In this two part article Sarah describes her experiences of direct action, of insight into the harm caused to mother earth and offers the reader sharp analysis regarding the dominant culture. The second part will be published on the 14th February 2021
My friend Tyler told me he was heading to Minnesota to join Indigenous Water Protectors protesting an oil Pipeline. I felt sad as I could not go. Tyler and I spent 4 months at Standing Rock. The Indigenous led resistance was strong, aiming to protect the sacred from the onslaught of destruction.
I took to Facebook to ask if anyone could go in my place. No one has volunteered (so far). I caught wind of another resistance camp. On January 15th, activists Max Wilbert and Will Falk stationed themselves on public land at Thacker Pass, Nevada, an area that is part of the Great Basin (the largest watershed in North America, spanning much of Nevada and into parts of Utah, Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Mexico).
I always say that the alien invasion is already here because we live like homesick aliens visiting and trashing a foreign Planet with no respect for the local customs, not realizing that Earth is our estranged motherland!
For today’s installment of ‘Know the Goddamn Planet You Live On’
In a closed endorheic watershed, such as The Great Basin, water is retained within the area with no water flowing out to other external bodies of water, such as rivers and oceans. Instead the water drains to form seasonal and permanent lakes, ponds and swamps, and relies primarily on evaporation to keep moisture balance.
Max and Will are camped in Thacker Pass to protest the Lithium America’s right to develop a huge Lithium mine. Lithium is a lightweight metal used in the industrial manufacturing of everything from cell phones and laptop batteries to ceramics to high tech military equipment to prescription drugs. The Lithium stores at Thacker Pass, if mined, will mainly be used for making batteries for electric cars, all part of the plan to usher in the transition away from fossil fuels to ‘green energy’.
“Well what’s wrong with that?” you may ask, “Aren’t electric vehicles better for the environment?” “Better for the environment” may be a euphemism for “slightly less horrifically devastating for life on Earth but also may have unknown consequences that could end up being worse for the environment than the original thing that was supposed to be the worst thing ever”. THAT is hard to brand, so just stamp “SUSTAINABLE”!
It may be possible for one woman’s experience of rape to not be as horrific as another woman’s but it is still rape. The U.N. pass an international law saying nuclear weapons are illegal. The majority of nations sign up, but the nine countries known to have nuclear warheads of course did not. The U.S. and Russia are roughly tied with having the most weapons, somewhere around 125,000 between them. The other 7 countries with nuclear weapons have less than 2000 weapons between them. In any case, a small fraction of these weapons are enough to destroy all life on earth.
It is estimated that the amount of Life lost due to Industrial Civilization will already take Mother Earth millions of years to restore. The current trajectory due to industrial civilization could result in life being unable to be restored to full health.
“….would impact nearly 5700 acres—close to nine square miles—and which would include a giant open pit mine over two square miles in size, a sulfuric acid processing plant, and piles of tailings. The operation would use 850 million gallons of water annually and 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day. The ecological damage in this delicate, slow-to-heal landscape would be permanent, at least on the human scale. At risk are a number of animal and plant species including the threatened Greater Sage Grouse, Pygmy Rabbits, the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, a critically imperiled endemic snail species known as the King’s River Pyrg, old growth Big Sagebrush and Crosby’s Buckwheat, to name just those that are locally significant. Also present in the area are Golden Eagles, Pronghorn Antelope, and Bighorn Sheep.”
Sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omelet, right?
Right now all we have is a shit ton of broken eggs and no omelet, all for nothing! Well, except for making a handful of white men extraordinarily wealthy while they build their gigantic metal penises in the form of buildings and towers and missiles. In the process of breaking all these eggs we also broke many of the birds who were laying the eggs, the insects the birds relied on for food, the plants the insects eat, we broke the watersheds that fed the plants. We broke the water that fed the watersheds!!!!! That is right, people…we broke water!
We have been led to believe that when it comes to the environment being damaged the means justify the ends. We are approaching the end and I would challenge anyone to find even a crumb of justification. The “means” turned out to be pretty mean in the end.
Just over 20 years ago there were over 1,200,000 Monarch butterflies counted in California. Last year, there were fewer than 2,000. Butterflies are considered by ecologists to be a strong indicator of ecological health. Rut Roh.
