Don’t talk to me about sustainability. You want to question my lifestyle, my impact, my ecological footprint? There is a monster standing over us, with a footprint so large it can trample a whole planet underfoot, without noticing or caring. This monster is Industrial Civilization. I refuse to sustain the monster. If the Earth is to live, the monster must die. This is a declaration of war.
What is it we are trying to sustain? A living planet, or industrial civilization? Because we can’t have both.
Somewhere along the way the environmental movement – based on a desire to protect the Earth, was largely eaten by the sustainability movement – based on a desire to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. When did this happen, and why? And how is it possible that no-one noticed? This is a fundamental shift in values, to go from compassion for all living beings and the land, to a selfish wish to feel good about our inherently destructive way of life.
The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.
Sustainability advocates tell us that reducing our impact, causing less harm to the Earth, is a good thing to do, and we should feel good about our actions. I disagree. Less harm is not good. Less harm is still a lot of harm. For as long as any harm is caused, by anyone, there can be no sustainability. Feeling good about small acts doesn’t help anyone.
Only one-quarter of all consumption is by individuals. The rest is taken up by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. Even if every one of us made every effort to reduce our ecological footprint, it would make little difference to overall consumption.
If the lifestyle actions advocated really do have the effect of keeping our culture around for longer than it would otherwise, then it will cause more harm to the natural world than if no such action had been taken. For the longer a destructive culture is sustained, the more destruction it causes. The title of this article isn’t just attention-grabbing and controversial, it is quite literally what’s going on.
When we frame the sustainability debate around the premise that individual lifestyle choices are the solution, then the enemy becomes other individuals who make different lifestyle choices, and those who don’t have the privilege of choice. Meanwhile the true enemy — the oppressive structures of civilization — are free to continue their destructive and murderous practices without question. This is hardly an effective way to create a meaningful social movement. Divide and be conquered.
Sustainability is popular with corporations, media and government because it fits perfectly with their aims. Maintain power. Grow. Make yourself out to be the good guy. Make people believe that they have power when they don’t. Tell everyone to keep calm and carry on shopping. Control the language that is used to debate the issues. By creating and reinforcing the belief that voting for minor changes and buying more stuff will solve all problems, those in power have a highly effective strategy for maintaining economic growth and corporate-controlled democracy.
Those in power keep people believing that the only way we can change anything is within the structures they’ve created. They build the structures in a way that people can never change anything from within them. Voting, petitions, and rallies all reinforce the power structures, and can never bring about significant change on their own. These tactics give corporations and governments a choice. We’re giving those in power a choice of whether to grant our request for minor reform. Animals suffering in factory farms don’t have a choice. Forests being destroyed in the name of progress don’t have a choice. Millions of people working in majority-world sweatshops don’t have a choice. The 200 species who became extinct today didn’t do so by choice. And yet we give those responsible for all this murder and suffering a choice. We’re granting the desires of a wealthy minority above the needs of life on Earth.
Most of the popular actions that advocates propose to achieve sustainability have no real effect, and some even cause more harm than good. The strategies include reducing electricity consumption, reducing water use, a green economy, recycling, sustainable building, renewables and energy efficiency. Let’s look at the effects of these actions.
Electricity
We’re told to reduce our consumption of electricity, or obtain it from alternative sources. This will make zero difference to the sustainability of our culture as a whole, because the electricity grid is inherently unsustainable. No amount of reduction or so-called renewable energy sources will change this. Mining to make electrical wires, components, electrical devices, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal plants, biomass furnaces, hydropower dams, and everything else that connects to the electricity grid, are all unsustainable. Manufacturing to make these things, with all the human exploitation, pollution, waste, health and social impacts, and corporate profits. Fossil fuels needed to keep all these processes going. Unsustainable. No amount of individual lifestyle choices about electricity use and generation will change any of this. Off grid electricity is no different – it needs batteries and inverters.
Water conservation
Shorter showers. Low-flow devices. Water restrictions. These are all claimed to Make A Difference. While the whole infrastructure that provides this water – large dams, long distance pipelines, pumps, sewers, drains – is all unsustainable.
Dams destroy the life of a whole watershed. It’s like blocking off an artery, preventing blood from flowing to your limbs. No-one can survive this. Rivers become dead when fish are prevented from travelling up and down the river. The whole of the natural community that these fish belong to is killed, both upstream and downstream of the dam.
Dams cause a lowering of the water table, making it impossible for tree roots to get to water. Floodplain ecologies depend on seasonal flooding, and collapse when a dam upstream prevents this. Downstream and coastal erosion results. Anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in dams releases methane to the atmosphere.
