Editor’s note: In this excerpt, Samir offers an outline of the rationale for the harmful development of lithium mines. In parallel we are also offered an outline of the development of the protest camp. While we are happy that a popular outlet like Vice News is writing about our campaign, we do not agree with all of the author’s statements. DGR is strongly opposed to any kind of industrial processes like mining because they are inherently destructive to life on planet earth. Hence we do not believe that there can be a “greener” kind of industrial resource extraction.
A mining giant wants to extract lithium from the Nevada desert to power electric cars. But a more sustainable future doesn’t come without costs.
One of the largest known lithium deposits in the world has sat undisturbed under the Nevada desert for centuries. Now, a mining giant wants to extract the resource to power electric cars using a potentially harmful method.
Before bringing in its equipment, however, the company will have to go through a blockade of environmental protesters that have been camped out at the site since December.
“Like the wildlife, we hunker down when the weather gets very bad and wait for the storm to break,”
said Max Wilbert, who started the Protect Thacker Pass, the grassroots organization leading the occupation.
“But we’re not backing down. What is at stake here is the soul of the entire environmental movement.”
Right now, Thacker Pass, a section of public land stretching hundreds of acres in northern Nevada, is several environmental permits—and lawsuits—away from becoming a massive open-pit mining project run by Canada-based Lithium Americas. The metal excavated from the planned 18,000-acre site will be used to manufacture rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for electric cars.
But a more sustainable future doesn’t come without its costs:
The proposed mining process at Thacker Pass uses sulfuric acid, which could seep into the water supply. The operation also requires tapping into groundwater, which could decrease its availability. Both would impact the ecosystems of several at-risk species, like golden eagles, pronghorn antelope, and Nevada’s state fish, the Lahontan cutthroat trout.
In an effort to protect the land, dozens of protestors from across the country have posted up at the site in freezing nighttime temperatures with heated tents and portable mini-toilets. Local ranchers, concerned about the welfare of their land and water supply, have also joined the cause.
The original article can be read in full on Vice News.
This essay is a firsthand account of the author Michael Drebert’s visit to Boundary Bay, BC — a shallow bay fringed in-part by a man-made dike, and estuarine marsh. Through his recollection of the visit, Drebert discusses how different forms of ‘taking’ from a particular place can be both obvious, but also inconspicuous. Most importantly, the essay asks what a meaningful response to such activities might entail.
Last week, I decided to throw my bicycle into the back of my ancient Ford truck and head south out of the city. My destination was a place that I’ve been visiting since youth: Boundary Bay, a shallow body of saltwater spanning the municipalities of Tsawassen, Delta, Surrey, and White Rock.
It’s the White Rock portion of the bay that I recall from my youth. My grandmother would take my brother and I to its beach during summers, where we’d be allowed to range freely over the massive stretch of exposed sand at low tide. For hours, we’d wade into the warm tide pools, chasing sculpins, and small crabs. But the prize activity, was the building of a sand fort. Together, or apart, we’d spend what seemed like an entire day constructing raised platforms of sand that were then walled as best we could against the incoming tide. It was pure joy to be sitting in our ‘forts’ as the quickly approaching water of Boundary Bay moved towards us.
Thirty-five years later, I still return to the bay.
Less so to that stretch of perfect sand, but instead to an area on the opposite side. My excitement remains the same as in those early years, except that my attention has now shifted from its sand flats, to its mud flats.
In this section of the bay, there are preserved portions of what would have originally been coastal salt marsh. Less than 100 years ago, this form of habitat would have been prominent around the entire bay. With the influx of settlement by Europeans, residences were built along the shoreline. Attracted by, and taking advantage of the fertile, alluvial soils, these settlers engaged in intensive farming activities. As a result, dikes were built around the majority of the bay to protect the farms. These constructions cut off the usual flow of biological activity between the what is now the seaward, and landward portions of the salt marsh. Although some culverts were also inserted, these semi-permeable structures equally separated the two places, blocking fish, and small mammals from freely traversing back and forth.
Regardless of all these intrusions, a fringe of intact wetland still exists here.
I consider it a gem, and it has captured my heart. Martin Shaw describes the mysterious process of being attracted to a place as being “claimed.”1 And so, I might say something like: this particular shallow body of water, with its fringe of brown-sand beaches, and scruffy marshes, has claimed me. This is a romance that has been in the works for over 35 years.
