Editor’s note: Already threatened by overfishing, acidification, overheating, the collapse of coral reefs, declining plankton populations, plastic pollution, and deep sea oil drilling, the world’s oceans now face a new threat: mining, disguised as “green.”
“To build a green future, in the next couple of decades the world will need to mine more metal than we’ve mined in our entire history” says Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company.
There’s some truth to that statement – if we wish to meet the rising demand for new technologies, we’d need to see a sharp increase in metal extraction. After all, electric vehicles require 4x the amount of metals found in standard cars, and a single wind turbine requires 340 tonnes of metal.
Here’s the problem: the ‘green future’ he’s selling us is a lie, because what Barron fails to divulge in his upbeat sales pitch, is the ecological upheaval that his company’s plans would surely wreak.
The Metals Company plans to mine the seabed for polymetallic nodules; potato-sized objects containing metals like nickel, copper, and cobalt; essential in the production of the lithium-ion batteries being used for electric cars and (so-called) renewable energy storage.
They’re located (among other places) in the Clarion-Clipperton zone, an area of the Pacific Ocean equivalent in size to the entire Indian Subcontinent. The seabed here (despite the claims of company officials) isn’t simply a ‘vast marine desert’, it’s home to a wide variety of species whose existence depends upon the presence of these nodules.
So, what would the mining process actually look like?
They’re building house-sized machines which would indiscriminately vacuum-up the contents of the seabed and send it to a ship on the surface. This includes an estimated 2 to 6 million cubic feet of marine sediment (granulated rock) per day for every machine in operation, only then to be subsequently dumped right back into the ocean.
It’s been stated that the sediment will be returned to a depth below 1200m. That’s called the Bathypelagic zone (Midnight Zone) – and some animals who live there include viperfish, anglerfish, frill sharks, eels, and sperm whales. These would be among the first creatures to acquire a gill-full of gravel.
But furthermore, the floating particles could be carried throughout the entire water column by powerful currents in a natural process called ‘downwelling’ & ‘upwelling’ – damaging (perhaps fatally) the respiratory systems of billions of fish.
This, plus the impact that light & sound disturbances from mining equipment would have on creatures adapted to conditions of silence & darkness, raises the likelihood of ecosystem collapse. Ocean ecosystems are already threatened by multiple stressors like overfishing, ocean acidification, & plastic pollution – do we really want to add anything else to the list?
The Metals Company claims that seabed extraction is a more ‘sustainable’ method of sourcing metal than land-based mining. Whenever anyone pulls-out the ‘sustainability’ buzzword, two premises need to be addressed:
#1: what are they sustaining? – clearly not biodiversity.
#2: how long do they wish to sustain it for?
The answer to the first question: an industrial way of life. The way of life which propels us to greedily squander nature’s bounty.
The answer to the second question: for as long as there’s anything left of the living world to convert into commodities.
This isn’t about saving the planet. It’s about creating new technologies which will prolong & exacerbate the destruction of the planet, and a false narrative that this is all somehow morally justifiable. Here’s a basic rule: if we consume the Earth at a rate faster than it can regenerate – eventually there won’t be anything left to take. Even Gregory Stone (chief scientist at The Metals Company) acknowledges this:
“On-land commodities are being exhausted…and [the deep sea] is the natural next place to look…these are some of the last resources that the Earth has to give us”.
Are we really prepared to blow-through everything that’s left? To leave no stone (or nodule) left unturned, just so that we can continue driving around in cars & tooting our horns?
The ends don’t really justify the means. Any right-minded, white westerner can reflect upon the cruelty of the transatlantic slave trade and conclude: “Yikes, my ancestors should’ve left the people of West Africa alone”.
Jazz music probably wouldn’t have existed without the transatlantic slave trade. Do I like jazz music? Sure, but you know what I like better? Thriving communities living in environments to which they’re socially and biologically adapted.
Communities like the ocean-dwelling phytoplankton who generate 80% of the Earth’s oxygen, who play a crucial role in atmospheric carbon regulation, and whose future hangs in the balance should deep-sea mining go ahead.
So, what can we do to stop this from happening?
The country of Nauru, which (having signed a contract with The Metals Company) would stand to benefit financially from deep sea mining, have declared that operations will go ahead in 2024, within waters assigned to them by the ISA (International Seabed Authority) – that means we have about two years to stop this.
So far, campaigners such as Greenpeace, WWF, and the government of Fiji have collaborated on a proposed 10-year moratorium (temporary ban) on deep sea mining until more is known about its effects on deep sea ecosystems.
Going a step further, organisations like Blue Planet Society and Pacific Blue Line are calling for an outright ban.
You (the reader) can help by educating yourself more on the subject, by spreading awareness, by signing online petitions, and by joining or organizing demonstrations against deep sea mining…but before you go and do those things, let me finish with a final appeal:
As environmentalists, we might not instinctively care quite as much about the deep sea as we do about other landscapes like rainforests or prairies. We’re land mammals after all; we don’t belong down there, and neither should we strive to assimilate. However, it’s important that we look beyond our human bias, because the deep sea comprises 60% of Earth’s surface. This means that the wellbeing of the ocean is crucial for the wellbeing of the planet as a whole.
Industrialists can’t understand this. They look upon the deep sea as a challenge, as another frontier just waiting to be conquered, and none of the native beings who live there will stand in their way.
We can stand in their way.
Help to stop deep sea mining, before it starts.
Joshua Clinton is a long-term environmental devotee, campaign organizer, & freelance writer. He can be reached at: tr33tantra@gmail.com.
Florence Nightingale, the English pioneer of modern nursing is quoted as saying, “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.”
Editors note: Never give up your agency. If your goal is to save life on the planet, sometimes you have to sink your own boat.
Derrick Jensen This is Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network. My guest today is Diane Wilson. She’s a mother of five, a fourth generation shrimp boat captain and an environmental activist. She’s been fighting to save the bays on the Texas gulf coast from chemical and oil development for the last 30 years. I also have to say that you have for at least 15-18 years been one of my heroes so thank you for that.
Diane Wilson Thank you Derrick, I appreciate that.
Derrick Jensen Thank you in general for your work in the world and thank you for being on the program. My first two questions are – can you introduce yourself and can you also then introduce the region where you live, the region you love
Diane Wilson First of all I’m a fourth generation fisherwoman, shrimp boat captain. My family has been around this area on the mid-Texas gulf coast for about 130 years so you might say I’ve got a real sense of place, where I was born and raised. I’ve been in the same town for my whole life. I’m 72 years old so I always call myself a late bloomer. Anybody out there who thinks they’re too old to start – that is not true. As a matter of fact, it just gets better as you get older. You get a little bit more free every year.
Basically, all of my family – my brothers, my brothers-in-law, my cousins, my uncles, everybody in the early days they were just gill netters, fin fishermen and they caught black drum and red drum. They had little wooden boats and they oared out. Where I’m from is a little fishing town. It’s probably the most authentic fishing village on the whole Texas gulf coast – Seadrift. We were all fishermen and your whole life was centered around the fish house, the bays, the nets the boats and that was your life. As a matter of fact, like most kids around my age, you spent your whole life outside. I was always on a boat I was always out on the water laying in.
I remember I was a real introvert even though people have accused me of being a real troublemaker, I’m by nature a real introvert. I can remember going to the fish house where my dad was coming in in the evenings and I would go to the bay and there was this old woman down there and she really liked me and when you’re one of seven kids and you’re getting attention from somebody and somebody likes you. I mean I liked going down there because of that old woman and she felt like she was my grandmother and the only thing I realized when I got older is that woman was the bay and she was as real to me as any other member of my family. I have never forgotten her and I have never forgotten what it feels like for something, what people call a resource or a commodity or an ecosystem, to me it was real and it had an aliveness and it had an energy.
When you’re small and your dad is just a small-town fisherman and you’ve got a small boat – I imagine his boat was good – and you would go out there because fishermen were poor people and they really couldn’t afford deck hands. So they would generally take the kids along. I had three sisters and me. My three sisters we decked for my dad and I really, really liked being out there and I was really good at it. When you had to take your turn at a wheel; when you’re dragging a net and you’re kind of holding the wheel and you gotta hold the wheel just so because you got to keep the net and the wheel wash in the shrimp all at the same time. My sisters would start crying because when you start turning a boat into the wind with the waves it will almost feel like you’re flipping over so my sisters did not like did not like handling the wheel but I loved it. I loved going out in the mornings and it was still dark and there was nothing but that salt air in that wind and you’re just barreling out in the dead of night. You see nothing. it’s almost like your instinct and there are very few beacons. It’s just years and years of doing it. I can remember and I suppose it’s because I had a real sense of the energy of that old woman. It’s like you literally could feel like your skin would separate – the wind in the water would just kind of move in there and it actually made me a bit of a mystic.
