Don’t talk to me about sustainability. You want to question my lifestyle, my impact, my ecological footprint? There is a monster standing over us, with a footprint so large it can trample a whole planet underfoot, without noticing or caring. This monster is Industrial Civilization. I refuse to sustain the monster. If the Earth is to live, the monster must die. This is a declaration of war.
What is it we are trying to sustain? A living planet, or industrial civilization? Because we can’t have both.
Somewhere along the way the environmental movement – based on a desire to protect the Earth, was largely eaten by the sustainability movement – based on a desire to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. When did this happen, and why? And how is it possible that no-one noticed? This is a fundamental shift in values, to go from compassion for all living beings and the land, to a selfish wish to feel good about our inherently destructive way of life.
The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.
Sustainability advocates tell us that reducing our impact, causing less harm to the Earth, is a good thing to do, and we should feel good about our actions. I disagree. Less harm is not good. Less harm is still a lot of harm. For as long as any harm is caused, by anyone, there can be no sustainability. Feeling good about small acts doesn’t help anyone.
Only one-quarter of all consumption is by individuals. The rest is taken up by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. Even if every one of us made every effort to reduce our ecological footprint, it would make little difference to overall consumption.
If the lifestyle actions advocated really do have the effect of keeping our culture around for longer than it would otherwise, then it will cause more harm to the natural world than if no such action had been taken. For the longer a destructive culture is sustained, the more destruction it causes. The title of this article isn’t just attention-grabbing and controversial, it is quite literally what’s going on.
When we frame the sustainability debate around the premise that individual lifestyle choices are the solution, then the enemy becomes other individuals who make different lifestyle choices, and those who don’t have the privilege of choice. Meanwhile the true enemy — the oppressive structures of civilization — are free to continue their destructive and murderous practices without question. This is hardly an effective way to create a meaningful social movement. Divide and be conquered.
Sustainability is popular with corporations, media and government because it fits perfectly with their aims. Maintain power. Grow. Make yourself out to be the good guy. Make people believe that they have power when they don’t. Tell everyone to keep calm and carry on shopping. Control the language that is used to debate the issues. By creating and reinforcing the belief that voting for minor changes and buying more stuff will solve all problems, those in power have a highly effective strategy for maintaining economic growth and corporate-controlled democracy.
Those in power keep people believing that the only way we can change anything is within the structures they’ve created. They build the structures in a way that people can never change anything from within them. Voting, petitions, and rallies all reinforce the power structures, and can never bring about significant change on their own. These tactics give corporations and governments a choice. We’re giving those in power a choice of whether to grant our request for minor reform. Animals suffering in factory farms don’t have a choice. Forests being destroyed in the name of progress don’t have a choice. Millions of people working in majority-world sweatshops don’t have a choice. The 200 species who became extinct today didn’t do so by choice. And yet we give those responsible for all this murder and suffering a choice. We’re granting the desires of a wealthy minority above the needs of life on Earth.
Most of the popular actions that advocates propose to achieve sustainability have no real effect, and some even cause more harm than good. The strategies include reducing electricity consumption, reducing water use, a green economy, recycling, sustainable building, renewables and energy efficiency. Let’s look at the effects of these actions.
Electricity
We’re told to reduce our consumption of electricity, or obtain it from alternative sources. This will make zero difference to the sustainability of our culture as a whole, because the electricity grid is inherently unsustainable. No amount of reduction or so-called renewable energy sources will change this. Mining to make electrical wires, components, electrical devices, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal plants, biomass furnaces, hydropower dams, and everything else that connects to the electricity grid, are all unsustainable. Manufacturing to make these things, with all the human exploitation, pollution, waste, health and social impacts, and corporate profits. Fossil fuels needed to keep all these processes going. Unsustainable. No amount of individual lifestyle choices about electricity use and generation will change any of this. Off grid electricity is no different – it needs batteries and inverters.
Water conservation
Shorter showers. Low-flow devices. Water restrictions. These are all claimed to Make A Difference. While the whole infrastructure that provides this water – large dams, long distance pipelines, pumps, sewers, drains – is all unsustainable.
Dams destroy the life of a whole watershed. It’s like blocking off an artery, preventing blood from flowing to your limbs. No-one can survive this. Rivers become dead when fish are prevented from travelling up and down the river. The whole of the natural community that these fish belong to is killed, both upstream and downstream of the dam.