It is estimated that a billion animals died in the Australian fires of 2019.
We are losing species at a faster rate than when dinosaurs went extinct!
I wonder how much longer anyone will be around to record these things?
As Mother Earth’s body is ravaged, we make scientific notes on how she reacts. I think it is safe to say at this point that record keeping is not enough of a motivation to make us stop the torture. We do not realize we’re in the throes of THE END mainly because a false sense of security, being generated by the artificial life support systems we are on. Those who benefit the least from securities are busy surviving. Those who DO have the luxury to think about it need to step up NOW. We cannot keep using fossil fuels to run artificial life support systems nor keep the machines going. The natural life support systems are being destroyed at an increasing rate for short term profit and unnecessary luxuries.
It is time to pull the plug on artificial life support systems and see what happens. The fact is, the plug will be pulled one way or another. If we pull the plug TOGETHER the transition may be smoother as everything collapses. It is likely, we probably won’t voluntarily pull the plug, so get ready for a world of pain…one that lots of people (and non-human beings) are already experiencing.
While at Standing Rock, part of me had to overlook the narrative that stopping these fossil fuel projects included replacing them with “green, sustainable, and/or renewable” energy. I happen to disagree with this Buckminster Fuller quote:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
This quote speaks to the kind of logic driving the push to replace fossil fuels with green energy. The logic says we have to keep using “low carbon” fuels like fracked gas and Nuclear energy as a way to “transition” to the “good, pure, guilt-free, rainbow-powered” fuels. We have bought the false premise that green energy will make fossil fuels obsolete by using a better DIFFERENT model.
The ‘new model’ is an illusion.
Green Energy is a different WAY to power the existing model. Mother Earth is shouting “I can’t breathe!” as the weight of Industrial Civilization’s knee digs into Her back. Switching to “renewables” will still leave us in the same situation. A system that extracts without replenishing, exploits, destroys, creates inequality and degrading human hierarchies. The same system that strengthens patriarchy and reinforces human supremacy over nature, promotes competition and conflict instead of cooperation and peace, that keeps us separated from Earth, from one another and ourselves. This system categorizes us as either master, consumer, or slave.
A sentiment like the Buckminster Fuller one can only come out of a culture that is disconnected from reality, from intuition and our ancestral wisdom. We are no longer standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. We are paving over and trampling on their unmarked graves.
Nature is the model that works!
All this fanfare over Biden returning to the Paris Climate Deal (PCD) can fuck off, it is “too little too late”. It will not be anywhere near enough to make a difference. It does not matter if we return to the Paris Agreement or not. We need to return to the agreement we used to have with Mother Earth! She gave us Life. We promise not to take more than we need. We offer respect, thanks and praise. We need to return to the systems that She set up, systems we arrogantly think we can control/improve. Systems humans have lived within for over 90% of our existence as a species.
We must come to understand that it is not the way that cars are powered that is the problem. Cars are the problem. There is no “sustainable” number of cars. There is no such thing as “good” gas mileage. The reality is that cars are killers. Car culture makes killers out of us. There is no way to live with killers. They must be stopped. Using non-renewable resources in the current infrastructure while we wait for a better solution means we pollute and kill the Earth. There is no “better” to be had within the context of industrial civilization.
Why bother if it’s over?
You only say that because you have been trained to look in all the wrong places for all the wrong points. The solutions being proposed by the system to “save the planet” are moot points. We have just been disconnected from the truth. The point is both painfully obvious and mysteriously elusive.
The point is spiders using electricity to magically fly through the air!
The point is the whimsical Maui dolphin, the smallest Dolphin in the world who never hurt anyone but SOMEHOW there are only about 50 left due to “overfishing”.
The point is that when a tree falls in the forest, other trees keep the stump alive in a process scientists call hydraulic coupling.
We must let go of doing what’s “better” for the environment. What it needed is to completely and immediately stop ALL means of production that is not necessary. This may not happen if we keep believing in money. I remember once seeing this headline in the fake parody newspaper ‘The Onion’ that read:
‘U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion’
We are facing our own death and the death of countless other beings and still, we refuse to face the reality. As Terrence McKenna says,
“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer.”