I’m a little bit of a mystic and I hate to tell you, I was raised Pentecostal and that’s holy rolling – speaking in tongues. My grandmother was a faith healer and I think she tried to raise my uncle from the dead and all kinds of stuff like that. I’m not that but I am a mystic and I have a real sense of what’s alive out there. People think it’s only what you see and it’s only yourself and it’s only the boundaries and the borders within your skin – that’s not true. As a matter of fact, that’s why I like your books so much because you seem to have a real sense of the connectedness and how valuable everything was. I could sense that, and I think it was because I spent all my life on the bay and I was a little bit of a loner so I didn’t have that peer pressure – sometimes at a certain age you get peer pressure and you get pulled away from that naturalness. I don’t think I was pulled away from it, so I’ve always had it my whole life and I still have it. It’s like a lot of the stuff that I do. It’s gut instinct and I don’t believe I’ve ever had a plan. I feel like I leave myself open for the energy because I truly believe there is energy out from nature and it’s got an intelligence, if you just work with it.
My location down here is mid-Texas gulf coast. We’re around Matagorda Bay, Lavaca Bay, Spirit Center Bay, San Antonio Bay, Mesquite Bay, Guadalupe Bay. Our county is a tiny county. When I was growing up there’s probably like 12 000 people in the whole county. The town where I was raised, Seadrift, was a thousand people. It’s been through so many hurricanes I can’t even tell you. It’s had so many hotels and railroads and restaurants and lumber yards destroyed in hurricanes. It always remains a very small town – a thousand people – and it’s always been this fishing town. We’re close to what they used to call Blackjack Island and now it’s known for the Aransas wildlife refuge. That’s where the endangered whooping cranes come every winter. They count every single last whooping crane that is left and they all come down and they nest in what they call Aransas wildlife refuge. Where my folks were from, they were fishermen there, and one of my uncles was in a hailstorm that killed a hundred cattle they had hail so big. He drowned out on the bay. I had another uncle, they had bonfires in those days and they did a lot of cooking on bonfires He was just a toddler and fell in the fire. I’ve got kin folks that are buried out there on that island. I’ve got a real sense of ancestries around here.
I know this whole area around here was where the Karankawa were. Those very tall, good looking, native American indigenous people and they lived around the water. We went across to where they were. They had all these arrow heads and all their camps and places and I believe I’m not too far from where there was literally a battle between some Irish settlers that came in. The Karankawas must have taken one of their calves and so they raided them and killed most of them and it was over a calf. It’s a sad part of the history down here. I think a lot of the Karankawas went to Mexico. That’s the history of this area. Even the Karankawas were early fishermen, and they laid the shrimp out to dry. I remember someone was telling me they would have a burning stake and stick it out in the shallow water and shrimp will come to the light and that’s where they would get a lot of their shrimp. They would have little catch nets or whatever and they would get the shrimp and then they’d dry them. That was one of their one of their ways they got nourishment around here. But like I said the Karankawa is no more although they’ve named bays and towns after them, but it’s a tragedy.
A lot of this area is where a lot of Irish settlers came in and a lot of German boats came in. There used to be a town called Indianola and now it’s a ghost town because that was where these big ships came in. All these German settlers came in and I think there was even a big civil war battle right there in Indianola and it was right on Matagorda bay. Two hurricanes hit it, one right behind another; then a fire hit it and then I believe smallpox wiped everybody out so now all you got is a beach. People say they can see that train out there when the tide’s real low although I have not seen that train.
Derrick Jensen Can you talk about what has happened and what caused you to become an activist? What has happened to the region in terms of industry and its effects on the bay and also its effects on fishing including shrimping?
Diane Wilson Well in the beginning there was no law; there was no verdict from Congress that industry had to say anything to anybody. So for a very long time these industries like, for instance. Alcoa and Union Carbide – very big plants – came in around 1950. They didn’t say nothing to nobody. They just did what they did. Sometimes the shrimpers, if it was a bad winter, might get a job for two or three months during the winter months and drive a truck or something like that. But basically, this industry did not have to report to anybody at all and the only thing that fishermen would get is when the times that they would work. They would say “they told me to take these barrels down to Stinky Ditch and I dumped them down there and I nearly passed out from smell and I remember and everybody in my unit is dead” or stuff like that. But it was just anecdotal because industry did not have to report or say anything to anybody.
Around 1989 shrimping was starting to fall off and so I started running a fish house. A fish house is a tin building. It’s got open windows and it’s got double wide doors that open to the bay and it’s got this long dock and this is where shrimpers bring their boats in. They tie up, they unload their catch – usually shrimp – and you take it into the fish house, put it on ice. You put it in these ice vaults so you can ship them off on these trucks later. I ran a fish house probably for five years. If I happened to look out that window, I could see my shrimp boat which was SeaBee and she was she was tied right up to the docks. I had probably 14 shrimp boats that I took care of.
One day I had this shrimper and he had three different types of cancer and he had these huge lumps all over his body and he was the best looking. I mean he looked like a surfer from California. My mama thought he was about the nicest looking guy she had ever laid eyes on. Anyway, he had all this cancer and one day I was in the fish house and I was sitting with a cup of coffee and I had my rubber boots sitting up on the desk and he came in and pitched this newspaper article to me. He said I want you to read that and like I said I’m a real quiet person so anyway I looked at the newspaper article. It was 1989 and on that front page article, The Victoria Advocate, was an associated press story and it was talking about the first time the toxic release inventory ever came out. The toxic release inventory was a community “right to know” bill
that was passed in Congress after Bhopal. People mainly know Bhopal because of Union Carbide was doing this whole effort to make India green and they were doing a pesticide plant in Bhopal, india. It wasn’t working so they were cutting all the safety. Anything that had to do about the lowering the temperature, about alarms, about freezing; they were removing it and the unthinkable happened and there was a chain reaction. There was a debate over actually how many people died but probably around two or three thousand died that first night in Bhopal, India. It was the worst environmental disaster that has ever happened and I think it still is. I think at this point maybe 20 000 people died from that one incident by Union Carbide. Because of it Congress passed the community “right to know” law meaning that there would not be another time when anyone in the US woke up one morning and there was something like that happen because they didn’t know what the industry next to them was doing or what they were polluting with. So, for the first time ever, industry in the United States had to report their air emissions, their water emissions, their injection wells, their landfill, their trucking – all of it. They had to report the numbers for the first time ever and that’s what that article was about. Our little bitty county with 12 000 people in the whole county we were number one in the nation and it literally blew my mind. It’s like “how could you be the most polluted place in the United States probably if it was the United States it was probably ranking worldwide and never know it?” I had never heard the first word about it. So, I acted totally out of character because I don’t like talking, I don’t like having to deal with people. I’ve never had a meeting called in my entire life but I went to City Hall. I walked down to City Hall which wasn’t too far away. I had that newspaper article and I went to the City Secretary and I said I want to have a meeting. There was the City Hall and a little bitty room that sometimes they let people have birthday parties or whatever. I said I wanted to use that little room and I wanted to talk about that we were number one in the nation. So, they put it down and they put down my name and the next day I was at the fish house and here comes the City Secretary. Well, you never see anybody, all you see is fishermen down there and here was a City Secretary and I still remember she had the prettiest fulstar with flowers all over it and she said “Diane you’re just gonna have to get this meeting out of the city hall.” I was like “why?” and she said “oh red flags; it’s putting out red flags all over the place.” I’m like “well I’ll do it in an elementary school, you know, they got a cafeteria I’ll do it there.” and she’s like “no they want you to get it totally out of town. They actually don’t want you to do it at all.” I couldn’t get over the fact that I had just asked for it and they didn’t want me to do it. The next day I had the bank president come down to the fish house. I had never talked to that man in my life and here he was, three-piece suit, and he said he said “Diane, are you gonna start a vigilante group roasting industry alive?” I’m totally dumbfounded. I have no idea what they are talking about; why they’re so upset with me – I have not even had the meeting. Then a guy from economic development called my brothers who were fishermen and said you better calm your sister down. My brothers were not the type that would even talk to women and tell them anything. Anyway, one of my brothers said “what in the heck are you doing?” and I’m like “I’m not doing a thing.”
Eventually I did the meeting anyway because I really don’t like people telling me I can’t do something, even though I’m a real quiet person, so I went ahead and had it. I went to a different place and had it. Eventually what it came down to is 1) nobody had ever questioned industry, ever, and 2) it was Formosa plastics, a Taiwanese company who had been kicked out of Taiwan- the biggest chemical expansion in Texas history; the biggest in the United States in 10 years. They had the Governor, the Chamber of Commerce, the Attorney General, the Senators, Congressional and whatever had promised this chemical company. There will be no questions asked; you will get all the tax abatement you want; you will get all your permits expedited; there will be no environmental impact studies. It was pretty much a giveaway and they never once asked one question about this foreign company’s environmental record. They could just come in and we’ll give you everything and I just stumbled on it. It was a fluke. Actually, I went to the mailbox and I got an anonymous letter. I opened it up and it was a newspaper clipping. It was for no supply sticks and it was seven air permits and I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t know what the company was. When I finally had my little my little meeting as I got a group and I said “we’ll ask for a permanent hearing on this plan.”