No matter how efficient with water you are, this infrastructure will never be sustainable. It needs to be destroyed, to allow these communities to regenerate.
The green economy
Green jobs. Green products. The sustainable economy. No. There’s no such thing. The whole of the global economy is unsustainable. The economy runs on the destruction of the natural world. The Earth is treated as nothing but fuel for economic growth. They call it natural resources. And a few people choosing to remove themselves from this economy makes no difference. For as long as this economy exists, there will be no sustainability.
For as long as any of these structures exist: electricity, mains water, global economy, industrial agriculture – there can be no sustainability. To achieve true sustainability, these structures need to be dismantled.
What’s more important to you – to sustain a comfortable lifestyle for a little longer, or the continuation of life on Earth, for the natural communities who remain, and for future generations?
Recycling
We’re made to believe that buying a certain product is good because the packaging can be recycled. You can choose to put it in a brightly-coloured bin. Never mind that fragile ecosystems were destroyed, indigenous communities displaced, people in far away places required to work in slave conditions, and rivers polluted, just to make the package in the first place. Never mind that it will be recycled into another useless product which will then go to landfill. Never mind that to recycle it means transporting it far away, using machinery that run on electricity and fossil fuels, causing pollution and waste. Never mind that if you put something else in the coloured bin, the whole load goes to landfill due to the contamination.
Sustainable building
Principles of sustainable building: build more houses, even though there are already enough perfectly good houses for everyone to live in. Clear land for houses, destroying every living thing in the natural communities that live there. Build with timber from plantation forests, which have required native forests to be wiped out so they can be replaced with a monoculture of pines where nothing else can live. Use building products that are slightly less harmful than other products. Convince everyone that all of this is beneficial to the Earth.
Solar power
Solar panels. The very latest in sustainability fashion. And in true sustainability style, incredibly destructive of life on earth. Where do these things come from? You’re supposed to believe that they are made out of nothing, a free, non-polluting source of electricity.
If you dare to ask where solar panels come from, and how they are made, its not hard to uncover the truth. Solar panels are made of metals, plastics, rare earths, electronic components. They require mining, manufacturing, war, waste, pollution. Millions of tons of lead are dumped into rivers and farmland around solar panel factories in China and India, causing health problems for the human and natural communities who live there. Polysilicon is another poisonous and polluting waste product from manufacturing that is dumped in China. The production of solar panels causes nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) to be emitted into the atmosphere. This gas has 17 000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Rare earths come from Africa, and wars are raged over the right to mine them. People are being killed so you can have your comfortable Sustainability. The panels are manufactured in China. The factories emit so much pollution that people living nearby become sick. Lakes and rivers become dead from the pollution. These people cannot drink the water, breathe the air or farm the land, as a direct result of solar panel manufacturing. Your sustainability is so popular in China that villagers mobilise in mass protest against the manufacturers. They are banding together to break into the factories and destroy equipment, forcing the factories to shut down. They value their lives more than sustainability for the rich.
Panels last around 30 years, then straight to landfill. More pollution, more waste. Some parts of solar panels can be recycled, but some can’t, and have the bonus of being highly toxic. To be recycled, solar panels are sent to majority-world countries where low-wage workers are exposed to toxic substances while disassembling them. The recycling process itself requires energy and transportation, and creates waste products.
Solar panel industries are owned by Siemens, Samsung, Bosch, Sharp, Mitsubishi, BP, and Sanyo, among others. This is where solar panel rebates and green power bills are going. These corporations thank you for your sustainable dollars.
Wind power
The processing of rare earth metals needed to make the magnets for wind turbines happens in China, where people in the surrounding villages struggle to breathe in the heavily polluted air. A five-mile-wide lake of toxic and radioactive sludge now takes the place of their farmland.
Whole mountain ranges are destroyed to extract the metals. Forests are bulldozed to erect wind turbines. Millions of birds and bats are killed by the blades. The health of people living close to turbines is affected by infrasound.
As wind is an inconsistent and unpredictable source of energy, a back-up gas fired power supply is needed. As the back-up system only runs intermittently, it is less efficient, so produces more CO2 than if it were running constantly, if there were no turbines. Wind power sounds great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice. Another useless product that benefits no-one but the shareholders.
