by DGR News Service | Aug 16, 2019 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
Editors note: in her book Solar Storms, the Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan describes the changes that come with electrification of a rural indigenous community:
“In a split second, the world changed. Even the migratory animals, who flew or swam by light, grew confused… once seen, it could easily have become a need or desire.
With the coming of this light, dark windowless corners inside human dwellings now showed a need for cleaning or paint. Floors fell open to scrutiny. Men and women scrubbed places that had always before been in shadow. Standing before mirrors, people looked at themselves as if for the first time, and were disappointed at the lines of age, the marks and scars they’d never noticed or seen clearly before. I, too, saw myself in the light, my scars speaking again their language of wounds. But it seemed the most impressive to those who had not long ago used caribou fat or fish oil to fuel their lamps…
…those who wanted to conquer the land, the water, the rivers that kept running away from them. It was their desire to guide the waters, narrow them down into the thin black electrical wires that traversed the world. They wanted to control water, the rise and fall of it, the direction of its ancient life. They wanted its power…
One smart village of Crees to the east of us rejected electricity. They wanted to keep bodies and souls whole, they said. Some of the Inuits said if they had electricity then they’d have indoor toilets and then the warm buildings would thaw the frozen world, the ground of permafrost, and everything would fall into it. They saw, ahead of time, what would happen, that their children would weaken and lose heart, that the people would find no reason to live.”
Many people, even leftists, still assume that so-called “development” is a positive thing. We at Deep Green Resistance, and many indigenous people and critics of modernity, disagree. Civilization and development are destroying the planet and impoverishing human culture. The costs of development far, far outweigh the benefits.
“UNITED NATIONS (AP) — To hear Ati Quigua tell it, New York City is a place where people who don’t know each other live stacked inside big buildings, gorging on the “foods of violence,” and where no one can any longer feel the Earth’s beating heart.
Quigua, an indigenous leader whose village in Colombia sits on an isolated mountain range rising 18,700 feet (5,700 meters) before plunging into the sea, is just one of over 1,000 delegates in town for the 15th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that ends Friday.
“On top of the temples of the goddess and Mother Earth, they are building castles, they are building cities and building churches, but our mother has the capacity to regenerate,” Quigua said. “We are fighting not to have roads or electricity — this vision of self-destruction that’s called development is what we’re trying to avoid.”
Read the full article on the Associated Press website.
Image by atiquigua, CC BY 4.0
by DGR News Service | Jul 8, 2019 | Colonialism & Conquest
From Survival International / Photo: Cmacauley, CC BY 3.0
Up to 10,000 goldminers have invaded Yanomami lands in northern Brazil, spreading malaria in the region and polluting many of the rivers with mercury.
Although most Yanomami are in contact with non-indigenous society, one uncontacted group is known to live in the area being invaded, and authorities are investigating signs of up to six other uncontacted communities living there.
The massive influx has been blamed by local indigenous leaders for the deaths of four children already. They say the miners are building settlements and airstrips, emboldened by President Bolsonaro’s support for land invaders, and constant attacks on indigenous people.
Some mining camps are just a few miles from uncontacted Yanomami.
The Yanomami association Hutukara estimates the number of miners at up to 10,000. They also report devastation to the fish and game they rely on for their livelihood.
The Yanomami are pushing the government to remove the miners. Earlier this year Brazilian Indians led the biggest ever international protest for indigenous rights, after President Bolsonaro effectively declared war on them and their rights.
The 35,000 Yanomami straddle both sides of the Brazil-Venezuela border. 20% of the Yanomami population in Brazil died from diseases brought in by goldminers during a previous gold rush in the late 1980s and early 90s.
After a long international campaign led by Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, Survival and the CCPY (Pro Yanomami Commission), Yanomami land in Brazil was finally demarcated as the ‘Yanomami Park’ in 1992. The Yanomami territories in Brazil and Venezuela together form the largest forested indigenous territory in the world.
Davi Kopenawa, known as “the Dalai Lama of the Rainforest” said: “Four of our rivers – the Uraricoera, Mucajaí, Apiaú and Alto Catrimani – are polluted. It’s getting worse, more miners are coming in. They’re not bringing anything [good], they’re just bringing trouble. Malaria has already increased here, and killed four of our children.”