On that blustery December day last week, after driving out of Vancouver over a couple of bridges, past farmland, eventually parking at Centennial Beach on the west side of the bay, I came to spend an entire day considering my attraction to such a place, and how I might best respond. And now, reflecting on this memory, another relationship to that place emerges: ‘taking’, in this case my ‘taking’ of this remembrance from Boundary Bay. I think about how so often, on my countless visits to different beaches around my home of Vancouver, and also abroad, I’d pick up some stone, or shell that ‘spoke’ to me. If it ‘spoke’ to me enough, I’d usually put it into my pocket, and carry it home. Once inside of my apartment, it would sometimes sit on a shelf, or placed in a box along with a clattering and dusty array of other mineral, and calcerific objects.
For over 35 years, I’ve barely questioned this.
“Of course,” I’d say to myself, “why wouldn’t I take a token to remember a special moment, a special place?” In particular, I have a small collection of agate stones that I collected from different beaches on Haida Gwaii. They now sit in a circle formation on the window sill of my bedroom. Whenever I look at them, my mind seems to become awash in something; something like the wind, or the sun, or the intermittent heavy rains that would pass over the lonely beaches around Rose Spit. So yes, that does have meaning for me, some connection to natural processes that are nearly impossible to express within language.
Even if I’ve taken these things to help me remember a particular place — and although they are often compelling in their own right, as objects outside the context that I found them in — were they not also beautiful on some rain-drenched beach? Were they not beautiful to someone else? Or useful, or necessary?
I want to compare this piece of writing and the memories it expresses to these taken objects — no different then a found cockle shell, or a set of fine, sun bleached bones that belonged to a western sandpiper. My 40-something year old body had to be there, in Boundary Bay — where one object encounters another, or, a material presence, encounters another material presence.
In other words, this essay would be impossible without the physical presence of my body making its way 50 kilometres south, out of Vancouver, where I met the earthen barriers which surround the bay. And once there, riding on my bicycle all day until the sun went down, sweating heavily beneath my Gore-Tex jacket and breathing in cold air which also made my eyes tear.
So, yes, I do believe I’ve taken something.
And, it’s not that I think this is entirely wrong, because all living things take things out of need, survival, happenstance. But usually, for the whole cycle to continue giving, and taking, it has to happen, in one place, or, it must circle back to the very place that the thing was taken from. Using a more more poetic sensibility, Gary Snyder posits another way of saying this: that in acknowledging our (human) need to consume, it would be proper etiquette to then offer a “[s]ong for your supper,”2 in respectful response.
The consequences of taking from somewhere and never giving back are, of course, obvious. Eventually, there is little left to glean, and eventually, when we move beyond the limits of particular places, they break. When it comes to material items, it’s easy enough to understand when there is a failure of reciprocity, but I think this same sentiment can be also be applied to ‘getting’ stories, as well.
To get this story (an account of some place where I do not live), I needed to go somewhere. This inevitably, and perhaps obviously implies ‘using’. My body needs certain things so that it can go places — it needs food, water, clothing, transportation. Where do these things come from? In the case of my visit to Boundary Bay, they almost certainly do not come from that place, but they do come from places, very real places.
Back to my very real, ancient truck, and back to that particular day, last week — along with these questions saturating my thoughts, it was also to my journey ahead that my mind now turned. I arrived at Centennial Beach, on the western side of the bay, around 1pm. The sky was grey, and there was a stiff breeze blowing in from the Salish Sea. I was a little nervous. Was this the right day to be attempting such a long bike ride along the dike? Will the weather continue to deteriorate, turning into rain, and stronger winds? There wasn’t time for second guessing. If I was going to do this, I had to leave right away so that I could get back to my truck before the park ranger locked the gates at 5pm. So I gobbled down some hard boiled eggs, and then off I rode heading towards the Serpentine River located at the eastern terminus of the dike.
The wind was unusually cold, biting at my face and neck.