Dams cause a lowering of the water table, making it impossible for tree roots to get to water. Floodplain ecologies depend on seasonal flooding, and collapse when a dam upstream prevents this. Downstream and coastal erosion results. Anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in dams releases methane to the atmosphere.
No matter how efficient with water you are, this infrastructure will never be sustainable. It needs to be destroyed, to allow these communities to regenerate.
The green economy
Green jobs. Green products. The sustainable economy. No. There’s no such thing. The whole of the global economy is unsustainable. The economy runs on the destruction of the natural world. The Earth is treated as nothing but fuel for economic growth. They call it natural resources. And a few people choosing to remove themselves from this economy makes no difference. For as long as this economy exists, there will be no sustainability.
For as long as any of these structures exist: electricity, mains water, global economy, industrial agriculture – there can be no sustainability. To achieve true sustainability, these structures need to be dismantled.
What’s more important to you – to sustain a comfortable lifestyle for a little longer, or the continuation of life on Earth, for the natural communities who remain, and for future generations?
Recycling
We’re made to believe that buying a certain product is good because the packaging can be recycled. You can choose to put it in a brightly-coloured bin. Never mind that fragile ecosystems were destroyed, indigenous communities displaced, people in far away places required to work in slave conditions, and rivers polluted, just to make the package in the first place. Never mind that it will be recycled into another useless product which will then go to landfill. Never mind that to recycle it means transporting it far away, using machinery that run on electricity and fossil fuels, causing pollution and waste. Never mind that if you put something else in the coloured bin, the whole load goes to landfill due to the contamination.
Sustainable building
Principles of sustainable building: build more houses, even though there are already enough perfectly good houses for everyone to live in. Clear land for houses, destroying every living thing in the natural communities that live there. Build with timber from plantation forests, which have required native forests to be wiped out so they can be replaced with a monoculture of pines where nothing else can live. Use building products that are slightly less harmful than other products. Convince everyone that all of this is beneficial to the Earth.
Solar power
Solar panels. The very latest in sustainability fashion. And in true sustainability style, incredibly destructive of life on earth. Where do these things come from? You’re supposed to believe that they are made out of nothing, a free, non-polluting source of electricity.
If you dare to ask where solar panels come from, and how they are made, its not hard to uncover the truth. Solar panels are made of metals, plastics, rare earths, electronic components. They require mining, manufacturing, war, waste, pollution. Millions of tons of lead are dumped into rivers and farmland around solar panel factories in China and India, causing health problems for the human and natural communities who live there. Polysilicon is another poisonous and polluting waste product from manufacturing that is dumped in China. The production of solar panels causes nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) to be emitted into the atmosphere. This gas has 17 000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Rare earths come from Africa, and wars are raged over the right to mine them. People are being killed so you can have your comfortable Sustainability. The panels are manufactured in China. The factories emit so much pollution that people living nearby become sick. Lakes and rivers become dead from the pollution. These people cannot drink the water, breathe the air or farm the land, as a direct result of solar panel manufacturing. Your sustainability is so popular in China that villagers mobilise in mass protest against the manufacturers. They are banding together to break into the factories and destroy equipment, forcing the factories to shut down. They value their lives more than sustainability for the rich.
Panels last around 30 years, then straight to landfill. More pollution, more waste. Some parts of solar panels can be recycled, but some can’t, and have the bonus of being highly toxic. To be recycled, solar panels are sent to majority-world countries where low-wage workers are exposed to toxic substances while disassembling them. The recycling process itself requires energy and transportation, and creates waste products.
Solar panel industries are owned by Siemens, Samsung, Bosch, Sharp, Mitsubishi, BP, and Sanyo, among others. This is where solar panel rebates and green power bills are going. These corporations thank you for your sustainable dollars.
Wind power
The processing of rare earth metals needed to make the magnets for wind turbines happens in China, where people in the surrounding villages struggle to breathe in the heavily polluted air. A five-mile-wide lake of toxic and radioactive sludge now takes the place of their farmland.
Whole mountain ranges are destroyed to extract the metals. Forests are bulldozed to erect wind turbines. Millions of birds and bats are killed by the blades. The health of people living close to turbines is affected by infrasound.