Survival International Director Stephen Corry said today: “Bolsonaro’s racism has tragic consequences – and the gold rush underway in northern Brazil is just one example. It’s devastating the Yanomami people, who were attacked and massacred thirty years ago during the region’s last bout of gold fever. Bolsonaro’s happy to stand by and watch as the people die and the forest is destroyed – only a public outcry in Brazil and internationally can stop him.”
by DGR News Service | Jul 4, 2019 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Repression at Home
Communiqué from the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) on the recent murder of its members, Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote.
May 2019, Lower Mountains of the State of Guerrero.
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Governing Council
To the People of Guerrero
To the Peoples of Mexico and the World
To the National and International Sixth
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the CIG Support Networks
Twenty days after the cowardly murder of our brothers, Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián, impunity continues at the three levels of government. We the Nahua people of the mountains of the state of Guerrero are grieving and angry. We publicly denounce the hideous murder of our brothers, Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote, who were both Indigenous Nahuas and local promoters of the Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ). The people who carried out this atrocious assassination are professional paramilitaries. They were not satisfied to just to take their lives away; they denigrated them, showing no mercy in this extrajudicial assassination. They dismembered them and put our compañeros in bags. They thought through this vile act they would also demean their story and denigrate their lives. They are wrong.
Not only are they wrong, but the dignity of their lives stands in contrast to the cowardice acts of the murderers. The peoples of CIPOG-EZ and CNI of Guerrero, Mexico are keeping alive the memory of the men and women who have lost their lives in the struggle for the reconstitution of collective rights. We therefore ask the dignified people of Mexico and of the world to remember and spread the word about the history of our murdered brothers and their struggle to defend life; Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote. Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián.
We hold the three levels of government categorically responsible: the federal government headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the state government of Héctor Astudillo Flores and the municipal government of Jesús Parra García. Each level of government has held no one accountable, passing the ball to each other saying that the problems were inherited from past governments. This is the PRI attitude that has immersed our country into a bloodbath. There is no “transformation” that wants to change things and it seems that the only important changes occur in the upper spheres of government. The people in power don’t care about the lives of the people below.
The different narco-paramilitary groups have operated for more than twenty-five years in the region of Chilapa, in complicity with the Mexican State, and today is no exception. The state regime has tried over and over to divide our people and we have resisted the war of extermination for more than five hundred years. Our crime has been to defend our territory from the extraction of what they call “natural resources” which for us are sacred mountains or water springs and life. We struggle to maintain the principles that we inherited from our grandparents, which we call “uses and customs”. This world is very different than the one that the Mexican State has formed which goes against our form of community government.
Our towns are suffering systemic violence in which our women, children and men go missing or are murdered, and nothing seems to happen. Everything remains in complete impunity for this bad government, where one of the strategies of the state is to create terror in the heart of our people. Using torture, psychological warfare, death threats, and persecution against all members who promote community development.
We as Indigenous peoples ask ourselves over and over: Why is there so much dehumanization? Why is human life not worth more? Why are some lives worth less than others? And it seems that those on top see us at the bottom as commodities. We ask ourselves again and again, how would the powerful, the governments with more than 30 million votes, react if this violence were to happen to one of their relatives? Or if they were missing, were tortured and viciously murdered or are those acts only reserved for us?
As a national Indigenous movement we fight to reconstruct the social fabric of our people. We are fighting to re-establish peace in our communities, and seek to recognize and reconstruct our indigenous languages, culture and the thinking of our peoples that is interwoven with mother earth.
On May 23, 2019 around 1:30 pm, our brothers Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote went missing near Chilapa de Álvarez, Guerrero. On the morning of May 24 we learned the terrible news; their lifeless bodies were found. Today we are making a public denunciation and asking for honest and dignified comrades from Mexico and the world; no matter how much they want to destroy us, today let us embrace the history of struggle, which is the history of struggle of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world.