Except for one, very thin line of bright yellow out towards the Gulf Islands, the sky was solid cloud in all directions. Even though all of this felt less-than-ideal, there was no turning back — I was committed. It didn’t take long before I started seeing bald eagles standing on the mudflats, and perched overhead on the power lines. Eventually, it seemed there was an eagle on every pole, and when I passed beneath looking up, the massive raptors would return the stare. This exchange made me shiver in a way to which I was totally unaccustomed. I thought: “What is stopping these creatures from swooping down with their bright yellow feet, tearing at my neck and carrying off a piece of my flesh to be eaten casually on the mudflats?” I’ll admit that one particular stare was so intense that I lost composure on my bike, wobbling as I sensed a feeling of nausea rise in my throat.
Things were different here. Even though I could still see the distant high-rise buildings of Vancouver, it all seemed so fragile, so vulnerable. Or at least I felt vulnerable, coasting along that thin hump of land meant to keep the salt marsh and all of its inconsistencies out of our human hair.
Half way along the dike, I noticed that the sky had lightened. I wasn’t sure that the weather was going to flip towards ‘pleasant’, but I am a sucker for any sign of sun — it can change everything for me. I also wasn’t particularly cold anymore — probably because of my constantly pumping legs over the smooth, gravel path.
Aside from the eagles, I was distracted from my cycling by many other birds.
In particular, the red-tailed hawks, who would casually swoop across the dike looking for food in either the salt marsh, or the farming fields. I also noticed many birdwatchers, carrying cameras with lenses as big as my legs. I was glad to these folks. Perhaps I sensed a kind of kinship. I rarely take composed pictures of wildlife, but I do look, stare, soak in, and strain to store particular sights into my memory. I think it’s a very similar activity, except I cannot claim any craft here, which certainly plays a role in my fellow kin’s activity out there on the marsh.
However, a pang of discomfort hit me as I considered this commonality. Again, back to my thoughts and feelings of ‘taking’ something from a place. No doubt these camera operators are taking something. Taking images, but also, in order to take these snap shots, the very device used to do so contains within it an incredible array of ‘taking’. Those cameras, worth more that two years of my annual income, undoubtedly come from some place else. The industrial processes involved in procuring such materials, always does harm to particular places. Put more succinctly, Lierre Keith states that, “[i]n blunt terms, industrialization is a process of taking entire communities of living beings and turning them into commodities and dead zones.”3
Another example of this process is the building of dikes, in order to facilitate industrial agriculture. To my right, is a living (although greatly diminished) salt marsh, and to my left is a dead zone of industrial processes which includes pesticides, fertilizers, and heavy tilling. One side allows for myriad life forms to flourish, and the other side is manipulated solely for human-use.
Is it too heavy-handed to say that one side is beautiful, and the other, is ugly?
It might be good to return here to my own initial discomfort of being physically present at Boundary Bay. Clearly, I also use harmful things. The most obvious thing being my truck. And so in an exacting sense, Snyder’s admonition is unavoidable for me. Truly, what is my song for my supper? The supper in this case might be all the elements which got me out to Boundary Bay, but also for this feast of the senses which has turned into this essay.
Is this essay then, my song? In part perhaps, but it remains an incomplete melody. On its own, it lacks the consonance of return. What I mean is that as a piece of writing, it remains within the realm of human nourishment, or meaning. At worst, it only increases the echo chamber effect of human culture, further dividing humans from their true responsibilities to the real, material health of particular places. More so, it gives the illusion of a completed cycle, inevitably leading to further breakage, and increased ‘taking’.
The time it took to get to the Serpentine River was more than double than what I anticipated. I allowed myself to forget this momentarily as I was in need of food, tea, and a place to relieve myself. I only took 20 minutes to rest, where I sat on granite boulders gazing out at the exposed mud flats of the Serpentine River estuary.
The sky at this point had completely changed.
Late afternoon sun poured over the bay, and a near full moon was rising. To make it back to the truck before the gates were locked, I would have to increase my speed by double to make it. There wasn’t time to question my ability here. No one else was embarking along the dike towards Centennial Beach. It was likely too late in the day for most people — the temperature dropping, and nearly time for supper. With the bright moon continuing to rise, I raced out back along the dike, my legs pumping with renewed zeal.