As it was, I walked into a hornet’s nest. They couldn’t figure out who I was. They figured I was an official woman – a woman- so I was not bright enough to be doing this on my own. So they figured I was a spy hired by Louisiana to get it kicked out of Texas so the chemical plant would go to Louisiana. That’s how it started, and it never got any better – it got rougher and rougher. I mean everything for the last 30 years has been a battle. It’s been a battle and you just have to be very, very persistent. I think the reason why I’m so persistent is I am connected to that bay.
I remember when I first started. All I got was high school education, I didn’t have any money and nobody supported me. A fishing woman speaking out! People thought I was kind of crazy and all I had was this good sense of the bay. That was what was keeping me going on it. I really kept thinking there’s bound to be someone way better than me; way better at speaking; probably has a biology degree, can understand all of this chemistry and what these chemical plants are and what these chemicals are. It took about five years before I realized I was actually the best person to be doing it because it was my passion. It has always been my passion for the bay that has kept me persistent. That’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years – I’ve been fighting these chemical companies. I fought Union Carbide, I fought Dupont, I fought Alcoa and probably be the longest and the hardest is I fought Formosa.
Derrick Jensen: Thank you for all that. The next two questions are going to be:
can you talk about some of your best victories or your best victory, either way? and
can you talk about current struggles?
Diane Wilson What was to me one of the most interesting things that ever happened and it probably was a psychological kind of a spiritual thing. I had been fighting the Formosa wastewater permit and I had an attorney who agreed to help me and he became a really good friend. People in the community were afraid of the retaliation from the chemical company, especially when a lot of the local officials have contracts with the company. Fishing is going down so you have workers that are being hired at the plant, so nobody wants to say anything and I was the main thing. I haven’t a lawyer who could help me file a suit or something like that. You know a thing about a chemical company. One thing they do is they sense who the allies are so they go after them. On this one they started just throwing them into a deep hole with documents so the money expenses really started hitting them hard and so eventually my lawyer quit and started working for the company. I literally had nobody at all. So, I started filing some papers trying to fight Formosa’s wastewater discharge. When you don’t have a lawyer and you and you don’t have a college education and you got to write briefs and do your own legal work and you don’t have any money. I was doing pretty much filing my own briefs on a Royal typewriter.
Sure enough, they didn’t give me status and they said I couldn’t fight the permit so I appealed it. I always considered you give a monkey a typewriter and after a while that monkey is gonna type a word and so eventually I managed. Believe you me I still don’t know how I did it. I managed to stall the permit with an appeal with a Washington judge, an appellate judge, and so Formosa could not discharge until there was all this ruling and all ofthis process with an appellate judge out of Washington DC.
So I pretty much had their waste water and they could not discharge; they could not begin their plant. So one day I called the EPA to check on the status of the of that discharge permit and I said my name was Diane and I was second on the status. They start talking about “how was that discharge going and I noticed you have some copper discharges but I’m sure we can try to figure out how to do it and you really kind of need to keep the flow in the right periodand now you know.” Then it hit me that she was talking about Formosa’s discharge and she thought I was Formosa’s lawyer whose name was Diane too but that was a different Diane. I said you’re talking to the wrong Diane and that’s when she realized she kind of screwed up there.
Basically, it doesn’t matter what the legal documents say, what the law says – if you have enough money you will get what you want. It was it was the first time I had really come home to the fact that the law doesn’t matter when you got money and when you got power; you really can do what you want, and the law is like a handkerchief in your back pocket. You pull it out when you want to. I was outraged. I was totally outraged about it. The unfairness of it, the injustice of it. It hit me like nothing had hit me before. I knew I had to do something to symbolize that type of injustice. When it appears that nobody cares, everybody overlooks it, it’s injustice going on so I knew I had to do something. l knew that I had to sink something; I had to sink something that I cared a lot about. That’s when I knew I had to sink my shrimp boat. I was going to take it out and sink it on top of Formosa’s illegal discharge. That boat was nowhere near the value of a bay.
Some people can get the little picture, or you can get the big picture. You can look at the little picture and it’s like “oh it’s my livelihood it’s my boat.” It’s “what am i gonna do?” and then you get the big picture and it’s like “this is the planet this is your home for all of us we’re all supposed to be here.” Are you gonna let them take it? I wasn’t gonna let them do it. I was gonna symbolize it by sinking my shrimp boat. So, I put the motor out and I convinced an old shrimper to pull me out in the dead of the night. There was this crazy norther came in at the same time. I can’t imagine how all of these elements came together at the same time – this weather and the black of night in this boat and just doing this covert of pulling a boat out to sink it on top of Formosa’s discharge. There happened to be a shrimper who had been bought back from us and they were paying sixty thousand dollars a year just to be a consultant. He was pretty much just watching me to see what I did and tell the company. Anyway, he pretty much told the company that I was towing a boat out so they called the coastguard. At one o’clock in the morning there were three boatloads of coastguard and they were out there in the middle of the rain and all that wind. They were like “Miss Wilson, Miss Wilson are you out there, Miss Wilson?” They said they’re gonna charge me with terrorism; that I was gonna go to jail for 19 years and it probably took an hour for every two yards because you’ve got a boat towing you; you got a boat with no rudder and you got three coastguards in the middle of the night; in the middle almost of the jetties and all this current. It was the wildest scene of all. These coastguards jumping all over the boats with ropes and all of this stuff. Eventually it took about an hour to happen, but they eventually pulled my boat to a harbor. They put seven or eight ropes and tied it down. They put me in the cabin, locked me in. The guys were so afraid I was gonna get out and somehow take that boat out there without a rudder. I was going to get it out there. They were sleeping on the back deck; they were sleeping in trucks on the wall. I was pretty much stuck there with all these coastguards and all the ropes on my boat. I hadn’t sunk the boat. The next morning when I woke up I heard the sounds of a boat. Then I heard more boats and I looked out the window and there were these shrimpers who never get involved – they don’t believe you can fight; they gave up hope. They think every nail is in their coffin. These guys did a blockade. They all went out in the middle of that rough water. It was so rough you could have sunk a boat out there. I promise you the coast guard does not like shrimp boats blocking anything and here all of these shrimp boats went out in this rough weather and they did a protest and in support of what I was trying to do. That was the most amazing experience to see how if you move sometime and you have no real plan – just have a real instinct – is that things have a way. Some of the most amazing things that you can never plan happen.
I remember after that – Formosa saw all of those fishermen out there protesting in the middle of the bay. I think they had a funny sense of a house built on sand. That’s when uh they asked me “what is it gonna take to shut you up?” and I said “zero discharge of your entire waste stream” and so that’s actually how I got zero discharge from Formosa of this waste stream back in 1994.
Derrick Jensen: I’m sorry that this is so short because i’m loving everything you’re saying and we only have like five minutes left. Can you talk briefly about the lawsuit that you won? Then can you talk about current issues?
Diane Wilson: I have a lot of connection with workers inside the plant. Over the years they’ve come to me with information. I had a worker that was in the utilities or the wastewater and he was a whistleblower. He wanted to give me information, so I met him in a beer joint 40 miles away. He was telling me about all of the pellets that were in the waste stream and how they were going into the bay; how they were in the storm water ditches. He was just real concerned about it because he liked to take his kids fishing and when he took his kids fishing there would be all these pellets all over their feet. So I started checking on the pellets that were coming out of Formosa plastics and the state agencies, EPA – nobody, nobody seemed to care at all. Eventually me and a couple of workers – probably it was three or four of us all together – in January 2016 we started collecting all of these pellets and this powder that was all over the bay, all over the creek. Within a year, and we were all going out almost every single day for over a year, we had a thousand samples and probably had two or three thousand photographs. Then we got a legal aid group – Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid – and they offered to be our lawyers to file a citizen suit under the Clean Water Act. For the next two and a half years until March 2019 we collected around 2500 samples of illegal discharges. We probably had 8 000 photos and videos and we took Formosa to federal court. Believe it or not we won. It was astounding and it was the first time a citizen brought their own evidence; it wasn’t the state’s information; it wasn’t the EPA’s information, it was our evidence. The federal judge said Formosa was a serial polluter and their violations were enormous.