Energy efficiency
How about we improve energy efficiency? Won’t that reduce energy consumption and pollution? Well, no. Quite the opposite. Have you heard of Jevon’s paradox? Or the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate? These state that technological advances to increase efficiency lead to an increase in energy consumption, not a decrease. Efficiency causes more energy to be available for other purposes. The more efficient we become at consuming, the more we consume. The more efficiently we work, the more work gets done. And we’re working at efficiently digging ourselves into a hole.
The economics of supply and demand
Many actions taken in the name of sustainability can have the opposite effect. Here’s something to ponder: one person’s decision not to take flights, out of concern about climate change or sustainability, won’t have any impact. If a few people stop flying, airlines will reduce their prices, and amp up their marketing, and more people will take flights. And because they are doing it at lower prices, the airline needs to make more flights to make the profit it was before. More flights, more carbon emissions. And if the industry hit financial trouble as a result of lowered demand, it would get bailed out by governments. This “opt-out” strategy can’t win.
The decision not to fly isn’t doing anything to reduce the amount of carbon being emitted, it’s just not adding to it in this instance. And any small reduction in the amount of carbon being emitted does nothing to stop climate change.
To really have an impact on global climate, we’ll need to stop every aeroplane and every fossil-fuel burning machine from operating ever again. And stopping every fossil-fuel burning machine is nowhere near the impossible goal it may sound. It won’t be easy, but it’s definitely achievable. And it’s not only desirable, but essential if life on this planet is to survive.
The same goes for any other destructive product we might choose not to buy. Factory-farmed meat, palm oil, rainforest timbers, processed foods. For as long as there is a product to sell, there will be buyers. Attempting to reduce the demand will have little, if any, effect. There will always be more products arriving on the market. Campaigns to reduce the demand of individual products will never be able to keep up. And with every new product, the belief that this one is a need, not a luxury, becomes ever stronger. Can I convince you not to buy a smartphone, a laptop, a coffee? I doubt it.
To stop the devastation, we need to permanently cut off the supply, of everything that production requires. And targeting individual companies or practices won’t have any impact on the global power structures that feed on the destruction of the Earth. The whole of the global economy needs to be brought to a halt.
What do you really want?
What’s more important – sustainable energy for you to watch TV, or the lives of the world’s rivers, forests, animals, and oceans? Would you sooner live without these, without Earth? Even if this was an option, if you weren’t tightly bound in the interconnected in the web of life, would you really prefer to have electricity for your lights, computers and appliances, rather than share the ecstasy of being with all of life on Earth? Is a lifeless world ruled by machines really what you want?
If getting what you want requires destroying everything you need – clean air and water, food, and natural communities – then you’re not going to last long, and neither will anyone else.
I know what I want. I want to live in a world that is becoming ever more alive. A world regenerating from the destruction, where every year there are more fish, birds, trees and diversity than the year before. A world where I can breathe the air, drink from the rivers and eat from the land. A world where humans live in community with all of life.
Industrial technology is not sustainable. The global economy is not sustainable. Valuing the Earth only as a resource for humans to exploit is not sustainable. Civilization is not sustainable. If civilization collapsed today, it would still be 400 years before human existence on the planet becomes truly sustainable. So if it’s genuine sustainability you want, then dismantle civilization today, and keep working at regenerating the Earth for 400 years. This is about how long it’s taken to create the destructive structures we live within today, so of course it will take at least that long to replace these structures with alternatives that benefit all of life on Earth, not just the wealthy minority. It won’t happen instantly, but that’s no reason not to start.
You might say let’s just walk away, build alternatives, and let the whole system just fall apart when no-one pays it any attention any more. I used to like this idea too. But it can’t work. Those in power use the weapons of fear and debt to maintain their control. The majority of the world’s people don’t have the option of walking away. Their fear and debt keeps them locked in the prison of civilization. Your walking away doesn’t help them. Your breaking down the prison structure does.
We don’t have time to wait for civilization to collapse. Ninety per cent of large fish in the oceans are gone. 99 per cent of the old growth forests have been destroyed. Every day 200 more species become extinct, forever. If we wait any longer, there will be no fish, no forests, no life left anywhere on Earth.
So what can you do?
Spread the word. Challenge the dominant beliefs. Share this article with everyone you know.
Listen to the Earth. Get to know your nonhuman neighbours. Look after each other. Act collectively, not individually. Build alternatives, like gift economies, polyculture food systems, alternative education and community governance. Create a culture of resistance.
Rather than attempting to reduce the demand for the products of a destructive system, cut off the supply. The economy is what’s destroying the planet, so stop the economy. The global economy is dependent on a constant supply of electricity, so stopping it is (almost) as easy as flicking a switch.
