish actual air quality issues and other data) is a textbook distraction or dis-tract attention, the word meaning “dis-” “away from” and “tract” “tracts of land and water.” Yet “distract” is step three of a simplified three-stage “tract” pattern of colonialism and disaster capitalism.
First comes “abstract” from “ab-” “to draw away from” & “tracts of land and water.” Abstract so as to get your attention in your head and disregard the feet and heart and soul of things. A prime example comes from Dr. Tink Tinker (Osage – Wazhazhe); the conversion of land into “property” which “chopped up our Grandmother [Earth] into pieces.”
Fast-forward to bizness lingo:
“A tract of land is a well-defined piece of property with specific boundaries.
It plays a key role in real estate transactions, zoning regulations, and property disputes.
It can range from small residential lots to extensive commercial developments.
Knowing what constitutes a tract of land is essential for demarcating property lines.”
Yet not even a homeowner’s God’s little acre backyard is sacred. In the 1950s chemical companies turned the medicinal Dandelion Nation into an abstract noun, “weed,” then got brainwashed yard-gardeners to poison (a form of extraction) the dandelions; thus distracting people from the medicinal values available from the very land they were standing with.
Number 2 is “extract” — from “ex-” “draw out of” & ”tracts of land and water.” Abstracting consciousness – which is a cutting off of empathy and recognition of the very substances that nurture us — enables the extractive industry mechanism to proceed without a care. Most of the extraction has to do with mining minerals and pumping oils, yet chopping down trees for solar panel ‘fields’ or another Amazon “fulfillment center” warehouse is another form of extraction, especially if you’re a tree whose deep roots are ‘drawn out of the Earth.’
Number 3 is “distract” — so as to keep your consciousness away from Land and Water, so as to enable the extractive industry to continue as if it’s normal business as usual. Distractions run the gamut from the more immediate and in your face corporate media, tabloid news and mainstream so-called culture to longstanding institutionalized religions that dis-empower people by keeping them at a distance from their direct and personal relating with Mother Earth and Spirit. Plus there’s the educational system as Information Factory, or as Birgil Kills Straight (Oglala Lakota) summed up the systemic process, “They cut you off from your heart, stick you in your head, and manipulate you out of a book.” Yet: “No one shows a child the sky.”
Though not specifically included in the “tract” etymology, Air can be considered an extension of Land and Water since what is done to them often affects the Air.
All of Land and Water as Property
The two more recent, mostly hidden, insanities are:
1): deep-sea mining
“Deep sea mining is the extraction of minerals from the ocean floor at depths of 200 metres (660 ft) to 6,500 metres (21,300 ft). Deep-sea mining uses hydraulic pumps or bucket systems that carry deposits to the surface for processing.”
What could go wrong?
My investigative call to the Octopus has not been returned. I pray they are ok.
2): The NYSE valuing of all of Nature aka Mother Earth as an “asset class.” I read about that in 2021 but don’t recall hearing of anything else until an interview with Rebecca Adamson (Cherokee) on First Voices Radio (FVR), well-worth the listen.
“This new asset class on the NYSE will create a virtuous cycle of investment in nature that will help finance sustainable development for communities, companies and countries,” said Douglas Eger, CEO of IEG. “Together, IEG and the NYSE will enable investors to access nature’s store of wealth and transform our industrial economy into one that is more equitable.”
You have to have money to invest, so the “virtuous cycle of investment in nature” con game is rigged from the get-go. And, “more equitable” is an oxymoron because “equitable” is “just and fair, equal,” therefore ‘equal is equal’ and “more equal” is bullshit. Then again, the masters of fine print manipulation may be referring to another dictionary definition of “equitable” along the lines of the title of Peter d’Errico’s book Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples – “of or relating to rights historically enforced in courts of equity.”
History 101 shows a progression:
– gold rush, gold
– black gold, oil
– white gold, lithium
But now the powers that do too much are going for the whole kit and caboodle: Nature/Mother Earth as gold. This should bring shudders to anyone with an ounce of empathy. Or else, another line from Trudell’s “Crazy Horse”: ”Mirrors gold, the people lose their minds.”
As highlighted by Rebecca Adamson in the FVR interview, also in on the deal is Bloom23, a slickly-worded website proclaiming “protecting nature” and working with “BIPOC” [Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color], yet it’s all under the banner of business, or more accurately, as the website name attests to, GreenBiz.