After that Formosa wanted to settle. They wanted to sit down and negotiate. So we sat down and negotiated with one woman, Taiwanese American, and we said we wanted 50 million; we wanted zero discharge of plastics; we wanted a clean up; we wanted our own enforcement and we wanted to make sure their plant did not discharge any plastic and we got it. We got all of it. It was the biggest settlement of a citizen suit ever in the United States. From that 50 million dollars we put 20 million dollars into a sustainable, diverse co-op for the fishermen to try to bring back the fisheries. Right in the middle of it then you know you got this Max Midstream trying to do oil export, and to do oil export he needs the bay dredged so he can get big ships in. Unfortunately, it’s a mercury superfund site and so I did a 36 day hunger strike to try to stop the oil exports and to stop the dredging. After that I went to the corps of engineers and blocked their highway; got arrested, thrown in jail. Then we went to his headquarters, we went to his home and we’re doing every single thing that we can to stop that oil export and stop the dredging because we’re trying to bring back the fishermen who have been devastated and that’s pretty much where I am right now.
Derrick Jensen This whole this whole time you’ve been talking I’ve been thinking about this line by Florence Nightingale which was something to the effect of somebody asked her to what did she attribute her success and she said “I never gave nor took an excuse.”
Diane Wilson That’s right.
Derrick Jensen You know you did not take the excuse that I’m not a lawyer so I can’t do this; I’m not a somebody so I can’t do this – you just did it That’s one of the reasons you’ve been one of my heroes forever.
Diane Wilson Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. You know when that Taiwanese American lady, that negotiated, the only woman that came in, when I walked in, and looked at me and said “you are very persistent”. You do it and be persistent; just keep doing it.
Derrick Jensen So my last question for today, and I’d love to have you on again, my last question for today is one of the things I try to do with these series of interviews is to help people. I mean everybody knows something that is that is bad; everybody loves something that is being destroyed. What can you say to them to help move them from sitting around going “gosh things are really bad somebody should do something” to being the person who does something. Or to being one of the people that does something. Can you say something to them?
Diane Wilson Basically I believe everybody, and I truly mean everybody, has – it’s almost like a destiny – there is something we are meant to do. Somewhere in their life some little piece of information is going to come to them. What they do with that information will determine the rest of their lives. I am just so glad I acted totally out of character and stepped out. That’s what you gotta do and I think everybody gets a chance. It’s what decision they’re gonna make on it and it will change your whole life. I’ve lost a lot of stuff but for the first time I remember “I like myself” and for a woman from the south to say she likes herself that’s a big deal. It’s changed my whole life. I am 72 and I have never felt so free and happy in my life.
Derrick Jensen Thank you so much for all of that and thank you for your work in the world and i would like to thank listeners for listening. My guest today has been Diane Wilson. This is Derrick Jensen for Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network.
The Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, one of the country’s most ecologically and culturally significant waterways, is facing proposals of further agriculture and mining development, including irrigation and fracking.
In response, First Nations communities in the region have developed different methods to promote the conservation of the river, including curating cultural festivals, funding awareness campaigns, and working with digital technologies.
First Nations land rights are held along the length of the Fitzroy River, the first time this has occurred across an entire catchment area in Australia.
The catchment is the last stronghold of the world’s most “evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered” species, the freshwater sawfish (Pristis pristis) and is home to the threatened northern river shark (Glyphis garricki).
WEST KIMBERLEY, Australia — November marks the end of the dry season in the Kimberley, the northernmost region of Western Australia, the country’s largest state. As the monsoonal rains start to fall, the country comes alive with the cries of red winged parrots (Aprosmictus erythropterus) and the Fitzroy River begins to run.
Stretching more than 700 kilometers (435 miles), the Fitzroy River is one of Australia’s most powerful waterways, a free-flowing system that passes through range, savanna and desert country to empty into the Indian Ocean each year.
Anne Poelina, a Nyikina Warrwa traditional Indigenous custodian of the river, said it’s her duty to care for the Martuwarra, the river’s original and enduring name.
“Martuwarra is a living, ancestral being,” she said. “It has a right to life, to live and to flow. We live by an obligatory law to protect the River of Life. It is the essence of our spirituality, identity, culture and law.”
The river was granted National Heritage Listing in 2011 due to its spiritual, cultural and environmental values. Native title, a federally recognized titling to traditional Indigenous lands and waters, is now held along the entire length of the river, the first time land rights have been held across an entire catchment area in Australia.
The Fitzroy is also the last stronghold of the world’s most “evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered” species, the freshwater sawfish (Pristis pristis). According to a 2019 study, its continued existence in the waters is due to the low level of human disturbance — namely mining and agriculture — compared to other rivers around the world. The authors recommended that any “further anthropogenic disturbance [to the Fitzroy River] should be minimized to maintain what is still a relatively pristine habitat.”
However, on the world’s driest inhabited continent, these life-giving waters are now a source of contention. Currently, agricultural and mining development proposals are being assessed to develop the Fitzroy catchment and the greater Kimberley region.
Such is the cultural significance of the river, that proposals have been met with scrutiny by traditional owners, and have led some to implement methods to preserve the river’s cultural and ecological significance.
Agriculture debate continues as fracking proposals arise
Chief among the industrial proposals earmarked for the Fitzroy are those linked to agriculture. Pastoral opportunities have long been debated in the Fitzroy catchment, with dams unsuccessfully planned along the river since the 1990s. In 2018, however, the incumbent state government pledged that there would be no future dams along the Fitzroy or its tributaries.
Despite this, the future of the Fitzroy remains uncertain. First announced in November 2020, the WA state government is currently assessing the feasibility of allowing up to 300 billion liters (79 billion gallons) of surface water to be taken out of the river each year through irrigation development to grow fodder for livestock. Conservationists say this will affect the flow of the river and, consequently, the diverse and unique ecosystem it supports, with threatened species including the northern river shark (Glyphis garricki), one of the world’s rarest fish.
While the debate rages on over pastoral activities in the catchment, there are other questions being raised about opening up the catchment to hydrofracturing stimulation.
Commonly known as fracking, hydrofracturing stimulation is an extractive process that involves injecting a high-pressure fluid made of sand, water and chemical additives into a drilled well to crack the rock and free natural gas from deep underground.
As much of the Fitzroy catchment sits on the Canning Basin, the largest shale gas reserve in Australia, the region has become a central focus of the federal government to boost the country’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery and strengthen the local energy market.
As Mongabay previously reported, a 2016 moratorium on fracking in WA state was lifted three years ago, allowing fracking in just 2% of the state. Much of that area falls in the western Kimberley, including parts of the Fitzroy catchment. In October 2021, the state government further backtracked on this minor concession and granted an exemption to the policy for an oil and gas company, Bennett Resources.
A subsidiary of Texas mining company Black Mountain Metals, the company has proposed drilling 20 exploratory wells, one of which lies just a kilometer (0.6 miles) from a tributary of the Fitzroy.
Bennett Resources did not respond to requests for comment from Mongabay. However, the company announced that it is seeking to extract up to 900 terajoules (953 million cubic feet) of gas a day once the gas fields peak.
In Australia, companies are able to secure mining leases that incorporate land recognized as native title. Rather than grant First Nations complete autonomy over their land, native title legislation mandates that communities enter into negotiations with mining companies regardless of whether they welcome industry on their land or not. Consequently, mining leases can incorporate the lands of multiple groups divided over development. As such, while the wells proposed by Bennett Resources are located in the territory of one community that has entered into fracking agreements, other groups on the lease either remain opposed to the process or are still undecided.
Roger Cook, the WA minister for state development and deputy premier, did not respond to requests by Mongabay for comment on industrial development in the Fitzroy catchment. However, in October, Cook told national broadcaster ABC that the exemption for Bennett Resources was granted because the project would help build gas pipelines to connect the area to the broader WA energy network.
Just how significant the resulting pipeline will be or whether it will cross native title land or the river itself remains to be seen.
Bennett Resources’ proposal says potential impacts could include contamination of surface aquifers due to well integrity failure. WA’s Environmental Protection Authority is currently assessing the proposal to ascertain whether the catchment will be compromised and the effects on species.
A festival to protect the river
For Joe Ross, director of the Bunuba Dawangirri Aboriginal Corporation, his connections to the river are ancient. An Indigenous Bunuba man whose ancestors come from the area, Ross is a seasoned advocate for the protection of the Fitzroy River catchment. In the late 1990s, he was influential in stopping the damming of the river for irrigation proposals.
In July this year, Ross organized a festival on his ancestral territory of Danggu, also known by its colonial name, Geikie Gorge. Named Yajilarra, meaning “let us dream” in the Bunuba language, the three-day festival included traditional stories told through stage performance. According to Ross, this enabled Bunuba children to interact with their elders and explore their identity.
“The aim of the festival was to celebrate our culture and revitalize our language,” Ross told Mongabay. “In doing so, we were promoting local industry, leadership for our younger people and our connection to country and the river itself.”
Following this, the festival featured a night of music and discussion about the river’s cultural and ecological values, bringing together some of the most influential and powerful individuals and corporations in Australia, including Australia’s richest man, mining mogul Andrew Forrest.