Governments and industry will never do this for us, no matter how nicely we ask, or how firmly we push. It’s up to us to defend the land that our lives depend on.
We can’t do this as consumers, or workers, or citizens. We need to act as humans, who value life more than consuming, working and complaining about the government.
Learn about and support Deep Green Resistance, a movement with a working strategy to save the planet. Together, we can fight for a world worth living in. Join us.
In the words of Lierre Keith, co-author of the book Deep Green Resistance, “The task of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much personal integrity as possible; it is to dismantle those systems.”
Do you agree with this analysis? If so, we have three steps for you to take:
DILLINGHAM, AK –Bristol Bay leaders are outraged by the Pebble Limited Partnership and Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) settlement concerning the proposed Clean Water Act protections for the Bristol Bay watershed.
In 2010, Bristol Bay’s tribes, joined by Native corporations, commercial fishermen, the sports and recreation industry, and other supporters petitioned the EPA to protect Bristol Bay from the risks posed by the Pebble mine—risks to our salmon, waters, people, and economy. EPA responded by undertaking a multi-year, peer-reviewed scientific study that was subject to extensive public participation. As a result, EPA proposed common sense protections for the Bristol Bay watershed supported by millions of Americans. Sadly, with today’s announcement, these protections, have fallen victim to the petty, partisan politics of our day. The leaders of Bristol Bay issued the following statements at a press conference regarding the settlement:
Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives Bryce Edgmon stated:
“I am keenly disappointed…Backing away from the agency’s painstaking work and analysis of the 404(c) issue following years of work to carefully construct a position that was not only was supported by a number of tribes in the region but once again the majority of the people in the region. The people of the Bristol Bay region do not need this kind of stress hanging over our heads continuing on year after year.”
Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation CEO & President, Norman Van Vactor stated:
“You might recall the process of the original 404(c). There were literally dozens of public hearings. Thousands of people in Bristol Bay testified and spoke. Tens of thousands of people in the state of Alaska spoke. Hundreds of thousands of people in the US spoke. Compare that to what appears to be happening in the last couple weeks closed door meetings between bureaucrats and foreign mining executives. Closed to all of us. And, a decision that will affect our livelihoods and our homes. We will do whatever it takes to protect Bristol Bay.”
Curyung Tribal Council Chief & Commercial Fisherman Robin Samuelsen stated:
“We will continue to fight Pebble for as long as Pebble wants to build a mine in Bristol Bay. I’m 66 years old and I’ll give it my last breath. My two grandsons here, who both testified in Washington D.C., when I’m gone there going be stronger than grandpa ever was fighting against Pebble. And their kids are going fight Pebble. We and Bristol Bay will never give up.”
Bristol Bay Native Corporation Chairman of the Board Joseph Chythlook stated:
“For more than a decade Pebble has created stress and uncertainty among our people and businesses. Bristol Bay needs and deserves certainty that our sustainable industries and world-class salmon fishery will continue- any settlement between EPA and Pebble moves us further away from that potential result.”
Bristol Bay Native Corporation Chairman of the Land Committee Russell Nelson stated:
Responding to the question of Pebble’s recent assertions that it will seek a small mine size – “Pebble can tell you what they want, you just need to look on their website, they’re going to mine it until the end until the last dollar until they can extract the last dollar out of that resource. They can tell you it’s small, but look at the cost of developing. They need to get their money out. They’re in it for the money.”
United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley stated:
“Our region couldn’t be more united in our effort to protect Bristol Bay from the Pebble Mine. I sit here today with tribal, Native Corporation, commercial fishermen, economic development and political leaders of Bristol Bay united to protect our home and in continued opposition to the Pebble mine. If there’s one thing I want you all leave here with today, it’s this: Pebble may have its short-term victory today. But, we as indigenous people, have been on this land for over 10,000 years and we’re not going anywhere.”
Nunamta Aulukestai (Caretakers of Our Land) Spokesperson Sharon Clark stated:
“We are here to give a voice to our region. We know what this fight is about. Protecting our home. Protecting our culture. Protecting our food. The Pebble mine PR people will talk about jobs and salmon and culture, too, but make no mistake. They are here to make money. They are here to take what they want and then leave. They will not protect our salmon, our culture and our way of life. If EPA settles today it will be disrespecting everything it gathered from our communities. It will be disrespecting science. It will be disrespecting hundreds of thousands of comments saying yes to Bristol Bay and no to Pebble. It is throwing out the fact that Pebble will destroy Bristol Bay. We are the protectors of our home. And we are not going anywhere. We have said no to this mine for over ten years. Our ancestors have always thought generations ahead and our fight against Pebble is no different- we will stay unified. We will say no to Pebble Mine today, tomorrow, and at every turn.”