We demand justice for our murdered brothers: Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote. Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián. May the pain that overwhelms us today as relatives, friends and compañeros in struggle, not remain in impunity, nor be forgotten.
FRATERNALLY:
Justice for Bartolo Hilario Morales and Isaías Xanteco Ahuejote, CNI members!
Justice for Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián, CIPOG-EZ member and former member of the CIG and CNI!
Justice for Gustavo Cruz Mendoza, Indigenous communicator assassinated from the CIPO-RFM!
Justice for Samir Flores Soberanes, Indigenous communicator assassinated!
Stop the counterinsurgency war against the EZLN!
Freedom for Fidencio Aldama of the Yaqui tribe!
Never again a Mexico without us!
Popular Indigenous Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ)
Regions Costa Chica, Costa Montaña, Montaña Alta and Montaña Baja de Guerrero
by DGR News Service | Jun 27, 2019 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, People of Color & Anti-racism, Repression at Home
Editors Note: the international refugee crisis is driven by war, imperialism, and destruction of the planet. In other words, it is driven by civilization, or “the culture of empire.” DGR is opposed to empire and we see the refugee crisis as a humanitarian emergency. We believe that the best way to fight this crisis is to fight it’s underlying cause, by dismantling civilization. Learn more on the DGR website.
By the International Mayan League
www.mayanleague.org
Washington, D.C. – May 16, 2019 – Today, the International Mayan League denounces the latest victim of death and murder at the U.S/Mexico border, a 2 ½ year-old toddler, a boy from Chiquimula, Guatemala. This tragic loss comes on the heels of the death of 16-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez of the Maya Ch’orti’ people – also from Chiquimula. For the last year our people have been under constant attacks at the border. Since May 2018 we have lost five lives from Guatemala. First, Claudia Patricia Gómez González (Maya Mam) 20 years old who was shot in the head by a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Agent; then 7-year-old Jakelin Caal (Maya Q’eqchi’), and 8-year-old boy Felipe Gomez Alonzo (Maya Chuj) both died in December while in CBP custody. Now, we have lost two more lives. How many more children must die before there is collective outrage, actions, denouncements? How many more times do we need to say this is a crisis specifically affecting indigenous children and youth?
We, indigenous peoples, are the majority in Guatemala and continue to be disproportionately impacted because our basic human rights are denied by the Guatemalan government and all sectors of society. We are forced to flee only to encounter inhumane treatment and human rights violations at the U.S./Mexico border in violation of international law. The Guatemalan and the United States governments must be held accountable for the deaths of our children. Impunity for their deaths is not an option and we demand justice and peace for their families.
Children, explicitly indigenous children, are some of the most victimized. In fiscal year 2019 alone, 19,991[1] Guatemalan unaccompanied children have been apprehended at the border. The number of Guatemalan family units has soared to 114,778, the highest for all the Central American countries[2]. Considering indigenous peoples are the majority in Guatemala, contrary to government admission, we strongly believe that these statistics reflect that thousands of Maya children and families are seeking refuge. Their indigenous identities must be acknowledged and documented.
Each indigenous child whose life has been stolen was forced to migrate because they are the most affected by centuries of structural inequality and discrimination in Guatemala. They often have no future in their rural and extremely impoverished communities. Many have little access to formal education and likely only speak their native language, an additional barrier that hinders their communication with authorities or service providers when migrating. We are outraged by these tragedies and demand the following from the government of the United States. There must be exhaustive, fair and transparent investigations by the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security into all the deaths at the border; a dialogue with leaders of the Guatemalan Maya diaspora for the development of humane immigration policies; and recognition and implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the bare minimum standard for the respect and protection of indigenous peoples’ rights in forced migration.
Almost exactly at the 1-year anniversary of the murder of Claudia Patricia Gómez González of the Maya Mam Nation, we are reliving another nightmare, the death of a toddler. We are tired of being treated as if our lives do not matter. We will not stand idly by as our children are murdered by inhumane policies and practices rooted in hatred, fear, and racism.
[1] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions
[2] Ibid.