Significantly, Forrest’s investments in the Kimberley in recent years relate to the industrial proposals the Fitzroy catchment now faces. In 2019, Forrest’s privately owned energy company, Squadron Energy, bought into fracking interests in the western Kimberley. And in December 2020, he finalized a deal that saw the purchase of two pastoral stations bordering the Fitzroy River, giving livestock access to the water.
“We are passionate about the unique environment of the Kimberley, and the precious waterway and lifeforce that is the Fitzroy River,” Forrest said in a media statement last year.
“We strongly believe in the principle of balancing the need for sustainable agriculture and job creation for local communities, with the need to preserve culture and heritage sites, while restoring the land and its original fauna to its natural habitat.”
However, shortly after the Yajilarra festival, Squadron Energy abandoned its fracking interests in the Kimberley, calling the move a strategic decision given that the process is at odds with the organization’s climate policy.
For Ross, the festival achieved what it set out to.
“The feedback we have received is that the Yajilarra festival was as good as could be,” he said. “What this shows is that we have the capacity to continue these events, to promote our culture and to build ongoing dialogue about the future of the Kimberley.”
A campaign to encourage public engagement
The Kimberley Land Council (KLC), one of Australia’s most prominent First Nations land rights organizations, has also backed proposals to protect the Fitzroy catchment. Though the KLC is tasked chiefly with advocating for its member communities, taking a stand against disputes is rare given the organization is constantly entering into negotiations with government and industry. However, the KLC’s stance became unequivocable in regards to the future of the river.
Declaring that traditional owners “have never consented to the extraction of water and oppose development of the river and its floodplain,” the KLC encouraged the general public to support the protection of the river. This was done by making submissions to the state government’s call for public consultation titled the “Fitzroy River Water Discussion Paper.”
The KLC followed this through with an awareness campaign that involved running an advertisement in WA’s highest-selling daily newspaper. This resulted in more than 43,000 submissions to the discussion paper, one of the largest results in public feedback for an environmental issue in state history.
According to a media statement by the KLC, the river should be preserved in its current state as a cultural and linguistic landscape.
“The cultural management of the Fitzroy River catchment is a responsibility that traditional owners have had since creation and take very seriously,” said the organization’s CEO. “Traditional owners have not consented to large-scale irrigation extraction processes and want to see the river protected as a healthy and thriving ecosystem.”
New media and digital technologies
When the proposals began, Anne Poelina, an adjunct senior research fellow with the University of Notre Dame, Australia, who focuses on Indigenous environmental policy, was driven to act, given the risks she felt were posed to the river system and beyond.
“The first element that needs to be acknowledged is that we believe these living water systems are already fully allocated,” she said. “Any alteration to the river, the taking of water or the compromising of the catchment, will impact our lifeways, our culture, our conservation and our values.”
Concerned at the potential for industry to hinder the flow of the river and its consequential effects on culture and ecology, Poelina, as executive chair, helped unite six native title nations along the river together to form the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council (MFRC).
Formed in 2018, the MFRC brought nations from across the river’s reaches into a united body through which to engage with government and industry. Under Poelina, the council used digital technologies to promote the cultural and ecological values of the river, producing multiple films to encourage traditional owners throughout the catchment to promote the multiple values of the river.
Floodplain of the Fitzroy River with Willare and King Sound in the far distance. Image courtesy of Yaru Man via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
“Digital storytelling has had a remarkable impact,” Poelina said. “We have a global platform from which to discuss our relationship with the river and the response to our work has been overwhelming. We have been asked to address global forums and be a part of multiple film festivals around the world.”
These resources have also helped in the preservation of Indigenous and scientific knowledge. By engaging with scientists and geographers, Poelina has been able to orchestrate studies that have confirmed the ecological, cultural and legal significance of the river country, one of which has included Martuwarra itself as a co-author. This has advanced the argument for legal recognition of the river as a living ancestral being and granting it certain rights.
“We have also used technology to create a whole database of maps, like the water and vegetation types of the river,” Poelina said. “This has helped map and conserve our cultural heritage, our songs and our ongoing, ancestral connection to the Martuwarra.”
Questions for the future
Anthony Ingraffea, the Dwight C. Baum professor of engineering emeritus at Cornell University, told Mongabay there’s no straightforward way to answer how many fracking wells would be needed to produce Bennett Resources’ goal of extracting up to 900 terajoules of gas a day.
Drawing on examples from the United States, Ingraffea said that at a certain rate and with advanced technology, “it would take a few hundred wells to produce 850 million cubic feet a day over a sustained period of time.”
However, he said that in any case, three factors are at play: the length of time for a certain production rate, how quickly the operator can put wells into production, and the quality of the shale gas produced.
“All shale gas wells experience what is called a decline curve of production, that is, the rate of production rapidly decreases over time,” he said.
Ingraffea highlighted a case in Texas in which approximately 2,000 wells were drilled over a cumulative period of six years to produce 850 million cubic feet a day, the same output that Bennet Resources is aiming for.
Given the significance of the Fitzroy River’s aquatic and mineral resources, the future of the catchment will be discussed at all levels of government as the feedback from the Fitzroy River Water Discussion Paper is released and future fracking development is proposed.
Ross and Poelina say they would like to ensure that the ecological and cultural significance of the river to First Nations communities is taken into account in that conversation.
“The Kimberley is one of the last places in the world that has not been taken over by mass industrialization,” Poelina said. “Our people have walked this country since the dawn of time, we know it better than anyone. We want to continue to care for the land as she looks after us.”
Fitzroy River, downstream from Fitzroy Crossing Bridge. Image courtesy of Yaru Man/Flickr.
Citations:
Lear, K. O., Gleiss, A. C., Whitty, J. M., Fazeldean, T., Albert, J. R., Green, N., … Morgan, D. L. (2019). Recruitment of a critically endangered sawfish into a riverine nursery depends on natural flow regimes. Scientific Reports, 9(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-019-53511-9
RiverOfLife, M., Poelina, A., Bagnall, D., & Lim, M. (2020). Recognizing the Martuwarra’s First Law right to life as a living ancestral being. Transnational Environmental Law,9(3), 541-568. doi:10.1017/S2047102520000163
Banner image: The Freshwater Sawfish (Pristis pristis) is the most Evolutionary Distinct and Greatly Endangered (EDGE) animal in the world. Its last stronghold is the Fitzroy River catchment. Image courtesy of Peter Kyne/Wikimedia Commons.
SAN DIEGO, Calif.— After nearly 30 years of petitions and lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today protected one of Southern California’s rarest butterflies, the Hermes copper butterfly, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
The agency also designated 35,000 acres of protected critical habitat in San Diego County. The habitat consists of three units: Lopez Canyon, which includes acreage within Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve; Miramar/Santee; and Southern San Diego.
“Without Endangered Species Act protection, the Hermes copper butterfly would surely be pushed into extinction by Southern California’s rampant development, wildfires driven by climate change and invasive plants,” said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist at the Center. “I’m relieved to finally see this beautiful little butterfly and its habitat protected.”
The small, bright yellow-orange, spotted Hermes copper inhabits coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats only in San Diego County and northern Baja. Its survival depends on dwindling patches of its host plant, the spiny redberry. Increasingly frequent and severe wildfires also ravage the butterfly’s primary source of nectar, the California buckwheat. Drought and development have also destroyed dozens of historic populations.
The Hermes copper occupied many San Diego coastal areas prior to urbanization, and still persists in some foothill and mountain areas up to 45 miles from the ocean. The butterfly declined from at least 57 historical populations to only 26 populations in a survey this year.
Devastating wildfires have increasingly burned through key Hermes copper habitat, putting an end to the tenuous existence of many remaining butterfly populations. For example, 2020’s Valley Fire came within just 2.5 miles of a core population of the butterfly. In today’s listing the Service warned that a single large wildfire could wipe out all remaining populations of the butterflies.
Background
Even by the time it was first described in the late 1920s, the Hermes copper was endangered by urban development. By 1980 staff at the San Diego Natural History Museum noted that San Diego’s rapid urban growth put the future of the butterfly in the hands of developers. The Fish and Wildlife Service first identified the butterfly as a potential candidate for Endangered Species Act protection in 1984.
The Center for Biological Diversity and San Diego Biodiversity Project filed formal petitions in 1991 and 2004 to protect the species. A lawsuit was required to force the Service to respond to the second petition, but the agency announced in 2006 that it would not protect the species, despite fires in 2003 that burned nearly 40% of the butterfly’s habitat.