Bristol Bay Native Association CEO Ralph Andersen stated:
“Two EPA Administrators visited our region, heard our voices and our concerns. President Obama came to Dillingham, he met with us and saw our region and our fisheries firsthand. EPA Administrator Pruitt has not even bothered to have any discussions or invite us into any conversations into what EPA changes are being planned four our region- that shows disrespect. What you’ve heard today and what you’ve heard from our region in the past isn’t changing- we are resolute in our unity against the Pebble Mine, this types of mining threaten our land, our water, our fish, and our wildlife. Subsistence not an abstract concept. Subsistence is our way of life.”
Nondalton Tribal Council President William Evanoff stated:
“We’ve been fighting for over 10 years to protect our land, water, fish, and animals- they don’t have a voice in any of this and we have to be their voice. Pebble claims they have wide support throughout the communities closest to the mine and I can tell you that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Nondalton is the closest village to the Pebble site –our people will be most impacted if Pebble is allowed to develop. I’m here today to tell you today that Pebble’s lies don’t fit the facts. Our Tribe has never supported Pebble and does not support this project. Do not be fooled by Pebble’s attempts to mislead the public. When our way of life and everything we hold sacred it at risk we know what we are doing is right fighting this mine- our future generations are depending on us.”
You can find full audio of the press conference by clicking HERE.
Alannah Hurley, United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director, 907-843-1633, ahurley@utbb.org Representative Bryce Edgmon, Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives 907-632-3001 Russell Nelson, Bristol Bay Native Corporation Chairman of the Land Committee 907-843-1075 Norm Van Vactor, Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation Robin Samuelsen, Curyung Tribal Chief, Executive Board Member of Nunamta Aulukestai, Bristol Bay Native Corporation Board Member, & Chairman of the Board of Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation. Sharon Clark, Nunamta Aulukestai (Caretakers of Our Land) Joseph Chythlook, Bristol Bay Native Corporation Chairman of the Board Ralph Andersen, Bristol Bay Native Association William Evanoff, Nondalton Tribal Council
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?
Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption — changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much — and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption — residential, by private car, and so on — is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”
Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one — if we avidly participate in the industrial economy — we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world — none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.
Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.
The second problem — and this is another big one — is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”
The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.
The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.
The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned — Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States — who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.
The Indian government is harassing and attempting to silence the leaders of the Dongria Kondh tribe, famous for winning a “David and Goliath” court battle against a British mining giant.
The Dongria’s resistance to mining on their lands has continued since their landmark victory in 2014. Leaders including Dodi Pusika feel that the risk of mining remains as long as a refinery is operational at the foot of the Niyamgiri hills, an area which the tribe have been dependent on and managed for generations. A recent protest at the refinery was met with a baton-charge from police.
Pusika’s daughter-in-law, Kuni Sikaka, was arrested in the middle of the night of May 3 and accused of links with armed Maoist rebels. In exchange for her release, Dodi Pusika and other members of his family were made to “surrender” as Maoists and paraded in front of the media.
There has been an alarming increase in arbitrary, politically motivated arrests of tribal people who are resisting mining operations or government policies which endanger their lands and communities. Typically, those arrested are accused of Maoist links – usually without evidence.
Human rights activist and doctor Binayak Sen and tribal teacher Soni Sori have both been imprisoned for alleged Maoist connections and only subsequently released after national and international campaigns.
In April, the Home Ministry issued a report claiming that Maoists were “guiding the activities” of the Dongria’s organization, the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS). On the contrary, Maoists instructed the Dongria to boycott the very meetings at which they delivered their decisive “no” to mining.
Lingaraj Azad, a member of the NSS, stated, ‘We have always opposed violence – either State violence or Maoist violence. We will not bow down, but continue our struggle to protect Niyamgiri from being mined.’
Survival International is calling on the government to drop these fabricated charges, stop this persecution of the Dongria Kondh, respect their decision about the Niyamgiri mine, and to uphold their right to protect their lands and determine their own futures.
I was asked to speak about the state of the planet, and to do it in under five minutes. I can do it in three.
The world is being murdered, flayed alive, poisoned, gutted, dismembered.
Every biological indicator is going the wrong direction.
And it’s getting worse by the day.
Two hundred species were driven extinct today, and they were my brothers and sisters. Two hundred will go extinct tomorrow. And the day after.