The International Mayan League has been working in defense of indigenous human rights for many years, and since last year, trying to raise awareness that most of the children, youth, and families coming from Guatemala are indigenous. They are a Mayan women-led grassroots organization working directly with and for their people, and are entirely volunteer-based.
by DGR News Service | May 23, 2019 | Alienation & Mental Health, Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy
By Elisabeth Robson / Art for Culture Change
On May 9, 2019 Blue Origin — Jeff Bezos’ space exploration company — posted this video of Jeff Bezos speaking at the Going to Space to Benefit Earth event. One of the visions of Blue Origin, as outlined on the web site, and the focus of Mr. Bezos’ presentation is that millions of people must live and work in space in order to “preserve Earth” and that we will “go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy.”
He begins his presentation by making some true statements — that the Earth is not infinite (who knew!) and will eventually run out of energy for our use (again, who knew!). Mr. Bezos then quickly veers into human supremacy in the extreme, with a couple of innocuous sounding but telling remarks: that our lives are better than our parent’s lives, which were better than our grandparent’s lives (really better? Or just more energy intensive?) — completely ignoring all the non-humans we share this planet with — and that we could power our culture’s current energy needs if only we covered Nevada in solar cells. “It is mostly desert, anyway,” he says, ignoring the fact that deserts are in fact teeming with amazing life of all kinds from beautiful desert flowers to lizards, birds, tortoises, and so many more; ignoring the fact that solar farms in Nevada and other areas are bulldozed of all life before the toxic and deadly shining solar cells are installed.
As Mr. Bezos correctly points out, if we continue growing (GDP, energy use, etc.) at 3% a year, our historical trend in the modern era, we’d have to cover the entire surface of the Earth with solar panels to supply our energy needs in 200 years. Unintentionally, he’s hit upon a big problem with renewables: the land use requirements are unsustainable, and aside from the fact that along with running out of fossil fuel energy, we will eventually run out of the raw materials to make solar cells, wind turbines, batteries, smart grids, and so on long before 200 years passes. Of course, as he says, it is ridiculous to cover the Earth with solar panels, so we need something else.
Something else will include efficiency: our technology will continue to become more efficient, but Mr. Bezos acknowledges that growth in energy use will far outstrip energy efficiency. This relationship between greater efficiency and greater resource use is known as Jevons’ Paradox, discovered by William Stanley Jevons in 1865. Energy efficiency never reduces the amount of energy we use, because the more efficient our devices and cars and lighting and heating become, the cheaper they get, and the more we use. One example Mr. Bezos uses is air transportation: 50 years ago it took 109 gallons of fuel to fly one person from LA to NYC; today it takes only 24 gallons. And indeed, air travel is growing faster than any other transportation sector and is expected to double in the next 20 years, far outstripping the gains in efficiency made by airline companies. Efficiency gains just lead to more growth.
So, yet again, we need something else. Mr. Bezos never questions that growth is bad. He never suggests that maybe we should de-grow our population, our economy, our consumption, anything. He never contemplates that growth might not always be a good thing if it leads to the suffering of multitudes. No, he charges on assuming that growth is what’s best for everyone. Of course he does. As the CEO of amazon.com he is the embodiment of growth at all costs, including the lives of his own employees.
Does he even for a second think about the lives of non-humans at all? I don’t think so.
Unlimited demand + limited resources = rationing. This is the equation Mr. Bezos shows the audience, and he is correct. But rather than suggest we limit our demand, he focuses on how awful the rationing will be. According to him, that rationing means our children’s lives will be worse than our parent’s lives, and our grandparent’s lives. Again, I am blown away by the human supremacy of this thinking. It assumes that our lives have indeed, until now, been getting better. Which assumes that “our” means humans, because it surely cannot mean non-humans, whose lives have been getting demonstrably worse. Much worse. And which humans is he talking about? Clearly only the humans in the so-called Western developed world, because most humans on this planet have more recently been stripped of their land and livelihoods by colonization and “sustainable development”, and forced into menial, poverty-level jobs in factories, mines, and oil fields where their lives are demonstrably worse than they were before. For proof of this, simply imagine (or better yet, read the stories about) the life of a Native American Indigenous person who lived free on the land before white colonization and genocide and compare that with the life of a Native American relegated to living in poverty on a reservation with no access to land for traditional use, clean water, clean air, or cultural sites and activities. Mr. Bezos is arguing, as all techno-utopians do, that progress is always good. Only for people like you, Mr. Bezos.