Large birds still crossed overhead, but because the light had diminished, they now seemed like very unusual objects. They were vague, but still intimidating, blending with the browns and the purples of a day-about-to-end. There was one exception to this blurring of life, and it was a phenomenon that I’ve witnessed a few times before. Close to sundown, large flocks of western sandpipers appear together over the water’s edge. Not unlike a school of herring will move, their tiny bodies fly together as one shimmering, and amorphous shape. But what makes this particularly shocking to me, is what happens at sunset.
When the sky is pink, and I happen to be facing the direction that can then view their bellies, all of a sudden, I’ll see a burst of tiny pink flashes — their white undersides acting as perfect screens, reflecting the bay’s show of evening light. After witnessing the sandpipers, I could see that the moon had climbed to the top of the sky — against dark indigo, its snowy glow cast a reflection onto the calm waters of the bay. I had just entered the bounds of Centennial Beach, and felt a rush of calm — I made it, just in time.
I only had a few minutes to load my bike.
The park ranger was weaving her truck slowly through the parking lot, orange lights flashing, letting everyone know that the gate closure was imminent. As my truck warmed up, I ate my remaining potato chips — I was utterly famished. Could I stay the night? Perhaps, but my cupboards were in another place. And so with mixed reluctance I drove my old truck out of the park bounds, pointed it northwards, and headed home towards Vancouver.
I’m writing this now, in my studio. I like to have the door open, but the weather is too cold — being mid-winter on the northwest coast. I like the door open so I can feel the breeze, and to better hear the bird calls. Though, because my yard and my neighbour’s yard are packed with plants, there are a lot of birds present regardless of the season. And even though the door is closed, I can still hear intermittent chirps, trills, and lilts. I don’t know what I would do without this lush garden, and all the visiting animals. Living in the city would be impossible, otherwise.
Given just a little more thought, my appreciation of this garden can flip, completely. In short: the horrors of the city are made acceptable, because of this tiny retreat. Take away my access to this, and I am a very different person. Even a degraded version of ‘land’ lends me the needed salve to continue an urban life. Less a salve perhaps than a balm, for I cannot attribute any medicinal qualities to its makeup.
This quality makes me think about the Tsawassen and Semiahmoo peoples who inhabited Boundary Bay long before European settlers.
It would seem that true medicine is ‘offered’ to those who live in a particular place, so that they can continueliving well in that particular place. Not to heal, and then leave. I would say that pocketing a unique shell, collecting an image in a camera, storing an experience in your mind and heart to be retold later, is similar to this ‘leaving’ experience. It is a draining off of life, taken from a place where it has no opportunity to perish, to decompose, to nurse new life — it breaks the elegance of a necessary cycle.
I don’t live at Boundary Bay, on the ‘right side’ of the dike. That would be impossible, mostly. My fumbling attempts at trying to hunt, forage, and build shelter would no doubt further harm that place. And so, in-line with my interest to pay for my debt of visitation, I decide to pause, and attempt to ask Boundary Bay: what is it you might want, or need? Although my asking is somewhat awkward — sitting in this small studio miles away — one answer comes surprisingly quickly: simply remove the poison.
In the physical, material world, poison is always harmful, and in many cases, deadly. What then might the material poisons in this particular place be? The dike which stretches along the bay, is a simple technology, but it only serves one species. It is effective, very effective in separating the wild processes, from the hyper domesticated processes of city living. But the harm of this dike, the poison of its material intrusion, affects thousands of species, negatively.
Pausing at my desk, my mind flickers back to those childhood memories of my brother and I building sand forts at White Rock Beach. During those countless afternoons, I would often glance back at my grandmother. She was usually sitting in a collapsible deck chair, perched on a sand bar — her oversized sunglasses turned in our direction — and always smiling. As the tide quickly approached, we rushed to complete our forts feeling safe, completely safe.
Even then, I knew that our efforts to keep the cool saltwater at bay, were ultimately futile, that our constructions would eventually collapse.
But still we did our best to play the game: whose fort would last the longest? I count these as some of the most fun, and enjoyable moments of my entire life. If an incoming tide ever began to break up the dike at Boundary Bay, I don’t think I’d be sad, or frustrated. I might even smile: understanding that this is how it should go, that this is natural, or helpful. I might also recognize my kinship with the cool saltwater of the bay, and decide in my own way how to lend-a-hand.