Electric and hybrid cars are not the solution to our dying world, this ‘solution’ is not addressing the root problem.
It reminds me of that old children’s book ‘There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.’ Its grotesque imagery is a cautionary tale. To make even one more new car (electric or otherwise) at this point in the collapse of the biosphere is literally insane. The amount of resources, by-waste, and pollution involved in the PRODUCTION of a vehicle is so great that it will NEVER be able make up for the damage incurred by its production.
We must greatly reduce and then eliminate the need for cars by creating localization of every aspect of our lives. We must stop calling alternative sources of energy “renewables”! The lithium mine may result in the land needing hundreds of years to renew. I took some of these roadkill photos while walking from Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the BP Oil Spill. The dead animals from my Roadkill photo album did not care if they were killed by 100% renewable energy instead of by gas guzzlers. Walking all day long for 3 months drastically altered my perception of time and space.
I remember reading somewhere how there were some Native American tribes that were very resistant to adopting Horse travel, which was not part of their culture until the Spanish brought horses to the American continent in the 16th century. These tribes strongly believed humans were not meant to travel that fast and doing so would propel our body forward while leaving our spirit behind resulting in a fractured state of being.
I felt this the first time I rode in a car after my long walk had finished. It felt dangerous, I adapted.
Something essential and elemental is missing in environmental activism culture.
I will admit that I am afraid that something might be on the verge of being lost forever. Taking action can be a good way to re-activate what is left of the magic of the natural world and that same magic within us. There are still humans left who are the guardians of that magic, but they are greatly outnumbered. Industrial Civilization is closing in on them by the day. It can’t just be about stopping bad things and bad people, like pipelines and presidents. Western Environmental activism needs to evolve past this. Max and Will are embarked on that next chapter of activism evolution. This evolution must be centered around a brutal obliterating honesty, so sharp that it cuts straight through the fat of hope and the tendons of delusion and muscles of bargaining. Right down to the bone.
If we do not break free from the mental and emotional prisons of Industrial Civilization, we will not be able to get past false diagnosis and solutions. Green New Deal is bogus. We need is a ‘Get Real Deal’. It’s truth telling time. We must admit we don’t always know what the truth is. I used to think solar panels and wind turbines were the answer until I learned more and the truth changed.
The final permits for this lithium mine were fast tracked by Trump before he left office in a way that is more difficult to reverse through presidential orders. It is unlikely Biden would stop it, he already has a “save the environment” token, due to his executive order to halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This will serve as a powerful pacifier for liberals. To highlight this point: we have a MLK Day so we do not need a Malcolm X or a Fred Hampton Day. Plus we would not want to offer a radical view now, would we?
Biden is being lauded for stopping Keystone XL.
This culture greatly praises men for doing the t simplest things. I am aware the Biden administration has suspended new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on U.S. lands and waters. But only for 60 days. Naomi Klein speaks of the tactic of “Shock and Awe” that the ruling elite uses as a means to wear us all down so we give up. The strategy of “Balk and Stall” (copyright, Sarah Baker) is where those in power make a big deal out of decreeing something to be bad to stall while they figure out how to get out of stopping the bad thing.
“FOR 60 DAYS” the permits will be suspended, says the Biden people. It is the fine print that we must see. The “Balk and Stall” I witnessed at Standing Rock, was impressive, after the Army Core of Engineers announced that the DAPL pipeline construction would have to stop until an environmental impact statement was conducted. The celebrations were so intoxicating that it was as if people could not see the continued construction. Similarly, Trump’s wall is still being built even though Biden said he would stop it! The Cleveland Indians announce they will consider changing the name of their team. I have a name for you: how about the Cleveland Colonizers. Their mascot can be a Smallpox infested Blanket.
I was going to post this essay on Inauguration Day but figured I’d wait until the tranquilizing effects of that patriotism packed lullaby for liberals started to wear off. I didn’t see the entire pageantry of that day, but what I did see was quite spew worthy. There was this overall sentiment of: “Shhhhhh, it’s ok, you just had a bad 4 year long nightmare but everything’s fine now, a Democrat is in charge again, so here’s a glass of water made from the joy filled tears of all the Latin American mothers who have been instantaneously reunited with their children at the border. Now let us get you tucked in so you can go back to sleep and dream about Impeachment hearings and Bernie memes.”