And what is wrong with rationing? Well, god-forbid, it means we’d have to use less of everything we’re accustomed to using now. (Rich) Americans — 5% of the global population — would have to stop using the 25% of the resources on this planet that we use now. The horror! Cutting back and using less is fundamentally anathema to the American Dream(TM) — the idea that if we just work hard enough we can all achieve that fantasy of progress: having more money, owning more stuff, and of course, the unarticulated implication of using more energy that goes with that. “More” is the stuff American Dreams are made of.
The choice Mr. Bezos presents us with is between “stasis and rationing” and “dynamism and growth”. For Mr. Bezos, the choice is easy: we want dynamism and growth.
And here’s the good news: if we move out into space, we’ll have access to more! To unlimited resources!
Mr. Bezos’ solution to continued dynamism and growth is O’Neill colonies: giant tubes in space filled with a million people each. Here’s what he envisions this would look like:
[see photo here]
These will be easy to get to from Earth, easy to move amongst so we can visit our friends and neighbors. We can have the atmosphere of the best day on Hawai’i, the best cities, the best recreational spaces (complete with a deer and a bird flying over!). We can have it all, if we are willing to leave the planet behind, willing to forgo our “planetary chauvinism” as he (and a clip from Isaac Asimov) says.
Earth will, according to Bezos, be zoned for “residential”, “light industry” and people going to college. That’s weird. Why would people want to go to college on the planet, but not on the colony? He never says why. He also doesn’t mention “other species” in his zoning plans for Earth… at all. Or forests, rivers, mountains, glaciers, prairies, or wild places of any kind. Or how we’ll go about cleaning up the pollution and what will be no longer needed nuclear power plants, roads, buildings, and so much more we’ve left in our wake. He just says Earth “will be a beautiful place that people will visit.”
A trillion humans in space means a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts, according to Bezos. He doesn’t mention a thousand white rhinos, or a thousand passenger pigeons, or a thousand great auks. Of course not, because — oops! — we already killed off those species with our insatiable greed and inability to set limits on ourselves. As if a beautiful sunset isn’t as valuable as a Mozart concerto, and a thousand physics geniuses is somehow better than an entire species. Mr. Bezos claims this would be a great civilization. Only for people who care only about people, Mr. Bezos. Yes, there are a still a few of us who care about more than that.
Mr. Bezos says it won’t be up to him to build this future; it will be up to the (presumably younger) people he points to in the front row. It will be those people and their children and grandchildren, those people who will need to create the companies and the infrastructure to move to space… well they’d better hurry because we have only a couple of decades to get our CO2 emissions down to zero to avoid catastrophic climate change, and I’m not sure you can build a million colonies in space each big enough to hold a million people in two decades. Perhaps Mr. Bezos envisions that all of Earth’s remaining resources will be used up in this process? In which case it is unlikely that Earth will be a “beautiful place to visit” once we’re done building these big metal tubes in space.
The rest of the presentation is an advertisement for Blue Origin and how the company is putting all the basic infrastructure — the road to space — into place so that future generations can take it from there, with gratuitous phallic images of rockets launching into space accompanied by rousing movie music. Jeff Bezos’ childhood fantasy come true.
At no time in this entire presentation does Mr. Bezos mention non-human species, except implicitly when he mentions (and shows fantastical pictures of) “recreational opportunities” and “agriculture” in the colonies. It is as if, for Bezos, “nature” doesn’t exist except for recreation and food. Who, I want to ask him, is going to be responsible for building the web of life on these colonies so his deer and his bird and the pollinators (not shown) in the colonies will actually exist for more than a few weeks, days, or hours? Unfortunately, knowing what we know about Jeff Bezos, it is entirely possible that the graphical rendering of the colonies shows a robotic deer and a robotic bird, and that pollination occurs entirely via miniature drones. And what about the soil in which the plants in the “agriculture” areas and the trees shown in the “recreational” spaces grow? It is likely that the soil, too, is artificial, and artificially fertilized… oops! Synthetic fertilizer is made from petroleum products, which implies that either we find fossil fuels out in space somewhere (where we’ll be putting all the “heavy industry” of the future, according to Bezos), or that we continue mining the Earth for fossil fuels so we can grow food in space. Or maybe once established, we’ll all be pooping out the fertilizer in these closed-circuit biospheres in space. Because that’s been so successful in the past.