And while I did this work, I might even sense the smile of something, or someone, much older than I: her calm and caring love taking delight in the work of her family. Perhaps then, simply: acts which remove poisons, could be our songs for our supper — a chorus of gratitude for the gift of being alive. And perhaps this kind of singing will attract others to the work, creating meaning and social bonds amidst the places we love,4 healing divisions within human culture, and the land.
Michael Drebert is a writer, gardener, and member of DGR living in Vancouver, Canada. When he isn’t knee-deep in a salt marsh, or rowing a small boat in a local waterway, he’s writing about his love of coastal areas and the need to protect them.
1 Martin Shaw, Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia (Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2016).
2 Gary Snyder, Back on the Fire: Essays (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2007), 34.
3 Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet (New York, NY: Seven stories press, 2011), 23.
4 Chris Hedges, “The Politics of Cultural Despair: That’s What’s Killing Us, Not Donald Trump,” Salon (Salon.com, November 1, 2020), https://www.salon.com/2020/11/01/the-politics-of-cultural-despair-thats-whats-killing-us-not-donald-trump.
In this article, originally published on The Conversation, the authors describe how extractive industries use social engineering and counterinsurgency techniques to avoid or manage resistance.
Around the globe, concern is mounting about the unfolding climate and ecological catastrophe. Yet the extraction of natural resources through mining and energy projects continues on a large scale, with disastrous environmental consequences.
To understand how this is possible, one place to start is recognising that extraction is not just a physical engineering process. It requires social engineering as well. To be able to function smoothly, extractive corporations and their governmental allies sculpt social conditions. They “manufacture” consent and “manage” dissent towards their ventures.
These industries depend on shaping the perceptions and behaviour of governments, shareholders, consumers, and people living in the areas where large-scale resource extraction occurs.
Usually, the media and academics pay attention when people resist such projects. A well known case is the struggle of the Ogoni people in southeast Nigeria to hold the oil company Shell to account for massive pollution. But it’s also important to notice the way corporations, governments and other elites try to pre-empt opposition.
This means looking beyond obvious conflict and repression, to the less visible and long-term efforts to shape people’s opinions and behaviour. In a recent article in Political Geography, we analyse some of these corporate attempts at social engineering.
The counterinsurgency toolbox
Many of the corporate strategies and tactics to address opposition come from the toolbox of counterinsurgency. There are “hard” techniques, such as direct and indirect coercion, and “soft” tools aimed at “pacifying target populations”.
The “softer” forms often relate to “community relations” work, such as sponsoring local events, medical clinics and other social development programmes. Social investments foster sympathy for extractive projects and dissipate criticism. How can one fight a corporation that provides so many life-affirming opportunities?
The “soft tools” of social engineering also include bureaucratic procedures and practices. One example is legislation acknowledging indigenous people’s right to consent to or reject extractive projects on their land. A growing body of research shows how this legislation eases the way for projects to expand into community territories.
Another way that extraction is made acceptable is through seemingly neutral speech. A case in point is speaking of “lessons learned” in relation to involuntary resettlement for extractive projects. In Mozambique, representatives of the government and extractive multinationals use the language of “learning lessons” from previous forced displacement efforts. This is to prevent opposition to renewed resettlement plans for liquid natural gas extraction in the north of the country.
Directing attention to the technical procedures of displacement and how they can be “improved” takes attention away from displacement itself. And local NGOs become concerned with the resettlement initiatives, instead of critically monitoring the new projects.
Bureaucratic procedures can make it look as if the people affected by resource extraction are participating, influencing decisions and sharing in the benefits. But the procedures actually channel and control dissent. They make it seem as if individuals themselves are responsible for gaining or losing from extractive operations, instead of directing attention to structural power inequalities.
The chimera of ‘green mining’
Another set of social engineering strategies is “green mining”.
Since the 1990s, large-scale extractive companies have started to profile themselves as part of a global transition to sustainability. They engage in biodiversity offsets or draw on and invest in wind and solar power. More recently, corporations have attempted to depict deep-sea mining as sustainable. They claim it has limited impact on deep-sea ecosystems, in particular when compared to the dynamic and volcanic nature of the seabed.
But it’s debatable how much “green extractivism” reduces the ecological harm of large-scale resource extraction.