A longtime environmental activist, Sarah lives in Ohio US, she loves writing and refusing to mow her lawn. You can read her article published in the Washington Post here.
Rabbits taught me that each sagebrush has a unique voice. I often take long walks across the steppes in Thacker Pass. It’s not uncommon to spy a rabbit – with one floppy ear pointed one way and one another – peeking out of the tangles of sagebrush branches.
Today, as I wandered across the basin floor, I asked Thacker Pass aloud if she wanted to talk with me today. As the words were pulled from my mouth by a strong, cold north wind, a rabbit sprang from bushes at my feet, throwing snow up with his strong back legs. I followed his tracks as long as I could until they crossed an exposed patch of dirt where the sun had thinned the powder. I dropped to my hands and knees to study the dirt for the imprint of rabbit feet. The wind blew with a gust.
And, that’s when I heard them.
The sage surrounding me reached towards the sun to let the wind wash through their branches and leaves. I was transfixed by the fragrant melodies formed in the frictions between sage and wind. I do not know for how many measures I knelt there listening to the unmetered chorus sung in keys no human singer can achieve swirling around me.
Eventually, I opened my eyes to find myself looking at the rabbit’s tracks a few yards away. As I crawled along the rabbit’s path, different sections of ensemble rose and fell. I realized that each individual sagebrush with its own specific pattern of leaves, specific orientation to the wind, and specific structure of branches contributed its own sonic hues to the masterpiece.
As I leaned my head towards the heart of the closest sagebrush, the sunshine fell through the clouds and the sagebrush’s twisting limbs. I recognized the sun as the great conductor of this symphony. I saw how the sagebrush grew towards the falling photons while intentionally choosing the specific patterns, orientations, and structures that, with the help of the wind, would create the most enchanting sounds.
It was the most fascinating song I’ve ever heard.
Finally, the wind touched my bones and reminded me that my blood would only remain warm on the exposed steppes for so long. As I rose from my crouch, I spotted the rabbit hiding under an ancient, thickly knotted sagebrush. He made eye contact with me, straightened his ears for a moment, and then settled back into the auditory rapture I had just emerged from.
#protectthackerpass
Image by Max Wilbert
Will Falk is a DGR member, lawyer for the natural world and is currently in direct action to protect Thacker Pass. He has also journeyed in conversation with the Ohio River. You can read about Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.
The first time I saw a coyote with mange my heart broke.
Most of her fur was gone. Her skin, covered with scabs and lesions, had a sickly pink pallor. Her tail seemed stuck between her legs. And, her movements, as she stumbled through a ditch next to a Colorado country road, were lethargic and listless. Just the sight of her made my own skin chafe and itch. As I hugged myself to ward away the horror, my fingernails dug into my own skin, scratching at the backs of my arms. The experience educated me in the realest ways about what the phrase “it made my skin crawl” truly means.
After witnessing this, I had to know more about what I had seen. I learned that this coyote was suffering from what scientists call sarcoptic mange, which is caused by mites who live in the skin of many wild canids. In burrowing into the animals’ skin to lay their eggs, these mites cause intense irritation and itchiness, scabbing, and hair loss. An animal affected by mange can develop secondary bacterial skin infections, too. Worst of all, mange can be fatal for animals if left untreated. With the loss of their fur, animals affected by mange often freeze to death. And, if the cold doesn’t kill them, those secondary bacterial skin infections exacerbated by excessive scratching will.
While mange does occur naturally,
recent research suggests that the widespread use of anticoagulant rodenticides – a type of rat poison – weakens the immune systems of animals and makes them more susceptible to mange. A 2017 study linked anticoagulant exposure to mange in bobcats, for example. Notoedric mange – which affects felines and is closely related to the sarcoptic mange that affects coyotes – ravaged the population of urban bobcats at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in southern California from 2002-2005. After mange was detected in 2001, the average annual survival of these bobcats plummeted by 49%. Mange-infected bobcats were necropsied and 98% of infected individuals had been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides. These bobcats also had greater amounts of anticoagulant rodenticides than bobcats who did not die with mange.