As wind is an inconsistent and unpredictable source of energy, a back-up gas fired power supply is needed. As the back-up system only runs intermittently, it is less efficient, so produces more CO2 than if it were running constantly, if there were no turbines. Wind power sounds great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice. Another useless product that benefits no-one but the shareholders.
Energy efficiency
How about we improve energy efficiency? Won’t that reduce energy consumption and pollution? Well, no. Quite the opposite. Have you heard of Jevon’s paradox? Or the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate? These state that technological advances to increase efficiency lead to an increase in energy consumption, not a decrease. Efficiency causes more energy to be available for other purposes. The more efficient we become at consuming, the more we consume. The more efficiently we work, the more work gets done. And we’re working at efficiently digging ourselves into a hole.
The economics of supply and demand
Many actions taken in the name of sustainability can have the opposite effect. Here’s something to ponder: one person’s decision not to take flights, out of concern about climate change or sustainability, won’t have any impact. If a few people stop flying, airlines will reduce their prices, and amp up their marketing, and more people will take flights. And because they are doing it at lower prices, the airline needs to make more flights to make the profit it was before. More flights, more carbon emissions. And if the industry hit financial trouble as a result of lowered demand, it would get bailed out by governments. This “opt-out” strategy can’t win.
The decision not to fly isn’t doing anything to reduce the amount of carbon being emitted, it’s just not adding to it in this instance. And any small reduction in the amount of carbon being emitted does nothing to stop climate change.
To really have an impact on global climate, we’ll need to stop every aeroplane and every fossil-fuel burning machine from operating ever again. And stopping every fossil-fuel burning machine is nowhere near the impossible goal it may sound. It won’t be easy, but it’s definitely achievable. And it’s not only desirable, but essential if life on this planet is to survive.
The same goes for any other destructive product we might choose not to buy. Factory-farmed meat, palm oil, rainforest timbers, processed foods. For as long as there is a product to sell, there will be buyers. Attempting to reduce the demand will have little, if any, effect. There will always be more products arriving on the market. Campaigns to reduce the demand of individual products will never be able to keep up. And with every new product, the belief that this one is a need, not a luxury, becomes ever stronger. Can I convince you not to buy a smartphone, a laptop, a coffee? I doubt it.
To stop the devastation, we need to permanently cut off the supply, of everything that production requires. And targeting individual companies or practices won’t have any impact on the global power structures that feed on the destruction of the Earth. The whole of the global economy needs to be brought to a halt.
What do you really want?
What’s more important – sustainable energy for you to watch TV, or the lives of the world’s rivers, forests, animals, and oceans? Would you sooner live without these, without Earth? Even if this was an option, if you weren’t tightly bound in the interconnected in the web of life, would you really prefer to have electricity for your lights, computers and appliances, rather than share the ecstasy of being with all of life on Earth? Is a lifeless world ruled by machines really what you want?
If getting what you want requires destroying everything you need – clean air and water, food, and natural communities – then you’re not going to last long, and neither will anyone else.
I know what I want. I want to live in a world that is becoming ever more alive. A world regenerating from the destruction, where every year there are more fish, birds, trees and diversity than the year before. A world where I can breathe the air, drink from the rivers and eat from the land. A world where humans live in community with all of life.
Industrial technology is not sustainable. The global economy is not sustainable. Valuing the Earth only as a resource for humans to exploit is not sustainable. Civilization is not sustainable. If civilization collapsed today, it would still be 400 years before human existence on the planet becomes truly sustainable. So if it’s genuine sustainability you want, then dismantle civilization today, and keep working at regenerating the Earth for 400 years. This is about how long it’s taken to create the destructive structures we live within today, so of course it will take at least that long to replace these structures with alternatives that benefit all of life on Earth, not just the wealthy minority. It won’t happen instantly, but that’s no reason not to start.
You might say let’s just walk away, build alternatives, and let the whole system just fall apart when no-one pays it any attention any more. I used to like this idea too. But it can’t work. Those in power use the weapons of fear and debt to maintain their control. The majority of the world’s people don’t have the option of walking away. Their fear and debt keeps them locked in the prison of civilization. Your walking away doesn’t help them. Your breaking down the prison structure does.