The Center filed a second lawsuit in 2009, but the Service delayed protection by placing the butterfly back on the candidate list in 2011. So the Center sued a third time in May 2019, which finally forced the Service to propose a status of threatened in January 2020.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
The points in time at which various ancient human societies began to go the wrong way (whether by force from outsiders, or by bad decisions made from within) are numerous and span thousands of years, but, thankfully for our future, some few remotely-situated Indigenous societies around the world never departed from those basic, ancient ways of seeing and living with the natural world and still have enough of their ancestral homelands not yet confiscated or destroyed by colonialist predators to make that continuance possible. The Kogi people of the northern Andes mountains in Colombia are a prime and now well-known example,[20] as are some of the more remote tribes to the south and east of them in the Amazon rainforest. Other relatively intact traditional indigenous societies exist in remote locations in central Africa, the Pacific islands, northern and southeastern Asia, and a few other remote locations in the Americas and elsewhere.[21] It is by learning from people such as these, and from all of our relations in the non-human world as well, that we might be able to find our way back to truly green, sustainable and regenerative ways of life. There are also many more Indigenous peoples throughout the world who have just a little or none of their ancestral homelands still accessible to them, retain only pieces of their traditional cultural values and practices, and have just a small number of tribal members who are still fluent in their ancestral languages. Colonialism, capitalism, cultural oppression, and intercultural relations have brought many changes to them, but, even so, for people whose encounter with wrong ways of living is more recent than most of the rest of humanity, the way back to truly green eco-harmony might be a little easier.[22]
Unless a community consciously agrees to put the needs of their entire local ecosystem and all lives within it first, above what they conceive to be human needs, their community will someday fail and collapse.
As clearly as we now see that the concept of utopian societies was never meant to mean “perfect” societies, it should also be clearly understood that traditional Indigenous societies were never perfect either, just as no human society has ever been perfect and none ever will. But, model ideal societies do not have to be perfect to provide inspiration, wisdom, and direction for our paths forward into the difficult future. It is interesting to note that the first contacts that European colonialists and their descendants had with Indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere (or, “the Americas” and the first people to be called “Americans”) inspired a small wave of utopian thinking that lasted for centuries,[23] and now, in this time of profound global crises, many people are looking to Indigenous individuals, societies and cultures for guidance and leadership towards resolution of the current crises and for ways to create viable, Earth-sustaining and regenerative future communities. Many utopian community social experiments have come and gone over the last five centuries, and one reason why the vast majority of them failed is that they did not look closely enough at the models to be found in Indigenous societies all over the world. While some communities have mimicked Indigenous, eco-based, reciprocal economic models to some extent, and others have imitated Indigenous representative political models, there are two elements of the original ways of human social organization, which nearly all non-Indigenous-led utopian communal experiments have missed, and which are essential to ideal community success. One element is the understanding that humans are just one of millions of types of people (or, “species”) who all have the potential to make essential, invaluable contributions to the interconnected web of regenerative life on Earth.[24] All species of the living world belong here and need each other. People from anthropocentric, “human needs first,” or “humans-are-most-important,” or “humans are superior to all other species” societies have an extremely difficult time trying to see that, unless they somehow acquire a special ability to break free from that very powerful mass delusion. Unless a community consciously agrees to put the needs of their entire local ecosystem and all lives within it first, above what they conceive to be human needs, their community will someday fail and collapse. A big step on the way to getting there is to realize that the greatest human need is to be in tune with the needs of the entire living organism to which we are all connected.
The second element is the need to learn how to have deep communion or interactive communication (listening, hearing, and being heard) with all of our non-human relations in the natural world (animals, plants, earth, water, fire and air). That idea sounds very unreal, or even impossible, to most modern humans today, but there are many stories and indications that most of our species once had and commonly engaged in such abilities, throughout most of our history as homo sapiens sapiens. Although I probably will not be able to recover much of our former fluency in such communion, after 70 years of living in this corrupt, lost, degenerated modern industrial world, I will remain committed to working on that quest for all of the remaining time that I have to live in this body, with all of the species by which I am surrounded. Why? Because I expect that we can learn more about what Mother Earth wants from us and how we can be healed and corrected, from our innocent, already-connected, harmonious, right-living, non-human relatives than we can from just listening to and following other humans. Daniel Wildcat (Yuchi, Muskogee), professor of American Indian Studies at Haskell University, helped to clarify this Indigenous perspective in his ground-breaking 2009 book, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge:
Current scientific research on animal communication overwhelmingly verifies the existence of complex communication systems. Honesty and humility require us to acknowledge that indigenous knowledge, in its diverse substance and structure, is the result of collaboration, a respectful partnership, between us and our many other-than-human relatives. Several tribal elders I have known have been almost matter-of-fact about their ability to exercise interspecies communication with animals.[25]
The old ability to also commune with and hear the languages of the plant beings is eloquently described by Potawatomi scholar and award-winning nature writer, Robin Wall Kimmerer in a recent essay that was re-published in Yes! magazine:
The Indigenous story tradition speaks of a past in which all beings spoke the same language and life lessons flowed among species. But we have forgotten—or been made to forget—how to listen so that all we hear is sound, emptied of its meaning. The soft sibilance of pine needles in the wind is an acoustic signature of pines. But this well-known “whispering of pines” is just a sound, it is not their voice….Traditional cultures who sit beneath the white pines recognize that human people are only one manifestation of intelligence in the living world. Other beings, from Otters to Ash trees, are understood as persons, possessed of their own gifts, responsibilities, and intentions. This is not some kind of mistaken anthropomorphism….Trees are not misconstrued as leaf-wearing humans but respected as unique, sovereign beings equal to or exceeding the power of humans.[26]
We definitely won’t get to successful, regenerative, natural Life-connected communities just from reading books written by other humans. This is not a simple philosophical exercise or an intellectual parlor game. We have to actually live the interconnected life, under natural laws and the wise limits of Mother Earth, on a finite but abundantly sufficient planet. That was the old normal way of living for the vast majority of our species, for the overwhelming majority of the time of our existence in Earth.
Some other essential elements for successful utopian societies at this particular moment in global history, besides the two most important elements mentioned above, include:
A group of people with a common enough vision or sense of direction, not excessive in population for the particular place in which they live so that they do not overshoot the carrying capacity of their local ecosystem or need to trade with the world outside their community for material goods[27], and can help to maintain regenerative processes and relationships between all species of life in that local ecosystem/community. Eventually, the community would need to determine their own membership or citizenship requirements and limits.
Access to sufficient land and clean water. This might require that people pool their financial resources and purchase land together. A more remote rural location would be safer, but for people who feel that they must remain living in urban locations, at least for the short-term future, city or town governments sometimes lease vacant lots relatively cheap for use as community gardens.
Sufficient collective knowledge and experience within the community membership about how to care for and nurture a wide variety of edible plants, either native to the place where the community lives or compatible with that ecosystem, to organically grow or gather for food and medicine. Knowledge in sustainable, respectful hunting and fishing might also be useful or necessary.
A commitment by all community members to expanding the community’s collective knowledge of the lifeways and connections between all species in the community’s ecosystem and learning how humans best fit into the interconnected purposes of life in that place. Knowledge of the lifeways of the people who were, or still are, indigenous to that place is an essential part of this process. As much as it may be possible, that knowledge should come directly from the people who are indigenous to the community’s place, whenever and how much they may be willing to share that knowledge, and such people should be invited into those communities and have leadership roles there, if they choose to do so. Generally, though, most Indigenous peoples would prefer to form their own ideal communities on their own ancestral lands or reservations.
Although ideal or utopian communities may need to use some money to get the community started, ideal communal economies should eventually become moneyless, direct-from-and-back-to-nature (ecologically reciprocal), mutually reciprocal, life-giving and sharing societies. In the formerly normal pre-monetary world, a society’s wealth was received directly from relationship with the natural world and was preserved or enhanced by maintaining a good, respectful, reciprocal relationship with the natural world. If our economic dependency is on the well-being of local natural systems, that is what we take care of and if our dependency is upon money, then that is what we care about most. In old Indigenous societies, the honorable attitude was to look out for the well-being of all people (human and non-human) in the community, give generously without worrying about what you will receive in return, and NOT measure out individual material possessions mathematically, to assure exactly equal portions of everything to each individual. In a culturally generous gifting economy, sometimes individuals or families would be honored in a ceremony and receive many gifts from the community, making them temporarily rich in material possessions. On another occasion a family or individual might sponsor a feast for the whole community and give gifts to all who attended until they had no more possessions left to give. When such activities were frequent and commonplace and people knew that they were connected to a generous, caring, cooperative, reciprocating community, of both human and non-human beings, there was no anxiety or sense of loss about giving one’s possessions away. Generosity was such a highly-esteemed, honorable character trait, that people sometimes actually competed with each other to become the most generous. There was also social shaming attached to being stingy or greedy, which is seen in some of the old stories, along with the stories about generosity and other positive traits.[28]
The community would need to mutually agree upon a governing structure and decision-making processes for issues that involve or impact the entire community (including the ecosystem and non-human members of the community). Community rules and laws should conform to and not violate nature’s laws. Effective government depends on mutual respect and/or love, listening and communication skills, common core vision and goals, honesty, transparency, and a commitment by all community members to working on and continually improving their self-governing skills.