There are stolid scientists who are saying the oceans could be devoid of fish in less than 35 years.
Imagine that: the murder of the oceans on this water planet.
The problems are not new. This culture has been killing the planet for 6000 to 10000 years. When we think of Iraq, is the first thing we think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight never reached the ground? That’s how it was, prior to this culture. The first written myth of this culture is Gilgamesh deforesting the hills and valleys of Iraq to make a great city. The Arabian peninsula was heavily forested. The forests of North Africa were cut to make the Egyptian and Phoenician navies. Greece was heavily forested.
Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels.
And not every culture has destroyed their landbases. The Chumash lived here for at least 13000 years, and when the Europeans arrived here, the place was an ecological paradise. Likewise where I live the Tolowa lived there for at least 12500 years, and likewise when the Europeans arrived the place was a paradise. No longer.
A dear doctor friend of mine always says that the first step toward proper treatment is diagnosis. If we refuse to diagnose the problems our actions will never resolve them.
The problems are not soluble by tweaking processes. The problems are inherent in how we perceive the world, how we interact with the world, what we value, and they are functional and inherent to this culture’s economy. What is GNP? It’s a measure of how quickly the living planet is turned into dead products. Trees into two-by-fours, living rivers into kilowatts, schools of fish into fish sticks.
This is not cognitively challenging. We would all understand this if we weren’t from early childhood inculcated into believing that the economy is more important than life, if we weren’t taught that what humans create has meaning and what the world creates does not, that humans have sentience and meaningful lives, and nonhumans and natural communities do not.
But what if this is all wrong? What if life is not a game of monopoly or risk where the point is to run the board, but rather life is a symphony, where the point is to learn your proper role, and play it at the proper time? The point is not for violin players to kill the oboe players and convert them into cash, but rather to make beautiful music together.
The only measure by which we will be judged by those humans and nonhumans who come after presuming any remain will be the health of the earth. They’re going to care about whether the earth can support life.
At this point in the murder of the planet, there is I think really only one question worth asking: is the world a better place because you were born, and because of your life and because of what you do? That is very possible to do. Think about it: how did the world get to be so glorious and beautiful and fecund in the first place? By everyone living and dying. Salmon make forests better places by living and dying. So do redwood trees and lampreys and banana slugs. That’s how life works. So, the question that the world needs for us to live is: especially given that this culture is killing the planet, how do we individually and collectively make the world a better place by our lives and deaths. By our actions. The planet, not the culture. And that is as true for any organization or corporation as it is for any of us individually. How do we make the real, physical still fecund world that is our only home, better, for hammerhead sharks, for coho salmon, for giant anteaters, for Mekong catfish, Amani flatwings, cayman islands ghost orchids, and orangutans, and the larger communities they call home.
This spring, if all goes as planned, the Marines will kill hundreds of Desert Tortoises in southern California.. This is not the first such tortoise kill, but it could very well set a new record-high number.
This assault was originally scheduled for last spring, in 2016 (with the full approval of the Obama administration), and was put off for a year only because of a lawsuit filed by an environmentalist organization. Now, with all chances for legal appeal passed, it is set to commence in late March or April in the Mojave Desert.
So what’s the story?
In 2013, Congress voted to expand the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California—which was already the largest Marine base in the world—by annexing 88,000 acres (about 136 square miles) from the Bureau of Land Management’s Johnson Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area, to the west of the base in the Mojave Desert.
This area is part of the ancestral home of the Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), a species that has lived there for many thousands of years, since the days when it was wetter. As the climate gradually dried out, the tortoise adapted by spending more time underground. In our contemporary age, they are in their burrows over 90% of the time! In the spring, when wildflowers brought by winter rains are flourishing, the tortoises emerge to eat and mate. They generally live 35-50 years, with reports of particular specimens reaching 80.
Though Desert Tortoises thrived at populations of up to 1000 individuals per square mile at the beginning of the 20th Century, their numbers have fallen drastically since then. Human activities are to blame including ranching, roads, agriculture, industry, military operations, off-highway recreation (“wreckreation”), urban encroachment, and in recent years, solar and wind projects. Also, with Global Warming, the climate is changing faster than the tortoise can adapt. In the last decade, the tortoise population has fallen by 50% in the western Mojave Desert, where the Twentynine Palms Marine base is located.
Desert Tortoises are listed as “threatened with extinction” by the federal government. Because of this status, it is illegal for anyone—even the military—to “harm” or “harass” them. The Marines plan to use the annex for training with tanks and live ammunition, which would certainly result in both harm and harassment, so they sought to move the tortoises somewhere else, although this too would cause harm and harassment. After a legal delay of one year forced upon them by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Tucson, Arizona, the Marines now have the go-ahead to start “translocating” the animals, as soon as late March.