Who knows what is in Bezos’ addled mind. I do know one thing that isn’t there: a fundamental respect for nature, for billions of years of evolution, for the intricacy of the web of life that supports us here on planet Earth, a web of life we know virtually nothing about in comparison to what there is to know. He very obviously sees humans as separate from nature; anyone who imagines we can live in space must believe that to some degree. What Mr. Bezos fails to understand is that we are completely, utterly, inextricably part of nature; that we are human animals, and that our attempts to pretend otherwise will last only as long as the planetary ecosystem here on Earth, the ecosystem that continues to function at some diminished capacity, despite the damages we keep inflicting on the one and only planet we know of that supports life.
To fantasize that it is somehow better to try to recreate in space what we once had on Earth, than it is to contemplate limiting our demand just a bit so we can continue to live on this beautiful blue planet is human supremacy in the extreme. This won’t be a popular position, I know. Humans, especially Americans, love a new frontier to explore, and almost everyone I know gets excited about new technology and launching things into space.
But launching ourselves into space with the idea that we can somehow live without the planet to whom we are tethered with blood, guts, bacteria, cells, water, phytoplankton, oxygen, breath, fish, birds, trees, … every living thing on Earth… is the insane hallucination of someone who’s been “successful” as measured by little bits of green paper and numbers on a computer screen, but who has absolutely no idea that his fantasy, like the paper and the numbers, is a delusion.
by DGR News Service | May 20, 2019 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Elizabeth Robson / Art for Culture Change
In the preface to Columbus and Other Cannibals, Derrick Jensen asks: “why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?” [1]
The author of Columbus and Other Cannibals, Jack D. Forbes, goes on to answer Derrick’s question in the chapters of his remarkable book, pinning the main cause of our suicidal destruction on a virus of the mind, wétiko. Wétiko was first identified by Native Americans and other indigenous people, when they saw how white colonizers so disrespected the natural world, women, and all people who were not yet colonized, they needed a name for the sickness in the colonizers’ minds that allowed them to commit such acts of aggression, hate, and conquest.
Colonizers are still colonizing today, now more than ever. Colonizers take whatever they think they need from the natural world to feed the global machine of capitalism and consumerism, without a care for the living beings who need what is now destroyed, and so the living beings themselves are now destroyed, too. These colonizers know the destruction they are causing–the loss of life, the loss of biodiversity, the loss of habitat, the loss of a stable climate–and yet they continue taking and destroying anyway. This is pure arrogance.
We in the early 21st century are the most arrogant humans to ever have walked the face of the Earth. Mr. Forbes identified this arrogance as one of the major traits of wétikoism:
“There are many psychological traits that help form the wétiko personality. Greed, lust, inordinate ambition, materialism, the lack of a true ‘face,’ a schizoid (split) personality, and so on are all terms which can be used to describe most wétikos. But one of the major traits characterizing the truly evil and extreme form of wétikoism is arrogance.”
This is not new, and it’s not news. Mr. Forbes argues wétikoism first originated in Egypt, and over time infected all peoples who reigned via colonialism and imperialism, including of course the Romans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Europeans, and the Anglo-Americans in the United States.
The wétiko virus is now more virulent than ever; we become more arrogant by the day, as we use science and technology to discover and invent whole new ways to pollute and destroy our one and only home. Mr. Forbes writes:
“Scientists in many fields recognize no societal obligations restraining their experimentation, least of all any restraints imposed by ‘the lower classes’ or less powerful nationalities. … Many modern scientists are the precise counterparts of Christopher Columbus, and not merely by way of analogy. They will pave the way for new imperialism and new systems of coercion and will themselves economically, participate in the fruits of the new ‘discoveries.’”