After reading the results of the bobcat study, and against my better judgment, I was compelled to find images of bobcats with mange. I was met with the stares of blue-eyed bobcats, stripped of fur and looking like hairless, Sphynx cats. Unlike Sphynx cats, these bobcats weren’t bred selectively to be hairless. Their hair had been stripped and their skin ravaged by mites because they had eaten rodents who had eaten too many anticoagulant rodenticides.
What exactly are anticoagulant rodenticides?
Anticoagulant rodenticides are widely used as a cheap and effective means for killing rodents. These rodenticides disrupt coagulation and cause fatal hemorrhaging. In simple terms, rodenticides cause the creatures who eat them to bleed more easily. Similar to the way a minor wound to a human taking a blood-thinner can cause a human to bleed out, rodents who have ingested anticoagulant rodenticides bleed to death.
Rodents exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides don’t just bleed to death – they bleed to death slowly. Rodents are very intelligent. They are so intelligent, in fact, that the use of toxins that immediately harm a rodent have proven to be completely ineffective because rodents learn not to eat things that instantaneously kill their kin. Anticoagulant rodenticides are effective because they can be mixed with rodents’ favorite foods as bait and the 3-7 days it takes for exposure to kill rodents makes it very difficult for them to understand what is killing them.
Anticoagulant rodenticides have been in use since the late 1940s, and by the early 1980s, genetic resistance to what are now called “first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides” was reported in rats and mice around the world. These first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides include the chemicals diphacinone, warfarin, coumatetralyl, and chlorophacinone and they killed rodents only after prolonged or repeated exposure. Due to genetic resistance, second-generation anticoagulants developed. These chemicals – which include difenacuom, brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and flocoumafen – are much more potent, have a longer half-life, and can kill rodents after only one feeding. This potency poses an increased risk of harm non-target species.
Inevitably, predators who eat rodents are exposed to the rodenticides ingested by their prey.
In one study, 70% of mammals tested in California were found to have been exposed to anticoagulants. Anticoagulant rodenticides were detected in 49% of the raptors tested in New York City, including in 81% of the great horned owls tested. A study of three species of owls in British Columbia and the Yukon detected anticoagulant rodenticides in 62% of barn owls, 92% of barred owls, and 70% of great horned owls. In sum, the Canadian researchers detected anticoagulant rodenticides in 70% of 164 owls. They also confirmed that rodenticides killed two barn owls, three barred owls, and one great horned owl.
As described above, rodents usually do not die for several days after consuming a lethal dose. This means they may continue to move through habitat shared with predators and they may continue to feed on poisoned bait. Additionally, rodents – exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides and who may be hemorrhaging internally – spend more time in open areas, stagger as they move, and sit motionless before death. All of this makes them easier prey for predators.
Coyotes, and especially urban coyotes, rely heavily on rodents for food.
It appears anticoagulant rodenticides are harming coyotes. Scientists in the Denver metropolitan area, for example, researching the effects of anticoagulant rodenticides on coyotes, found a dead juvenile male with no obvious external injuries or other signs of trauma. However, when they necropsied the young coyote, they “found free blood in the abdominal cavity” and “a puncture wound [that] was present on the left side of the body overlying the spleen but not penetrating the abdominal wall.” They determined that the coyote died from “acute severe hemorrhage, disproportionate to the amount of trauma observed.” The coyote’s liver tested positive for an anticoagulant rodenticide. In other words, it’s likely that the rodenticide in the coyote’s body turned a minor injury lethal.
These scientists found another young male coyote dead on a two-lane road “with minor evidence of skin tearing over the ventral neck and chest.” When they necropsied the coyote, they found that the coyote’s chest was filled with blood and they concluded that the coyoted was killed by “severe acute hemorrhage, disproportionate to the mild to moderate trauma received from being hit by a vehicle.” The scientists suspected rodenticide exposure. And, sure enough, the coyote’s liver tested positive for two types of anticoagulant rodenticides. Again, rodenticides turned a small injury into a coyote’s death.