Here’s a blurb from Theresa Lieb, Sr. Director, Nature and Food Systems:
“Biodiversity has quickly become a hot topic for companies and investors. At Bloom 23, the flourishing group of nature-focused business leaders will come together with policymakers, entrepreneurs, Indigenous groups and other key stakeholders to transform rising awareness into real progress.”
Sounds pretty good, right? But a FAQ spill$ the bean$:
”Who attends Bloom 23?
The majority of attendees will come from Fortune 500 companies, investment and insurance firms, service providers, leading nonprofits and government agencies. Experts from community organizations, academia and nature tech startups will also participate.”
Indigenous Peoples have been doing “nature tech” for thousands and thousands of years. For one in-depth example, read the book Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence by Gregory Cajete.
According to Rebecca Adamson’s article “Water + Indigenous Peoples Rights = Risk”, 3/8/2024:
“80% of the planet’s remaining biodiversity is within Indigenous territories along with 40% of the terrestrial areas, 33% of the intact forest landscapes and 70% of tropical forests.”
So there’s the not new battle line, as most at risk from such investments are Native/Indigenous Peoples on the front lines — and “nature focused” woke inclusivity won’t stop the destruction.
The least one can do is to de-abstract the thinking process so as to access the true nourishing energies; be wary of any and all extractive processes; and minimize being distracted from caring about Land and Water — and maximize actually caring for Land and Water by doing whatever you can to thwart those who see dollar signs instead of true gold: Sunlight amplifying Daffodil, Forsythia, Dandelions, Marigolds, Freesia, Black-Eyed Susan, Goldenrod . . . . .
Editor’s note: While this article could have been written about any extractive industry, it has focused on offshore wind turbine farms. These destructive projects should require at least as much scrutiny as an offshore oil rig, but they are not. Because in the name of climate mitigation, they are rushed through without consideration for the damage they will cause, or even their effectiveness in serving this purpose and need for existence. Which is usually just based only on government mandates. And this is all done in the name of Big Environmentalism. DGR does not believe the Bright Green Lies of mainstream environmental NGOs.
People who believe that offshore wind turbines can help solve climate change are misinformed. Because the facts are that they will not. Even the companies building them make no such claim. And thetruth, based on facts, will always trump belief. I am not a climate denier, but you don’t have to be a climate denier to know that these things are bad and aredoomed to failure. And you also don’t have to belinked to the fossil fuel industry, the same people that knew they were causing global warming and therefore threatening the very existence of the planet. Yet, in pursuit of profit, fossil fuel executives not only refused to publicly acknowledge what they had learned but, year after year, lied about the existential threat that climate change posed for our planet. “Renewable” energy projects should require just as must scrutiny from regulators and environmentalists as fossil fuel projects.
Truth be told, most rebuildable “renewable” energy extractive companies are also liars, and have ties tofossil fuel companies. In reality what is really going on is aboondoggle, that you won’t hear about in mainstream corporate media because they only givedisinformation. After years of rebuildable energy – solar and wind infrastructure – the world used more fossil fuels in 2023 than it did in 2022, as it did the year before that and the year before that. We are in fact using more fossil fuel than ever before. From61 thousand terawatts-hours of primary energy consumption in 1973, which was the year of the OPEC oil embargo, when governments began to massively support research and development of large wind turbines and solar panels, to 137 thousand today. This is well over twice as much. In that same period, emissions grew from 17 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions to the37 billion metric tons today. A 20 billion metric ton increase in the last 50 years. And after all of that, 80 percent of our energy use still comes from fossil fuels. Thepercent of US energy use from electricity has remained the same, about 20 percent. Of that, wind turbines account for 7 percent and solar energy provides 2 percent of total US electricity used. So the dream of a 100 percent electric power supply is just that, a dream.
Why? Because theseenergy intense extractive technologies require massive amounts of fossil fuels to produce and those emissions areadding onto what is already being used, not reducing it (Jevons paradox). Thus spewing more planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a time when greenhouse gas emissions world wide must nosedive to stop extreme weather from growing more unpredictable and violent. The only reason CO2 emission may drop in countries installing rebuildable extractive energy and electric vehicles is because they have outsourced the mining and manufacture of these machines to other countries, thus increasing the CO2 emissions in those countries. LNG has replaced dirty coal to run power plants. Add on to all of this, easy access resources are gone. So theEnergy Return On Investment (EROI) has gone down sharply in that time. Instead of Jeb shooting for some food, we have to use fracking and offshore drilling, mountaintop removal and deep sea mining. In the foreseeable future, the energy needed to produce our energy needs could approach unsustainable levels, a phenomenon called “energy cannibalism.”