I cannot think of a more perfect example of wétikoism than the emerging research field of geo-engineering. Scientists working in this field are hoping to invent and understand ways to reduce the impacts of climate change via chemical and technological means. One of these research areas, solar radiation management, also known as albedo modification, is proceeding to the experimental phase at Harvard University, where scientist David Keith heads up an experiment named SCoPEx, a powered balloon that will release chemical particles into the stratosphere, and measure how those particles affect the reflection of sunlight away from the planet. Solar radiation management is widely regarded as the cheapest and easiest way to cool the planet in case we do so much damage to the climate, we find ourselves in need of such extreme and drastic measures. Inspired by volcanoes–which release reflective particles when they erupt–solar radiation management would, in theory, cool the planet with just a few applications a year, costing in the millions or low billions of dollars. Of course, we have no idea what this would do to the temperature or the weather on a planetary scale, but, scientists argue, it’s better to have a fallback idea that’s already been researched and tested, than not have one at all.
Do you or I or anyone but the scientists at Harvard have a say in whether the SCoPEx experiment goes forward? Does it matter?
Scientists tend to use the argument that it’s better to know, than not to know. Maybe. But research can lead us down a path that, in hindsight, we might wish we’d never taken. Some of the scientists who developed the hydrogen bomb, which has led us into a nuclear arms race that threatens all life on earth, regretted their participation in creating that weapon of mass destruction. Without the benefit of hindsight, how might we feel about inventing new ways to change the atmosphere of the Earth?
Of course, we already are changing the atmosphere of the Earth, so perhaps one might argue that more experiments are necessary to counteract the planetary-wide experiment we are currently running with CO2 in our atmosphere.
The thing is, these scientists at Harvard aren’t asking you, or me, or anyone else if they should go forward with their research and their experiments. They aren’t asking the millions of other species on this planet if they want more experiments on the only planet we know of that sustains life. In other words, as Jack Forbes put it, these scientists “recognize no societal obligations restraining their experimentation.”
What do the scientists get out of this research, other than satisfying their need to know? Are the scientists paving the way for “new imperialism and new systems of coercion” as Mr. Forbes writes? Are these scientists participating in the fruits of their discoveries? Are these scientists wétikos?
David Keith, the main researcher on the SCoPEx experiment at Harvard founded a company in 2009 named Carbon Engineering, of which he is executive chairman. Carbon Engineering creates technology that captures CO2 from the air. The company announced partnerships with the fossil fuel companies Chevron and Occidental in January 2019.
Why are Chevron and Occidental partnering with Carbon Engineering? Because, as Occidental stated, “the deal would complement the company’s enhanced oil recovery business, where CO2 is pumped in fields to release more fuel.”[2]
In other words, the oil companies use the captured CO2 to get more oil out of the ground.
So think about it: David Keith is the founder of and receives direct monetary benefit from a company that sucks CO2 from the air. And he is the primary researcher behind the Harvard solar radiation management experiment that would reflect more sun in our atmosphere, cooling the planet and thus allowing us to burn more fossil fuels and continue creating CO2 emissions, that his company can then capture and sell to oil companies to “enhance” oil recovery.
Yes, these geo-engineers are wétikos.
One can easily imagine the day that humanity realizes it has so utterly failed to stop the relentless and insane extraction and burning of fossil fuels, that in order to survive, in order to keep this ecocidal, genocidal culture going so that the rich and powerful can maintain their positions of power for just a little while longer, someone somewhere decides to spray reflective chemicals into the stratosphere. Will you or I or anyone who is not rich and powerful have a say in that decision? It is highly unlikely.
Will any of the other millions of species on this one planet we all call home have a say in that decision? Of course not. Wétikos forgot how to listen to the Earth a long, long time ago.
And so what is geo-engineering if not a wétiko system of planetary imperialism and coercion?
[1] Columbus and Other Cannibals, by Jack D. Forbes, 1979, 1992, 2008
[2] https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060111481