There have been many more studies demonstrating the harmful effects anticoagulant rodenticides have on non-rodent species.
Some of these studies include harmful effects on buzzards, mountain lions, otters, endangered European mink, polecats, and, even, freshwater fish. Anticoagulants, in fact, act on all vertebrates – not just the rodents they’re intended for. Scientists have also discovered anticoagulant rodenticides in raw and treated wastewater, sewage sludge, estuarine sediments, and particulate matter suspended in the air.
For brevity’s sake, I’ll stop here. But, it bears mentioning that as I sifted through study after study describing the havoc anticoagulant rodenticides wreak on natural communities and felt my stomach grow increasingly sour, I learned the literal meaning of another phrase: ad nauseum. It is also important to remember that, despite the amount of studies being conducted on the effects of anticoagulant rodenticides on non-target wildlife, scientists caution us that most of this poisoning remains undetected because the necropsy and liver analysis required is labor and cost intensive. Similarly, unless an animal is being tracked through radiotelemetry, finding dead animals in a non-decomposed state, is difficult.
***
After learning about problems with anticoagulant rodenticides, the torturous manner in which these chemicals kill, and how they are making predators of rodents more susceptible to mange, most people want to know:
What can I do?
This is the wrong question. Don’t ask: What can I do? Ask: What needs to be done? What do bobcats – blue eyes unblinking despite the pain of internal hemorrhaging – need us to do? What do coyotes – scraping their inflamed skin against fence posts, the corners of concrete walls, and rough tree trunks – need us to do? What do rodents – intelligent, sociable, and bleeding to death – need us to do?
Rodents, and all those who eat them, need us to stop the manufacture and application of anticoagulant rodenticides. And, they need this to happen as quickly as possible. This is, of course, much easier said than done.
Individual home or other property owners, as opposed to government or business entities, account for a portion of total anticoagulant rodenticide use. If these individuals could be convinced to live and let rodents live, or to employ non-lethal, non-toxic measures such as blocking holes and other openings rodents use to access buildings, practicing better sanitation, or trapping rodents and removing them to better habitat, then the total use of anticoagulant rodenticides could be reduced.
There are barriers making it unlikely that individual property owners will forego the use of anticoagulant rodenticides:
First, fear of rodents is so pervasive in the dominant culture that there are multiple words to describe this fear including musophobia (fear of mice specifically), murophobia (fear of the taxonomic family Muridae, which includes mice and rats), and suriphobia (which comes from the French souris meaning “mouse”). Similarly, calling someone a “rat” is a grave insult.
Second, anticoagulant rodenticides are simply more economical. Sealing up holes in a house and live-trapping rodents can be costly and can require much more labor than using poison. In fact, a member of California’s Department of Consumer Affairs, Structural Pest Control Board recently estimated that pest control services employing only sanitation, exclusion of rodents, and removal of harborage can be 2-5 times more costly than using rodenticide due to labor and material costs.
I want to be clear here: I am not saying we shouldn’t try to convince everyone we can to stop using anticoagulant rodenticides. This is, of course, one reason I wrote this piece. I am saying, however, that coyotes, bobcats, other predators of rodents, and rodents, themselves, need us to do much more than to simply refuse to stop using anticoagulant rodenticides in our own homes.
Many people assume that if homeowners stopped using these rodenticides the problem would go away. Unfortunately, this is not the case. National and global anti-rodenticide market data are protected by business privacy laws as
“confidential business information.”
However, it’s safe to say that while individual, residential use of anticoagulant rodenticides accounts for a portion of global rodenticide use, governments and agricultural corporations are likely the biggest users of anticoagulant rodenticides.
Statistics from California tend to support this point. In 2012, California imposed stricter regulations on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides including restricting sales of these chemicals to the general public. Then, in 2014, they imposed a new round of restrictions that were specifically intended to restrict the access of homeowners to second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. But, using data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s Pesticide Use Reporting database, it does not appear that the amount of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides applied between 2012-2017 was significantly reduced despite the new regulations.
So, if homeowners are only part of the problem, and governments and corporations are the worst offenders, how do we stop governments and corporations from using anticoagulant rodenticides?