If this continues, the so called “green” energy transition will in fact be an energy correction, complements of Mother Nature, bigger and more storms, flooding, fire, drought and biodiversity collapse. These are no longer natural disasters, instead these more powerful weather events are man made.
Nature is not more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you CAN think” ~Frank Edwin Egler
Rebuildable extractive energy capturing machines arenot clean except through greenwashing and are only making ourpredicament worse. The trillions in government subsidies given to this sector only makes therich richer. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) should more appropriately be called the 4th Industrial Revolution Act. This is government redistribution of wealth from the working class to offshore transnational state sponsored corporations and the wealthy financial class, which are also principally owned by fossil fuel companies. Ultimately any money that is offered by them as payouts for grants, agreements, promotion or mitigation will come from the utilityratepayer. This is ascam that is notfinancially feasible without trillions in government subsidies. This is what their balance sheet looks like. What is done to the natural environment is even worse.
Wildlife and wind turbines are an uncomfortable mix. Rotating turbine blades can make short work of anyone or anything unlucky enough to collide with them, but direct mortality is only part of the story. Having reviewed the available evidence from around the world,biologists in Finland have found that 63 percent of bird species, 72 percent of bats and 67 percent of terrestrial mammals are displaced from areas where turbines are installed. The same holds true for offshore wind farms, to include fish and marine mammals. Wind turbines are an invasive species to functioning ecosystems that took millions of years to create. The building process is a war zone. The noise and devastation are a disaster to fragile ecosystem habitats. Consider how you would feel if these massive monsters were put up next to your house in your town. The oceans, from which we came, are the lungs of the planet. Life can not exist if the delicate balance is disrupted. These projects are doomed to failure in more ways than one.
True resilience and sustainability comes by thinking globally and acting locally. The land base that people live on should be able to, on its own, continually feed, clothe and house the people who live on it. It makes no sense to destroy the sustainable food provided by the ocean in order to keep the lights on. It is preferable to eat in the dark than to starve in the light. Also know that fish farms are in the same league as wind farms. It is an enclosure of the commons for corporate control of our food supply, what they call “The Blue Economy”.
How do we know that offshore wind will be a “pain” now and into the future forfishing, tourism, cultural heritage, beauty, integrity, stability, sustainability, ecological balance and quality of life? Millions of dollars are offered up to mitigate (bribe) it. Money would better be spent to mitigate the already abandon mines, fossil fuel wells and habitat degradation. This is where our good paying jobs should be working, to protect the planet. Life on the planet can be saved, a modern industrial lifestyle cannot.
Step 1. Create an effective advertising campaign for Your Destructive Offshore Wind Project
Use a name that has a certain historical, cultural, or environmental value for the communities. Change the name from Pilgrim and Mayflower(tone deaf) to South Coast Wind or Vineyard Wind(more like Graveyard). Call it “clean”, “green”, “renewable” energy that is the solution to climate change and save our lifestyle. With the right branding, people will drink any poison, pinwheels for everyone.
Step 2. Get the Local Government on Your Side
Pay off the local politicians to agree and hand out licenses. Tell them there is nothing they can do to stop it, so they should just get the best Good NeighborHost Agreement possible or get nothing.
Step 3. Lobby as Much as Possible to Bend the Law in Favor Offshore Wind
Create legal loopholes and tax credits for corporations, behind closed doors. Speed up the “permit” your destruction process. Buy-off federal and state politicians and corporate capture regulatory agencies. Nobody wants these in their backyard, let’s just put them out to sea.
Step 4. Presents! Buy Off Public Opinion
Build a new school, library(Carnegie) or sewer system. Or just offer money as compensation to do with as you wish. The major ENGOs have entered intoagreement with offshore wind: Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Conservation Law Foundation andtaken money; Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Environmental League of Mass., Sierra Club, etc. along with aquariums, universities and the media.
Step 5. Offer a Compromise
Let us destroy this land/sea here and we will protect some other land/sea. Or agree with us and we will let you have a say in how the destruction will occur. This project has to be done to stop climate change, we have to destroy the planet to save it. There must be sacrifice zones. Sorry that your home is being destroyed but don’t be a NIMBY(Not In My Backyard). Actually when respondents of national surveys begin to think about ideas of what rebuildable energy entails, such as offshore wind, their support often diminishes. There will be painful trade-offs, trying to preserve comfortable lives. Most of that pain will come from other species. But if we acknowledge that our modern industrial lifestyle is causing the end of life on the planet, we must say NOPE(Not On Planet Earth).