Offsets are based on the idea that mining corporations can make up for damage in one place by investing in biodiversity protection elsewhere. Research shows that the net benefits of these investments are very limited. Also, it’s difficult to compare the value of what is lost and what is protected.
Biodiversity offsets can be part of political pacification, as shown by the case of Rio Tinto in Madagascar. Through a vast programme of offsetting and restoration, this corporation has managed to counter criticism of its operations. Yet offsets have created conflicts and insecurities for locals. They have also allowed the corporation to extend control over land, people and resources to multiple sites.
The green economy has not only become a way to legitimise large-scale resource extraction. It has also become a new source of profit as corporations invest in market-driven nature conservation, ecotourism, and the production of biofuels and low-carbon energy.
Going forward
Without further economic transformation, the demand for so called “clean energy” will lead resource extraction to soar. For example, the production of minerals such as lithium and cobalt is expected to increase from 2018 by as much as 500% by 2050.
“Green growth” is a false narrative that industries push to continue business as usual. Academics and social movements should expose this narrative to avoid it becoming the cornerstone of climate policy.
To address the ecological and climate crisis, policies fostering degrowth and redistribution are needed. This is the only way to acknowledge the historical responsibility of rich countries and ensure climate justice on a global scale.
This article was originally published in The Conversation. For us as radicals, spraying pesticides is not only a horrible crime committed to our fellow beings, it is also unbelievable stupid to poison our own food chain. While all large-scale monoculture is destructive, a world wide ban of all pesticides would be a huge step forward towards harm reduction and a healthier landbase.
When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species lead solitary lives instead, and around 70% of them build nests underground where they raise their offspring on the nectar they gather from flowers.
Incredibly, almost all scientific understanding of how pesticides affect bees has came from testing domesticated honeybees, and, more recently, bumblebees. That’s largely because these species tend to be easier to work with in lab conditions. How non-social bees cope with these chemicals is largely understudied, despite them making up the vast majority of bee species worldwide.
Neonicotinoids are a family of pesticides which have been used in farming across the world. Their chemical structure resembles nicotine and they’re designed to kill crop pests by targeting the insect nervous system. Neonicotinoids can be sprayed on plants, but are most commonly used to coat seeds. Since their introduction in the late 1980s, robust scientific evidence has emerged to suggest these chemicals impair learning and memory, foraging behaviour, and pollination in bees. The EU banned neonicotinoids in 2019, and while the UK government pledged to follow suit, it granted a special exemption for sugar beet farmers to use the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam in January 2021. Thankfully, it wasn’t used.
Because honeybees don’t spend much time on the ground, environmental risk assessments for neonicotinoids often neglect to consider how exposure to these chemicals in the soil affects all pollinators. But in a landmark study published in Nature, researchers have shown how neonicotinoids affect bees not just by accumulating in the plants pollinators visit, but in the ground where most wild bees build their nests.
Down on the farm
Working over three years in Ontario, Canada, the researchers mimicked the conditions on a real farm by growing crops of squash plants in large polytunnels. Before planting, common neonicotinoid pesticides were applied to the seeds and later the leaves, while one chemical called imidacloprid was applied to the soil. This is used in Ontario to control the striped cucumber beetle.
Mated female bees were introduced when the crop came into bloom. They dug nests in the earth around the plants and began foraging for nectar from the large, yellow squash flowers, which they’d bring back to offspring tucked away in special chambers underground.
These were hoary squash bees – a ground-nesting species found on farmland throughout North America. Squash bees are uniquely suited to pollinating the flowers of squashes, pumpkins and cucumbers thanks to special leg hairs that fit the size and shape of their pollen grains. They tend to forage earlier in the day than most bees too, to match the early morning flowering of these plants.
The researchers studied nest building, foraging and reproduction in these bees and found imidacloprid in particular – one of the most widely used neonicotinoids worldwide – had a devastating effect on all aspects of squash bee life. Compared to insects living on untreated cropland, the hoary squash bees exposed to imidacloprid in the soil created 85% fewer nests, left 5.3 times more pollen unharvested and produced a staggering 89% fewer offspring.
Imidacloprid appeared to rob squash bees of their usual industrious attitude towards the laborious work of building nests, foraging for food and rearing young. These non-social bees lack the support of relatives in big hives, and must face these essential tasks alone. By reducing the amount of pollen they collect, the pesticide could leave squash bees and their offspring with less energy to do so.