Democratic or consensus decision-making about what technologies and tools will be allowed in the community, again giving highest regard to what would be best for the entire ecological community and for the connected biosphere of our whole planet.
Here again are the first two necessary elements of ideal community creation (explained above, before this list), reduced to nutshell, outline form:
Relinquish all anthropocentrism and any concepts of human superiority over all of the other species that we share interconnected life with in our ecosystems and in the entire biosphere of Mother Earth. Recognize the interconnected value of all species of life and keep that recognition at the forefront of all community decision making. (How can the species that is the most destructive to Life on Earth be rightfully considered “superior” to any other species, much less to all of them?)
All individuals in the community should commit themselves to actively developing our formerly common human abilities to commune deeply with and communicate (listening, hearing, and being heard) with other species in our inter-connected natural world. Since, for many of us, our ancestors lost those abilities hundreds or even thousands of years ago, a community should make no requirements about the speed at which those abilities should be developed. It should not be a contest, but, instead, a mutually-encouraging, enjoyable, natural process. With each successful step that any individual makes in this endeavor, the entire community gains greater ability to more closely follow nature’s laws and gains a better sense of how humans were meant to participate in and contribute to Earth’s living systems.
There are probably many more essential elements of community formation, structure, and actual operation which people may feel they need to consider and discuss. The reason that I titled this essay “Paths (plural) Forward….) was to acknowledge that there will be innumerable forms that ideal communities will take, throughout the world, depending upon the needs of local ecosystems and all of their inhabitants, the will of the particular communities, their sense of the common good, and whatever creative ideas that they come up with.
Some Obstacles and Possible Scenarios on the Near Future Paths Forward, both Good and Bad:
The idea of giving up and abandoning modern technologies is unthinkable and even abhorrent to most present-day humans. Besides those humans who have an abundance or excess of such things, many people around the world who own very few modern technology products are also repulsed by the idea that they might have to give up even the dream or desire to have such things. To abruptly switch to pre-20th century, or earlier, technologies would be excruciatingly painful to most modern, western industrialized people, and even a slow transition would be quite hard. It is possible that, to somewhat ease the transition to truly green and bio-sustainable living, we could just end the production of toxic modern technological products, while still using those things that already exist until they’re spent or broken (but cease immediately from using items that burn fossil fuels or emit other toxic wastes, in their production or consumption), and then not replace them. Some items could possibly be re-constructed from discarded parts, until such things are no longer available. During the time span in which the old manufactured goods are being used up, people would simultaneously need to be very actively engaged with learning to bio-sustainably produce the things that they actually need and that are actually green or Earth system friendly. That might be, at least in part, what a viable transition could look like. Obviously, most people today would absolutely reject and resist such a change, due partly to not knowing any other way to live, alienation from nature, fear of the unknown, and belief in, addiction to, or imprisonment by their normal material culture. Just wrapping their minds around the realization that so many things that they had always considered to be normal and innocent should probably never have been made, will be nearly inconceivable to most, at least initially. I remember how hard it hit me when I first realized that we just cannot continue to go forward with the status quo social systems and most of their by-products and still have a living world for very long. But how many will give it a second thought or change their minds after personally experiencing the increasingly common excruciating pain of global warming natural disasters? At some very near future point, relief agencies, all of which have finite resources, will not be able to keep up with the increasingly frequent catastrophic events, including more pandemics (connected to thawing permafrost, increased trade and travel, and increasing displacements and migrations of humans and other species). Is the creation of ideal or “utopian” local eco-communities, immediately and proactively—like building the lifeboats before the ship actually sinks—the best possible and most viable path forward, both for humanity and the rest of Life on Earth?
Because of the likelihood that modern industrial humans will not respond quickly or adequately enough to sufficiently (or even significantly) alter our present global destruction trajectory, the creation of utopian eco-communities might become more of a post-collapse source for places of refuge or survival and healing for those relative few who do manage to survive, than a means for actually providing an appealing alternative to continuing with the status quo, or just limiting the harm caused by our predicament. It may be likely that even those of us who would like to create utopian eco-communities would have a hard time doing so as long as the option of continuing with the status quo still exists, because we are so conditioned to depend on or desire many of the things that society offers us. Either way, though—whether prior to the collapse of the status quo or after—the creation of such communities would be a good thing and probably the least futile use of our time, attention and energy.
I offer here a brief assortment of some possible near-future scenarios, both positive and negative:
1. Sometime within the next five years, about 60% of humans around the world decide to create local eco-utopian communities, following the old Indigenous principles described above, and begin the process of abandoning modern industrial technological social systems and structures. Soon after that, we also begin the difficult process of safely de-commissioning all of the existing nuclear power and nuclear weapons facilities in the world and sealing away the radioactive materials therein. The bio-system collapse already set in motion to that point continues, but at a rapidly diminishing rate, as Earth’s regenerating systems are allowed to take over and bring gradual healing and an opportunity for a new direction for humanity, rather than repeating our former disastrous mistakes. As the human people begin to experience the joy of re-discovering our real purpose as part of Earth’s interconnected life-regenerating systems, while simultaneously grieving about all of the increased suffering of the humans who are still stuck in the collapsing, chaotic old industrial societies, and offering refuge to any persons that their communities can take in, many ask each other the question, “why didn’t we start doing this much sooner?”[29]
2. In the initial first few years of the international, local utopian eco-community movement, very few people take it seriously and the vast majority of humanity knows nothing about it. Government security agencies in the wealthiest nations of the world know about it, but only because they spy on everybody, and not because they see the movement as a serious threat, as they assume it would never catch on due to the common unquestioning submission to the system and consumer addictions to modern technology and over-consumption. During those same first few years, the corporate-controlled wealthiest governments are much more concerned with the growing far right wing revolutionary movements in the U.S. and much of Europe than they are with the mild-mannered, willing to work through the system, so-called “left.” The fringe right, or the tail that wags the Republican Party dog, successfully breaks Donald Trump out of prison, and re-elects him as President in 2024, then designates him to be “President-for-life.” Though at one time useful tools for the ruling class’s divide and conquer strategy, at this point the rulers determine that they have become somewhat unmanageable, since an obvious one party state is not as useful or dependable as two parties masquerading as opposites, when they actually serve the same corporate economic masters. So, the corporate rulers decide to make the far right wingers of the U.S. an example to the far right in Europe and to any on the far left in the U.S. who might be encouraged to try something similar with the harder to wag Democratic Party dog. The U.S. military is called in, they stage a coup against Trump and his cohorts, and begin mass imprisonments, and some executions, of many of the remaining right wing revolutionaries (except for the ones who cooperate with the government, making deals and submissions in order to save their “me first” lives). It is only after that that the governments of the wealthy nations of the world and their corporate handlers begin to notice that the utopian community movement had grown exponentially during the years that they were pre-occupied with the far right. Of course they had noticed that consumer spending had diminished considerably throughout the “developed world,” but had attributed that to other usual economic factors and to the extensive hardships caused by the increasing natural disasters, including the most recent pandemics. Once they realize that the eco-utopian movement has the potential to completely bring down the prevailing economic system, they get right on it. One useful tactic they find for dealing with the situation is to employ the now scattered, frustrated, scorned, unemployable, and even more fearful far righters as mercenary soldiers against the eco-utopians, whom they easily scapegoat for the deteriation of the economy, with very little need for indoctrination. Most of the righters agree to serve just because of the promise made to them that they would get their guns back after they complete their service to the country. Simultaneously, the EU, Russia, China and other governments use their more conventional militaries and other methods of persuasion and suppression to deal with the situation.
3. Instead of rejecting modern industrial technological society altogether, the majority decides to try technological “fixes” to our predicament instead. They generally agree that saving the capitalist system, their precious, hard-fought-for careers, and their even more precious levels of material consumption are more important than saving biological life on Earth itself. But, in order to save capitalism and the status quo civilization, and avoid an international socialist revolution, they realize that some more significant and more convincing gestures need to be made toward CO2 reduction. In 2023, production and installation of solar electricity panels and wind farms begins to increase rapidly throughout the world, along with all of the toxic, CO2-producing mining, manufacturing, construction, deforesting and defoliating of natural habitats for new power lines as well as for the new power installations themselves, road-building, hauling of equipment, workers, and the products themselves to retailers and installation sites, and more—all of which involve a huge increase in the burning of fossil fuels. Even though the alleged purpose for all of that increased industrial activity would be to replace fossil fuels with “green energy technologies” at the scale needed to keep the precious system going and growing and create more jobs, the unexpected or oft-denied negative consequences soon become nearly undeniable (but humans have the ability to deny just about anything—or, actually, just anything). The oil, lithium, and “green energy” companies then use their greatly increased profits for advertising and indoctrinating people to trust the new “green” uses for fossil fuels. They also use some of the new profits to purchase the cooperation of additional politicians and entire governments in protecting their enterprises. The bio-system collapse, natural disaster and mass extinction trajectory then continues, at a more rapid rate.