Step 6. Threats Are Effective Deterrents
If you file a law suit against this project, we will file a lawsuit against you, a SLAPP(Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Focus on the leaders of the struggle. Scaring people works. This smear tactic was conducted by the prestigious Ivy League College Brown against the opponents to offshore wind. Attack the messenger. In the global south, this is done literally. Real nice place you got here, it would be a sham if something bad happened to it.
Step 7. Create Chaos and Conflict; Divide the Community in Two Camps
Tout the temporary “good paying union” jobs you will create over the permanent sustainable jobs, fishing andtourism, destroyed forever. Destroying a food source never makes good sense. What is truly needed, at this time of ecological collapse, is food sovereignty. Where jobs are hard to come by this is called poverty pimping. Then don’t forget to accuse those opposed to offshore wind of promoting “disinformation“. Push it as a choice in political values, Republicans against Democrats. There is a backlash against “renewable” energy. It’s turned Democrats into Republicans.
Step 8. Having Wrought Havoc, Now Frame It as a Successful Story of Growth and Prosperity
Welcome to the great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day. Technology has fixed the problem that it has created! Too bad it is a dystopian science fiction. No one willingly wants to destroy their environment. It is done because of the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold, makes the rules! Not to mention that these companies have gotten out of paying most of the taxes required of multinationals. And avoid putting emphasis on the fact that the jobs are short term, while the environmental damage is forever.
If you would like to help stop The Blue Economy of offshore wind, see Green Oceans https://green-oceans.org/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:Ben Martin Steinreich Communications (212) 491–1600 bmartin@scompr.com
GREEN OCEANS LEADS35CO–PLAINTIFFSINLAWSUITALLEGINGU.S. AGENCIES ILLEGALLYAPPROVEDOFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS
LITTLE COMPTON, R.I. – Rhode Island-based Green Oceans, a non-partisan, grassroots not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting the ocean and the ecosystems it sustains, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging four federal agencies shortcut statutory and regulatory procedures and violated environmental protection laws by approving the South Fork and Revolution Wind projects. An additional 35 co-plaintiffs joined the litigation.
The suit alleges that the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their respective administrative leaders, issued permits for the two projects on the critical marine habitat known as Coxes Ledge, despite the acknowledgment of serious irreversible harm and without adequate environmental impact studies. The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the approvals for both projects until the government complies with all relevant statutes and regulations.
“In a rush to meet state mandates, we cannot short-circuit our country’s most important environmental and natural resource policies. This suit will ensure the federal government follows its own rules and regulations,” said Green Ocean’s Co-founder and President Dr. Elizabeth Quattrocki Knight.
Filed under the Administrative Procedure Act, the suit intends to prove that the federal agencies violated eight statutes, including the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, National Historic Preservation Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Clean Water Act, and their associated regulatory programs.
The suit highlights the alarming scale of proposed offshore wind plans – up to 1,000 turbines, each towering over 870 feet high. The closest turbines will reside just 12.9 nautical miles from the Rhode Island coast. Collectively, the nine projects planned for the waters off the coast of Rhode Island represent the largest offshore development anywhere in the world. The Green Oceans suit alleges that BOEM did not adequately consider the cumulative impact of the entire lease area, a legal requirement. No geographic boundaries exist between the nine different projects planned for the 1,400 square miles of coastal waters between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
“Marine mammals will not appreciate whether any given turbine belongs to one project or another. Legally, BOEM must evaluate the collective impact, not just each project in isolation,” Dr. Quattrocki Knight emphasized. The projects threaten to permanently alter the environmentally sensitive Coxes Ledge, one of the last remaining spawning grounds for Southern New England cod and an important habitat for the North Atlantic right whale and four other endangered whale species.
Barbara Chapman, a Green Oceans trustee, added, “Even people who support the concept of wind power understand the threat to sea life. On the official NOAA site, they have granted the developer of Revolution Wind, just one project of many, permission to harm and harass over 13,000 marine animals, including 568 whales, during the course of a single year. We do not consider 13,000 a small number.”
“BOEM admits the projects will have adverse impacts on the health of our fisheries, navigation safety, historic resources, the North Atlantic right whale, and environmental justice populations, while having no effect on climate change. Why accept this irreversible environmental damage for no overall gain?” questions Green Ocean’s Co-founder and Vice President, Bill Thompson.