But it’s not just bees which are in trouble. Pumpkins, squashes and gourds are entirely dependent on pollination by bees to set fruit. Without an influx of new bees or a recovery in their reproduction, farm productivity could suffer too.
Hoary squash bees, like many bee species, are specialists. Unlike generalist honeybees which are comfortable pollinating a wide range of plants, specialists co-evolved with their host plants and are uniquely adapted to pollinating them. Generalists can sometimes step in to do their work, but they’re unlikely to manage it with the same kind of skill.
Due to their wild nature, non-social insects are far harder to protect on farmland than domestic species. Honeybees hives can be moved around the countryside if an area is no longer able to support them. Squash bees and other non-social bees build small nests throughout the landscape, making it impossible to pinpoint and protect them all. Protecting honeybees from pesticides is already difficult. For wild bees which forage and nest among a wide variety of crops worldwide, it may be impossible.
In this article, originally published on feministcurrent, Brenda Brooks describes how transgender ideology pushes more and more girls and young women into “gender reassignment” by dangerous surgery and hormone treatment.
Impressions formed around the delivery of bad news have a way of sticking around,
and I suppose this is why, to use a well-worn phrase, I still remember where I was the day a friend informed me that lesbians were being harassed for rejecting men as dating partners. I laughed, at first, and probably said something like, “You sure know how to inject a dose of warped humour into a relaxing coffee break.” For the next half-hour my friend’s solemn, intense explanation left me unwilling to absorb the news that men who “self-identify” as women feel entitled to add lesbians to their dating pool. I watched her grow edgy, fevered around the eyes, and anxious. She reminded me of that terrified guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as he dodged cars on the noirish highway, warning belligerent travellers: “They’re after you! They’re after all of us! You fools!”
Why was I so reluctant to believe the news, aside from it being as unbelievable as it was true? It might be that I had let down my guard, and even gone a little bit “post-lesbian.” I mean this in a lightly humourous way, because it seemed to me that for a while, back in the olden days, it became possible to apply a touch of irony to the matter of “identity,” as people sometimes do when the worst of times are over and a relaxed atmosphere offers perspective — even jokes. I guess you could say I’d relaxed into the fair weather.
But over lunch that day, as my friend grew more emphatic, and I grew less relaxed, I soon found myself thinking: “What fresh hell is this”?
Now, a few years later, I know a heartbreaking amount about the nature of “fresh hell.” I know the number of American girls attempting to escape being female by seeking surgery quadrupled between 2016 and 2017. Journalist Abigail Shrier addresses this trend in her book, Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which transactivists and Big Tech have done their best to shut down. Her first publisher cancelled the book after threats from staff, and Amazon refused to allow Regenery, her new publisher, to sponsor ads on its site.
The phenomenon of girls transitioning to become “male” isn’t limited to the US.
A shift has been noted in Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, and beyond. In the UK, the number of children being referred for gender reassignment went from 77 in 2009 to 2,590 in 2018-19. But most striking of all is who is being referred — in 2017, according to TheGuardian, 70 per cent of referrals were female.
I’ve also apprised myself of the dangerous health projections for girls who proceed along the route from puberty blockers to surgery, which reminded me that I had once explored the idea of having my ovaries removed in order to escape the hormone-generated migraines that plague the women in my family until menopause. My doctor was quick to state the impossibility of that notion, stressing that surgery wasn’t available to “someone so young” (I was 35 years old). Why? Because my hormones protected me from heart disease and bone loss, among other things.
In her 2018 study of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), Lisa Littman determined that, “Without the knowledge of whether the gender dysphoria is likely to be temporary, extreme caution should be applied before considering the use of treatments that have permanent effects, such as cross-sex hormones and surgery.” Who could argue with erring on the side of being careful, responsible — ethical? Many, apparently, who have done just that, dismissing Littman’s suggestion that some cases of gender dysphoria may be “socially contagious,” accusing her of bias and promoting misconceptions about trans people. Among the young people she studied (83 per cent of whom were girls), more than one-third were in friendship groups in which half or more began to identify as trans in a similar time frame.