4. By 2033, it becomes widely obvious to the majority of humans that the “green” energy techno-fix for the continuation and growth of modern industrial capitalism is not really that green and is actually exacerbating global warming and the continually increasing environmental catastrophes, while pulling attention and resources away from both the urgently-needed disaster relief and the struggle against the seemingly endless parade of new pandemic diseases. Because they still have not developed any proven technologies or machinery for sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere at anywhere near the rate needed to get back to the 2° C “point of no return,” which we had already passed back in 2028, the ruling class then decides to proceed with the next great, unproven, theoretical techno-fix: injecting sulfides and/or other chemicals into Earth’s only, increasingly fragile, atmosphere in an attempt to block or reduce much of Father Sun’s gift of radiant light and warmth—a technology called “geoengineering,” or artificially forced Earth cooling. Very soon after the first widespread use of that techno-fix, we then get a “Snowpiercer” scenario, but without the horrific, impossible, perpetual-motion prison train “lifeboat.” We just get the entire planet frozen to death.
5. The complete collapse of the modern industrial economy occurs in the year 2029, due to multiple factors (too many to list here, but they include some of those listed in the scenarios above and many things that are actually happening RIGHT NOW). The radical left finally realizes then that a real opportunity for a successful socialist revolution is now upon them, effectively dropped right into their laps. They can actually just vote it right in, throughout the so-called “developed world.” Seeing the writing on the wall, the trillionaires and billionaires decide that the whole planet has become unmanageable and too out of control, so they make one last plundering of the planet’s gifts (a.k.a., “resources”) to build up their private spaceship fleets and build more space stations, in preparation for their last grand exit. Many of the millionaires and wannabe trillionaires do whatever they can to join them and those who fail to make the escape then also fail at a last ditch attempt to save capitalism. Many eco-utopians and eco-socialists advise the more conventional Marxist socialists that socialism will fail without putting the needs of the natural world first (instead of just the humans) and doing away with money. After much productive discussion around the world, in-person and by the internet (whenever the intermittent grid is up and running) it is generally agreed that nation states and empires have run their course, done much more net harm to life in Earth and the common good of humans than their assumed “benefits” can make up for, so the human people decide to abolish all such political entities. They also decide that, instead of nations, human societies should be small, local, eco-centered, non-monetary and truly democratic, while staying in touch with each other through communication networks, with or without the electric grid. For several decades after that glorious beginning, as the Earth begins to heal through natural regenerative processes and the humans begin to discover who they really are and how they fit within the Whole of Life, they also discuss whether or not they should continue to use electricity, and, if so, what limits upon such use does Mother Earth and all our non-human relations recommend to us?
6. OK, just one more possible near-future scenario to give here, although I am sure that we all could think of many more. Nuclear war breaks out between the U.S. and China in 2022, with additional participation from Russia, the EU, and North Korea. China targets both the Yellowstone caldera and the San Andreas fault. We get combined nuclear and volcanic winter, and the Earth freezes to death. A couple of the trillionaires, with their entourages, manage last minute, rushed, and not completely prepared, spaceship exits, and end up starving to death in outer space within a couple of years (having extended the time of their survival with cannibalism, of course).
Which of the above scenarios seems most likely to occur, in your opinion? Do you think that something else would be more likely and, if so, what? What would you like to see happen? Do you feel free to think with utopian creativity? If not, do you understand why that is? Would you like to have that freedom and engage in such creativity for the common good?
I realize that, for many of you, this may be the first time that you have heard of many of these dismal realities regarding the present condition and future prospects of life on Earth. As I began to say earlier, I have not forgotten the dismay, anger and other emotions that I felt when I first became aware of some of these facts (and other facts that I did not go into here), several years ago. There are many other people, around the world, who are going through the same thing and there are support groups and other resources that have been formed over the years to help people get through this together and peacefully adapt to it.[30] For me, the way I deal with it best is to try to create alternative, natural living paths forward. Just because the status quo way of societal life is doomed does not necessarily mean that all life or all potential human societies are doomed.
I also realize that for many of you this may be the first time that anybody ever told you that utopian does not really mean “perfect” or impossible, and that exercising our utopian creativity might be not only a good thing, but an absolutely essential thing to do at this particular time. It might also be the case that you have never heard that traditional Indigenous societies and lifeways might provide us with models for viable, Life-saving, Earth-protecting, regenerative paths forward at this time, instead of being the “miserable,” “brutal,” “struggles for existence” that you might have heard about in some anthropology class. The future might indeed look like it is going to be a painful struggle for life, for both humans and non-humans, but engaging in survival efforts as communities with united visions, a common sense of purpose, seeking the common good for each other and for all species of life in our local community worlds, will be much easier and more enjoyable than trying to pursue mere survival as “rugged individuals” or rugged little nuclear family units. Embarking upon these paths forward to “utopian,” ideal, or best possible and ever-improving human eco-communities might be what our Mother Earth and all of our relations of all inter-connected Life have been yearning for us to do for thousands of years! I am excited to find out what we will learn in the actual doings.[31]
Banner image: The Kogi village and tribal community of Tairona, in northern Colombia.
George Price (descendant of the Assonet band of the Wampanoag tribal nation of Massachusetts) has been living with his family on their five-acre organic, polyculture farm on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana since the summer of 1985. He retired from a 33-year teaching career in 2018, which included teaching Native American Studies, American History, and African American Studies at the University of Montana for 20 years. Since he is no longer working “through the system,” he is devoting the remainder of his life to Earth/Water protecting, organic farming, food sovereignty, constructive communicating, and replacing industrial technophile capitalism with local, eco-harmonious, EarthLife-centric, cooperative, alternative communities.
[20] Here is a link to the only free access to the amazing old documentary film on the Kogis, “ From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgTtrQOiR0 The written introduction to the film at the top of the post, contains an excellent explanation on why the Kogi people do not want to receive tourists or other visitors on their lands. What humans who want to return to our original harmonious ways need to start doing is to work on listening to and following the voices of our relations in the non-human portion of this inter-connected life world. That is an ability that all First Peoples had for most of the time of our existence as humans on this Earth, and it is still the best source of true guidance. Stop looking to modern humans and guru types for the light that we all need that is freely available in our natural, inter-connected world (both within and outside of our bodies).
[21] I am afraid that if I name and give more precise locations for these model Indigenous societies, some eco-tourists, missionaries, or other modern humans might find them and corrupt or destroy them.
[22] I must acknowledge here that, like all human demographic groups, the multitude of Indigenous peoples, world-wide, have much variation among individuals within their unique individual societies—in personal experiences, adaptation to historical circumstances, retaining of cultural traditions, level of wealth or success within the imposed colonialist economic systems, and several other factors that impact cultural resiliency and recovery.
[23] Besides Thomas More, other colonial era European writers who imagined “utopian” societies and were inspired, in part, by what they had heard about Indigenous peoples of the Americas include Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762), Tomasso Campanella (City of the Sun, 1602, English translation, 1623), Thomas Bacon (New Atlantis, 1626), and James Harrington (The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656). Benjamin Franklin is known to have admired the form of government of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy and to have recommended to his fellow revolutionaries that they copy the Haudenosaunee, to some extent. See, Donald A. Grinde, Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen, Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 1991, pp.96-98, but really, the whole book.
[24] There are presently about 9 million species of animals and 391,000 species of plants in Earth. See, “Our World in Data,” “Biodiversity and Wildlife.” ourworldindata.org/biodiversity-and-wildlife
[25] Daniel R. Wildcat, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, Golden, Colorado, Fulcrum Publishing, 2009, pg. 75.
[26] Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Hearing the Language of Trees,” excerpt from The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence, edited by John C. Ryan, Patricia Viera, and Monica Galiano, published by Synergetic Press (2021), re-printed in Yes!, October 29, 2021.
[27] If not a need or dependency, such trade could remain optional, to preserve good relations with neighbors, and provide things not available in the community location that would do no harm if brought in to the community.
[29] Some of us old-timers who tried to go in that direction back in the late 1960’s on through the 1980’s and failed will probably have plenty to say about that. Barb and I lived communally (in shared houses and living spaces) from 1970 until 1973 and in intentional community (separate households on shared land) from 1982 to 1985.
[30] Although I do not agree with them about everything, two people who it has been said are very helpful with that kind of support are Joanna Macy and Michael Dowd (they work separately).
[31] That is enough about the “whys” of this for now, partly because the essay is getting very long. I’ll be glad to hear from others now, in the comments below and elsewhere, and will turn my attention now and in future blog posts to more about the “hows” of it all. But, I know that the real knowledge, wisdom, and joy, will come through the doing, not just the words.