Co-plaintiffs to the suit include the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, Save Right Whales Coalition, New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, Bat World Sanctuary, three former Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board members, along with local and regional recreational fishermen, sailors, boaters, pilots, conservationists, residents, and leading members of the business community.
Green Oceans is a nonprofit, non-partisan group of community members dedicated to combating climate change without jeopardizing biodiversity or the health of the ocean. For more information or to get involved, visit: https://green-oceans.org/.
Editor’s note: Lierre Keith, co founder of DGR, is going to be in London for two events. On April 1, she’s going to be a part of a Women’s Rights Conference along with a number of other feminists. On April 2, she is going to give a talk on Bright Green Lies, followed by a screening of the documentary and Q&A.
What is to be Done? Women’s Rights Conference
A hybrid conference (up to 150 of us in real life and lots more online) in London on Saturday 1st April 2023,9am-5pmnear Old St tube or Barbican tube. Women’s Declaration International invites you to a day of speeches, workshops, networking, internet livestream link to global sisters and hopefully fun. If you would like to attend, help plan, organize, volunteer on the day, run sessions, etc, please email info@womensdeclaration.com or fill in this form https://forms.gle/bFLntzbBzrm4zd6M8
We will livestream the whole thing, so you can participate online too.You can use the normal FQT attendee login so if you are registered for FQT you are registered and need to do nothing further. If not go to womensdeclaration.com and register for Feminist Question Time and you will get a Zoom link the week before.
With four rooms, a garden and a coffee area, the speakers/workshop leaders include: Sheila Jeffreys, Lierre Keith , Zuleyka Valentin Arroyo, Kaïla Atarou Manfah, Christina Ellingsen, Julia Long, Amparo Domingo, Kate Coleman, Stephanie Davies-Arai, Amber Alt, Paula Boulton, Maureen O’Hara, Marian Rutigliano, Lynne Harne, Emma Thomas, Sally Wainwright, Louise Somerville, Jan Williams, Kelly Frost, Kate Graham, Alison Jenner, Lynn Alderson, Shannon from HearSheHearShe, Jo Brew and many more!
The theme is What is to be done, so talks and workshops will focus on what we should do next.
After the day, we have booked a quiet room at a pub where we can sit and chat, plus go downstairs to buy food and drink.
In order for WDI to break even (& hopefully increase our war chest), we need all of us to support the event both financially (by buying tickets, and donating funds) and also through volunteer activities (in preparation, day of, and cleanup).
You can buy tickets for the in person event here. Register for the online event here.
From Living Planet to Necrosphere: In the Time of Patriarchy’s Endgame
Lierre Keith – writer, radical feminist, food activist, and environmentalist will be in London Sunday, April 2nd for this highly anticipated talk. This will be followed by a screening of Bright Green Lies and a Q and A with the people behind it.
More and more environmentalists are starting to question whether not just fossil fuels, but also so-called ‘green energy’, could pose a potentially serious threat to our environment and to what remains of our already threatened species and biodiversity.
With praise from world-renowned author and campaigner Vandana Shiva (anti-GMO activist and President of Navdanya International), Jeff Gibbs (director of Planet of the Humans, available to watch here for free) and Chris Hedges (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour), Bright Green Lies and its accompanying documentary film dig further into this issue, exploring whether our dependence on fossil fuels can really be replaced with a new form of industry that calls itself green.
Join us for the event with our expert panel:
Lierre Keith – writer, radical feminist, and food activist
Julia Barnes – Bright Green Liesfilmmaker and award-winning documentary maker
Derrick Jensen (author of the Bright Green Lies book, activist and named one of Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World”)
This illuminating film “dismantles the illusion of ‘green’ technology in breathtaking, comprehensive detail, revealing a fantasy that must perish if there is to be any hope of preserving what remains of life on Earth. From solar panels to wind turbines, from LED light bulbs to electric cars, no green fantasy escapes Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert’s revealing peek behind the green curtain. Bright Green Lies is a must-read for all who cherish life on Earth.”
—Jeff Gibbs, writer, director, and producer of the film Planet of the Humans
Copies of the film on DVD will be available for purchase, alongside copies of the book which Lierre may sign for you.
Note: This is an in-person event. Please register on this Eventbrite link.
![[Event] Lierre Keith in London: What is to be Done and From Living Planet to Necrosphere](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2023/03/Lierre_Keith.jpg)