Despite all this, nothing affected me more than Dysphoric — a four part documentary series by Vaishnavi Sundar, an independent filmmaker, feminist, writer, and activist. Subtitled, “Fleeing womanhood like a house on fire,” Sundar’s film elucidates the way young women’s dysphoria is heightened through social media, as well some branches of the medical and therapeutic community, and of course trans activist ideology itself. There are a few clips in the film of social media personality Jeffrey Marsh, who refers to himself as an “internet mom,” offering a sort of alternative family (at least online) for the young, lonely, and confused. But the thing is, he is not a “mom.” Marsh, the author (ironically) of, How to be You, is a man — a gay man (who identifies as “non-binary” and “queer”) and his current metier involves promoting himself on YouTube — an activity actual mothers rarely have time for.
In Sundar’s film, endocrinologist Dr. William Malone stresses that most girls who experience dysphoria will outgrow the symptoms post-puberty, and psychiatrist Dr. Roberto D’Angelo reminds us that many of these girls will grow up to be lesbian. But, until then, they are simply young, vulnerable, and confused about how to handle their attraction to other girls.
I thought we had broken the back of this problem decades ago
— encouraging girls to be themselves, and grow up to accept their sexualities without shame. But that hard-won fight has been set back. And now the repercussions may mean the sacrifice of countless girls who are abandoning their bodies to a devastating illusion.
If this process of turning lesbian girls into straight boys isn’t conversion therapy, I don’t know what is. But now that “gender” has been added to the definition of the term, things have become confused. Now it is claimed that protecting young girls from rushing into body modification in an attempt to enter boyhood (and a life of medical intervention) is the real crime — the authentic “conversion therapy.”
I recently received a ballot from my local MP inquiring how I would like him to vote on Bill C-6, an Act to Amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy.) If conversion therapy still meant making it illegal to impose “correctives” on those who are attracted to the same sex, my position would be straightforward, and I’m sure many politicians feel they are being progressive in voting to prohibit such practices. But adding “gender identity” has changed things to mean that prohibiting “conversion therapy” pressures therapists and medical professionals to validate a child’s feeling that they have been “born in the wrong body” and require irreversible medical treatments. The Cassandra Project, a coalition of women’s organizations concerned about Bill C-6, have articulated a number of worries, not the least being that “services and therapy that do not encourage hasty transition” will be criminalized.
Considering the daily realities faced by so many girls in today’s world, there is a kind of logic to their transformative wishes — if only they could become wild horses instead, and run far away.
Teaching girls to believe in repressive and obsolete gender stereotypes — encouraging them to believe it is possible to be born in the wrong body because they don’t look, feel, or act the way a girl “should” — is the actual conversion therapy. The most authentic betrayal is leading girls into surgeries that remove their healthy breasts, endanger their health, and doom them to a lifetime of medical oversight. That is the true conversion therapy, and its message is as it ever was, except that now bodies are ruined along with minds — the message is that it is better to betray and renounce body and spirit than to be a lesbian (or a woman).
So much for being “post-lesbian.”
It seems I was too optimistic about the future. I failed to imagine its profound loss of soul. I grew complacent. I let down my guard. And now I am a member of the authentic counterculture once again. My primary surprise is that the repugnance and contempt for women is still great, and the example we set as lesbians is fragile.
Invoking Invasion of the Bodysnatchers feels eerily accurate. The urge to dart out onto that rain-slashed highway and implore fellow travellers to see what is in front of their faces — Look,you fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see?! —is almost irresistible. One can only be grateful to those who have been running into traffic for some time. I only wish somebody could assure me that this dystopian reality will be put right. Meanwhile I’ll hold my wish that young girls could become wild horses that no one can break.
At the close of Sundar’s film, she speaks of the various political, social, and religious dangers to girlhood: “We have this one life, and we must have the opportunity to live it the way we want. But this industry of hate that gaslights girls into turning against themselves infuriates me.” The one question that keeps Sundar awake at night, as posed by a future generation of girls, is this: “Where the hell were you?”
Brenda Brooks’ novel Gotta Find Me An Angel was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Her 2019 book, HONEY, was shortlisted for the U.K. Staunch Book Prize, an award for thrillers “where no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, or murdered.”
Also listen to an interview of Vaishnavi Sundar in Resistance Radio.