A common response is: change the law. It is highly unlikely, however, that governments will ever impose a true ban on anticoagulant rodenticides. The agricultural lobby is one of the most powerful political forces in American politics. Meanwhile, in the United States, rodents are responsible for an estimated $19 billion in economic damages annually through the consumption and contamination of stored grains. Rodents don’t just pose a threat to agricultural interests, either. A British study, which attempted to determine the cost of physical damage to the built environment caused by rodents, estimated that rodents cost the British economy £200 million per year.
An astute reader may be saying to herself: “Didn’t California recently ban anticoagulant rodenticides?” And, of course, despite the headlines, California did not ban anticoagulant rodenticides. To understand this, we must look to the actual text of the California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2020 (also known as Assembly Bill No. 1788). Courts applying law do not rely on newspaper headlines – they rely on what a piece of legislation actually says.
The pertinent section (12978.7(c)) reads:
“Except as provided in subdivision (e) or (f), the use of any second generation anticoagulant rodenticide is prohibited in this state until the director makes the certification described in subdivision (g).”
So, first, the prohibition only applies to second generation anticoagulant rodenticides and excludes the less potent but still deadly first generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
Second, if we scroll down to the exceptions provided in subdivisions (e) and (f), we see how hollow this “prohibition” really is. Subdivision (e) declares that the prohibition does not apply to governmental agency employees who use second generation anticoagulant rodenticides for public health activities or for protecting water supply infrastructure and facilities; to mosquito or vector control districts; to efforts to eradicate nonnative invasive species on offshore islands; to efforts to control an actual or potential rodent infestation associated with a public health need, as determined by a declaration from a public health officer; or for further research into the dangers posed by second generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
Subdivision (f) creates exceptions to the prohibition for medical waste generators and for “agricultural activities” conducted at warehouses used to store foods for human and animal consumption; slaughterhouses; canneries; factories; breweries; an agricultural production site housing water storage and conveyance facilities; and agricultural production sites housing rights-of-way and other transportation infrastructure.
The power of agricultural interests should be clear from these lists of exceptions to this so-called “prohibition” on second generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
It should also be clear that the California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2020 has not banned anticoagulant rodenticides. At best, the law simply prevents individual homeowners and property owners from using a subset of anticoagulant rodenticides while exempting those who likely use second generation rodenticides the most.
To repeat, it is unlikely that governments will ever truly ban anticoagulant rodenticides. This does not mean that we have no power to stop the manufacture and application of these poisons. It is true that we must raise awareness about the harms of anticoagulant rodenticides. And, anyone who reads this, please, please stop using these toxic chemicals. Similarly, pushing for legislation to limit the use of anticoagulant rodenticides can help. But, if we truly want to protect rodents, and the predators who eat them, from horrible deaths, and if we truly want to keep these poisons out of the natural communities we depend on for life, we will have to do it ourselves.
As with any truly effective tactic that impedes humans’ ability to destroy the natural world, stopping anticoagulant rodenticides will require exceptional bravery. To find that bravery, I return to the first mangy coyote I saw. If it was me, and my skin was covered in itchy sores and lesions, my organs were hemorrhaging blood, and my movements were growing ever slower, I’d likely give in, lay down, and let death take me.
But, that first mangy coyote I watched struggle to keep moving through a roadside ditch did not give up. She kept moving in an effort to fulfill her species’ ancient role as a trickster lesson-giver. She wanted us to see her. She wanted us to know what happened to her. And, she wanted us to stop those who hurt her.
Will Falk is a DGR member, lawyer for the natural world and is currently journeying in conversation with the Ohio River. You can read about Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.
This episode, recorded January 7th 2021 is a round table discussion of the January 6th protest and riots in Washington D.C. in the U.S. Capitol. The hosts for this episode are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan. They are joined by Saba Malik and Will Falk.
The discussion starts with Will outlining his work and allegiance to the natural world, and includes the needs for anti-civilization and a strong biophilic analysis. Saba is clear that the dominant US culture was founded upon kidnapping and genocide. Max describes the destruction of the systems of life support on Earth (soils, waters) and the current unrest is a sign of the collapse of empire. Jennifer describes the insanity of the recent events and asserts that people are literally going mad. Saba relates the earth as an organism in crisis because she is being killed and the behaviour of some people demonstrates the crisis and insanity.