This is where the killing starts.
There is enough data from attempted tortoise translocations in the past to make estimates about how this latest effort will go. Though the rates of survival have varied from project to project, they are often no better than 50%. (See Desert Tortoise Recovery: Science and Politics Clash.) This particular translocation at the Twentynine Palms base will be the largest so far attempted, of over 1100 animals. So it would not be surprising if at least 500 deaths resulted, and perhaps far more.
This number includes about 900 adult animals (of 180mm in size or larger) who were tagged with radio-transmitters as they were found over the last three years. An additional 235 were too small for transmitters and were moved to the base where the Marines have been raising them. (So some tortoises have already been disturbed.)
How are the tortoises found in the first place and what’s it look like to round them up? For an answer to this question, I contacted Laura Cunningham, a biologist who works with Basin & Range Watch and who has participated in tortoise translocation projects herself. She also detailed how other animals are affected when tortoises are removed. It is worth quoting her at length:
“Here is the basic mechanics of tortoise translocation: after placing tortoise exclusion fencing around a project, biologists do a ‘Clearance Survey’ which entails dozens of biologists walking in straight lines criss-crossing the project area, all carefully walking a certain length apart and following GPS coordinates. Any tortoise found above ground is radio-transmittered [if it hasn’t been already] and carefully moved into transport boxes and readied for translocation (which is going to be partly by helicopter for 29 Palms Marine Base). Each biologist carries a shovel. All burrows encountered are dug out to locate any tortoise underground. These tortoises are also carefully removed. Two or three sweeps are needed usually to find all the adults. Even then sometimes a few are missed and found later. Many of the tiny juvenile tortoises are missed, those the size of a silver dollar—they are crushed in machinery later or buried alive or impacted later during tank maneuvers.
“Digging out burrows of this keystone species, the tortoise, is difficult because it ripples across the desert ecosystem: so many other species depend on the digging abilities of the tortoise with its long front claws. Burrowing owls, rattlesnakes, lizards, tarantulas, and other species utilize the burrows. They must be dealt with as well. Rattlesnakes are left in the desert to fend for themselves. Burrowing owls are being given increasingly careful attention, if their sign is found at a burrow, the owls are watched to see when they fly out and the burrow is closed up so they cannot return. The idea is to try to get the owls to move away to another location outside the area. But I am not sure anyone has a good idea how many burrowing owls die when they are flushed from their burrow and become homeless. There are new agency guidelines to try to limit impacts to this species, which also may need federal listing under the ESA [Endangered Species Act] as it too is declining.
“Desert kit foxes dig their own burrows, but biologists must dig out those burrows to in case a tortoise is living there. So kit foxes are also displaced, and guidelines are followed to try to make this enforced homelessness have the least impacts as possible. But again, little studied. A canine distemper outbreak happened on the Genesis Solar Energy Project in the Chuckwalla Valley, killing some. Coyotes and badgers are also displaced. In parts of southern Nevada and eastern California deserts, rare Gila monsters are displaced from burrows as well.”
Additionally, the areas into which the tortoises are to be moved seem less than ideal as they already host tortoise populations that are in decline. According to Ileene https://sub.media/video/endciv-3/Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity whom I contacted for this story, the reasons for this decline are not entirely known but include elements that can be controlled such as grazing, off-road recreation and predation and others that are more difficult to control such as drought and disease. “Until the controllable ones are controlled,” Anderson said, “it does not bode well for the translocated or resident tortoises since they will now be competing for resources.”
Two animals that are commonly predators of tortoises are coyotes and ravens, who are both native to the Mojave Desert too. According to the Press Enterprise, the Marines have already announced that if coyotes are a problem, they will shoot them. According to the LA Times, some have already been “removed” by state wildlife authorities.
As I was finishing this story, I got word through Basin & Range Watch that the Marines at the Twentynine Palms base are hosting Coyote hunts on March 25th and 26th. The Marines’ announcement stated: “The purpose of the depredation program is to reduce the numbers of coyotes that are unnaturally inflated in the local area due to human subsidies. Elevated coyote numbers prove a safety risk to residents, and are a significant factor in the mortality of the desert tortoise.” The response to this news by Basin & Range Watch reads, in part: “The so-called mitigation of killing coyotes is a false action that will not help recover the tortoise, and will only disrupt desert ecosystems more. Coyotes are a native, natural species that belong to the Mojave Desert. Tanks, Humvees, bombing, live-fire exercises, and military maneuvers do not belong to the desert. The military has enough land to carry out tests and training, they do not need to keep expanding.”