Max, Will, Saba and Jennifer are clear that preparation, community building, and self-defense is needed as we see more economic and environmental collapse.
Max Wilbert is a writer, organizer, and wilderness guide. A third-generation dissident, he came of age in a family of anti-war and undoing racism activists in post-WTO Seattle. He is the editor-in-chief of the Deep Green Resistance News Service.
Jennifer Murnan is a US based feminist activist and environmental campaigner. Jennifer is involved in projects focused on growing and supporting gynocentric communities, and is co – host of The Green Flame podcast.
Will Falk is a member of Deep Green Resistance, he is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist.
Saba Malik is a mother of two and has been a feminist and anti-racist activist for most of her adult life.
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In this reflective writing Will Falk offers his thoughts on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, human civilization and his thoughts on the natural world.
I viewed the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn from my parents’ back porch in Castle Rock, CO, a Denver suburb.
It took my dad and I several minutes to locate the planets amongst the streaking, blinking lights of airplanes crossing the southwestern sky. I wanted the experience to be more joyful than it was. But, it was hard to marvel at the heavens while the earth around me was being destroyed. Automobiles on Colorado Highway 86, about a hundred yards from where I stood, sped their way to their drivers’ homes at the end of the work day. Construction workers putting in a new high-pressure gas line across the street wrapped work up for the day. With their boots and Carhartt jackets covered in an early winter slush, the men bantered with the relieved voices that workers who hate their job always banter with at 5 pm.
All this commotion created a harsh soundtrack for my Great Conjunction. It was hard to focus on the tiny specks of light that the internet told me were planets hovering just above the sunset. The noise the highway traffic made dominated all other sounds. I heard the friction between spinning tires and hard asphalt as it keened. I heard the screams of forests clearcut for the rubber plantations that tire production requires. I heard the wailing of long-dead algae in the oil ripped from its underground resting place and blended with shattered stones to form asphalt. I speculated whether these sounds were chastising me for my lack of wonder.
Being December 21, it was difficult not to think about Jupiter and Saturn’s reaction to viewing the perverse electric constellations humans have hung on the Earth like the suburban Christmas lights surrounding me. Feeling this bitterness, I thought about asking my dad what was wrong with me, why I always seem drawn to ugliness and pain, and if he thought I was ungrateful.
I did not want to disturb his enjoyment of this historic astronomic event.
This experience quickly reflected something I’ve been confused about for a long time: Why do so many people find it so easy to see the beauty surrounding us when we must overlook so much destruction when viewing that beauty? As the stars intensified in the deepening evening and this question banged around in my head, a blue jay landed in the snow below one of my mother’s bird feeders.
I confess that I found the blue jay to be infinitely more fascinating than the distant planets. The feeder had been recently filled and a sizable pile of seeds sat in the snow and mud. The blue jay could have gorged himself on a huge meal, but instead he pecked at the ground here and kicked at the snow there with relatively no concern about the pressure I assumed winter would place on him to consume calories. His movements were lazy and nonchalant. I realized the blue jay could not care less about worlds a bird could never fly to, about two pinpricks of light representing places that, as far as any of us know, do not produce a speck of bird feed.
As Jupiter and Saturn silently disappeared over the horizon, I wondered if they simply could not bear to witness the scars lacerating the skin on their sister’s continents. My attention returned to the blue jay who continued to ignore the sunset and the stars. I was tempted to conclude that the abused beings of the world are bored with beauty, annoyed by the current human insistence on aesthetic appreciation.
The sun’s dying light was pretty.
But, it was also entirely commonplace for those who live beneath the sky. The stars were magical, but their enchantment was distant. Besides predicting romantic compatibility and sending a wayward meteor every few million years, the stars only exert so much influence over earthly affairs.
The sun’s very last orange detonated in a thin line across the west. I hoped that, beyond beauty and ugliness, explosive rage has its place, too.
Will Falk is a DGR member, lawyer for the natural world and is currently journeying in conversation with the Ohio River. You can read about Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.