The ravens might be luckier as they are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, though some have already been killed by “wildlife authorities.” The LA Times ran a story about how the Marines plan to use non-harmful lasers to scare the ravens away. The article also said that “the anti-raven arsenal” “includes ‘techno-tortoises’: highly realistic replicas of baby tortoises that, when pecked or bitten, emit irritants derived from grape juice concentrate, a chemical compound already used to keep birds from congregating on agricultural fields and commercial centers.” However, as John Marzluff, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington and expert on raven behavior who was quoted in the same Times article said: “My concerns are that we don’t really know how long these forms of aversion therapy will last among raven populations, which are very clever at responding to challenges.” And then what? More killing?
Not all of the tortoises will be subject to translocation. Some will be subject to staying, to face the tanks and live ammunition. Any tortoises that show signs of communicable disease will be left behind, so as not to infect healthy tortoises in the new area. Anderson estimates these would number 100 or less. She thinks that the Marines “might” monitor these animals to see if they survive.
Summing up the desert tortoise’s plight, Ileene Anderson said that “this species is continuing to decline throughout its range, and continually decreasing its habitat—whether that be through military expansions or other types of development—will only be detrimental to recovery efforts, because the tortoise needs habitat in order to survive, just like every other species on the planet.”
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Militarism is problematic, to say the very very least, for many many reasons. We might first mourn the human casualties, of course; those killed, maimed or made homeless or stateless. We might also think of the cities turned to rubble, with their art and history buried or burned. We might consider, too, the immense monetary cost of all of it, and how every bomb is, in a very real way, stealing food out of someone’s mouth or a roof from over their heads. But rarely do we consider the affected ecosystems and their inhabitants. (One exception is this excellent article by Joshua Frank: Afghanistan: Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard.)
Unfortunately, the military is seeking to expand into other desert areas (such as in Nevada). In protesting or attempting to curtail these expansions, I would hope to see some collaboration between activists who oppose war and those who support animal rights.
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How the Media Whitewashes Stories Like This
An AP story about the planned translocation from Twentynine Palms ends with the sentence, “Critics say the move will devastate the threatened species.” Considering the facts, this way of putting it is pretty flip and really only just short of dismissive. Which is why I titled this piece, “Headlines should read, ‘Marines to Kill Tortoises’.” Because it’s a fact that they will and somebody ought to just say it.
When we speak of the bias of the corporate media, we are referring to multiple aspects. In general, there is bias in favor of the wealthy, the conventional and the institutional and against the poor, unconventional and the individual. For example, anyone who has ever attended a boisterous protest and then watched the TV coverage of it afterwards will have noticed the corporate media bias against protesters and in favor of the police. If the police attacked the protesters, this will almost assuredly be described as, “protesters clashed with police.”
There is also a bias in the media in favor of stressing stated intent and brushing aside likely consequences when the consequences will be negative. This one is subtle but universal. As far as the media’s point of view is concerned, it’s not that tortoises are sure to die, it’s only that the Marines plan to move them, and, it is implied, move them safely. But it is sure that tortoises will die. Just as it is sure that civilians will be killed when cities are bombed, even if the intent is “humanitarian” and the targets “terrorists.”
“Collateral” is the word typically used by the media to describe the deaths of civilians in warfare, and it would be their style to apply it to tortoises killed by translocation. Wiktionary defines this sense of that adjective as “being aside from the main subject, target, or goal; tangential, subordinate, ancillary.” But if such death is inevitable, how can it be separated from the “main subject”? How can it be considered “tangential”?
There is a fundamental dishonesty in every news story that presents stories in this fashion. It’s called “white-washing.” Because all our information is spoon-fed to us in this same sanitized way, we first of all never think about it and secondly, have little collective knowledge (and hence concern) about what’s going on in the world, and how the US and its policies affect other people, living things, and the planet at large.
It is a measure of our misbegotten privilege that we can live in such a state of denial at all, in a bubble. And it is violence that empowers that privilege in the first place. It is upon the graves of Indians and the whipped backs of slaves that the US gained its power and it is through the military and economic subjugation of much of the world at large that it is now sustained. There’s nothing “collateral” about any of the suffering and damage that results from this system.
What do the poor tortoises have to do with any of it? Nothing, obviously, but this is the way of empire, that they must suffer too.
The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.