We don’t have time to wait for civilization to collapse. Ninety per cent of large fish in the oceans are gone. 99 per cent of the old growth forests have been destroyed. Every day 200 more species become extinct, forever. If we wait any longer, there will be no fish, no forests, no life left anywhere on Earth.
So what can you do?
Spread the word. Challenge the dominant beliefs. Share this article with everyone you know.
Listen to the Earth. Get to know your nonhuman neighbours. Look after each other. Act collectively, not individually. Build alternatives, like gift economies, polyculture food systems, alternative education and community governance. Create a culture of resistance.
Rather than attempting to reduce the demand for the products of a destructive system, cut off the supply. The economy is what’s destroying the planet, so stop the economy. The global economy is dependent on a constant supply of electricity, so stopping it is (almost) as easy as flicking a switch.
Governments and industry will never do this for us, no matter how nicely we ask, or how firmly we push. It’s up to us to defend the land that our lives depend on.
We can’t do this as consumers, or workers, or citizens. We need to act as humans, who value life more than consuming, working and complaining about the government.
Learn about and support Deep Green Resistance, a movement with a working strategy to save the planet. Together, we can fight for a world worth living in. Join us.
In the words of Lierre Keith, co-author of the book Deep Green Resistance, “The task of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much personal integrity as possible; it is to dismantle those systems.”
Do you agree with this analysis? If so, we have three steps for you to take:
The destruction of our world isn’t an “environmental crisis,” nor a “climate crisis.” It’s a war waged by industrial civilisaton and capitalism against life on earth–all life–and we need a resistance movement with that analysis to respond.
I spent years as a liberal environmentalist, believing the propaganda from the state and the mainstream environmental movement that change will come about through top down solutions and technology fixes. Well, look where that’s got us – increasing destruction of the biosphere, accelerating species extinction and repeated failures of climate negotiations that are sold as successes.
When I finally understood that this approach wasn’t going to work, I got involved with the UK climate movement, but was unconvinced of their strategy and tactics. I respected the work being done but it looked hopeless considering the scale of the problems and the system causing them. In 2012, I read the Deep Green Resistance book. The book proposed a resistance movement forcing a crash of industrial civilisation and ending ecocide that made far more sense to me than anything else being offered. A strategy that is appropriate to the scale of the problem.
I see this response as self defence, or counter-violence. What is counter-violence? Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth coined the term to mean the violent, proportional response by colonised people to the coloniser’s violent repression. It has since been used more generally to refer to by any group’s use of force in response to state violence. [1]
Other terms for this response might be ”protective use of force,” “holistic self-defence” [2] or “defensive violence.” I find these ideas a relevant and useful way to frame how to respond to the destruction being inflicted on our world by industrial civilisation.
Self-defence actually discourages aggression and is a much better principle to use as a starting point than nonviolence. The definition of self-defence, agreed after thousands of years of experimentation, is that you can use the necessary amount of force to end an attack. Self-defence is a right and duty; a community that does not defend itself against aggression encourages further aggression. If aggressors are willing to kill or hurt anyone who gets in their way when taking what they want, there is little that those that practice nonviolence can do.
Most resistance movements in history have resorted to the use of force in response to the violence directed against them. They are simply defending themselves against violence by governments or the state. Mike Ryan articulates this well: “We accept the necessity of armed struggle in the Third World because the level of oppression leaves people with no other reasonable option. We recognize that the actions of Third World revolutionaries are not aggressive acts of violence, but a last line of defense and the only option for liberation in a situation of totally violent oppression.” [3]
So if freedom fighters in less industrialised countries are considered justified by many in using force against oppression, then why not in the industrialised world? Why not sabotage industrial infrastructure, if it amounts to self-defence? Perhaps because our conditioning to not act is too strong–we are too comfortable and have too much to lose. And therefore our collective inaction admits our participation in the oppression of other people.
When thinking about self-defence, we first need to be clear on what we mean by violence: Is fracking, deforestation, the damming of rivers, factory farming and the trawling of oceans violence? We also need to ask if non-humans who use force to protect their habitat, pack or family are violent? Your answers to this questions will affect if you think humans acting in self defence of their home or people are justified. [4]
Self-defence is a right we must reserve for ourselves. It we do not, then we invite violence attacks on ourselves, our families and our communities. Self-defence is the only thing that keeps violent institutions in check. It must also be combined with genuine solidarity with all non-human and humans under attack.
Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army and former Black Panther, clearly understood the need to fight back against the FBI and police who were killing black liberation leaders and activists. [5] Following the shooting of two New York police officers she said: “I felt sorry for their families, sorry for their children, but I was relieved to see that somebody else besides black folks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos were being shot at.” [6]
The US communist Angela Davis describes how any revolutionary movement focuses on the principles and goals it is aiming to achieve, not the way they are reached. She described how society’s systemic or structural violence is on the surface everywhere, so is going to lead to violent events.
The former Black Panther Kathleen Neal Cleaver describes how the systematic violence against people of colour in the form of bad housing, unemployment, rotten education, unfair treatment in the courts–as well as direct violence from the police–led to the Black Panther Party forming to defend themselves.
I feel a deep sadness for what is happening to living beings and the natural world. I have been so well trained and conditioned by this culture that I struggle to really feel angry about what is happening. I think feeling angry is the appropriate response. We need to stop being so polite and positive, and connect with our anger about the destruction that is taking place. People alive now will be measured by those that come after by the health of what’s left of their landbases. [7] What matters is being effective, not moral purity about using only nonviolent tactics. We need a new Three R’s; instead of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, they should be Resist, Revolt, Rewild. [8]
The two main arguments against using force or violence are that it is morally wrong and ineffective. The moral question needs to be reframed. Instead of judging if an act of force in an isolated situation is justified, we need to ask what actions are necessary to ensure the least amount of suffering to living beings overall. This means seeing ourselves as connected and as part of nature, and then acting in defence of life. To quote Mark Boyle: “We need to defend the Earth with the same ferocity we would evoke if it were our home, because it is. We need to defend its inhabitants with the same passion as if they were our family members, because they are. We need to defend our lands, communities and cultures as if our lives depended on it, because they do.” [9]
There isn’t any one strategy or tactic that is necessarily more effective than another. It depends on the circumstances. Those that advocate the use of force certainly don’t argue that it’s a more effective tactic and that nonviolence should never be practiced. [10] To think that violence is not effective is deluded. Clearly violence is effective because that is what the state uses. Of course, the ends achieved through undesirable means may not themselves be desirable. Also most revolutionary and decolonisation struggles have involved nonviolent and counter-violence movements working in tandem. [11]
Bowser writes:
There is a very simple activity you can do to examine your own relationship with nihilism and resistance. Picture somebody you love deeply…Next, picture that person being viciously beaten to death by a gang of heavily armed policemen and soldiers…who are virtually undefeatable. What would you do?
The voice of nihilism, the cry of fears says, “It’s hopeless, you could never stop the beating, they all have guns and weapons and you only have your fists. Besides stopping the beating is illegal, and you don’t want to break the law, do you? Just stand there, try not to look, and be grateful that it isn’t you.”
The voice of resistance, the cry of love, says “I don’t care what the odds are or who says what is illegal, I have to do everything in my power to fight to defend what I love. I must spend all my energy and effort attempting to stop this horrible thing, even if it’s the last thing I do. I must fight to resist this atrocity, or I am not worthy of this person’s love.” [12]
I think that most would fight to defend their love ones, although some may be too damaged by this culture to do this. Ultimately we need to ask “What do you love and what are you willing to fight for?”
This exercise also brings up an important point about legitimate and illegitimate use of force or violence. The state likes to pretend that its use of violence is legitimate against foreign states, “terrorists,” or its own citizens. But in fact there are no legitimate governments in existence in the world. They all exist because they or their predecessors conquered an area and now dominate it with the use of, or threat of the use of, violence. “Government” by its very nature isn’t legitimate. It exists to concentrate wealth for the few at the expense of the many. We need to look to indigenous people to see how people can be organised in a legitimate way–small human-scale groups (about 100 people), where they choose their own leaders, have a council or elders and are committed to living in balance with their landbase.
Indigenous societies would not understand the modern legalistic view of “violence” or the state’s exclusive claim on violence. Violence (or the use of force) is something that has been taken from us and it is something we need to take back. [13]
How our cognitive defence mechanisms are condemning us to death
By Sebastien Carew-Reid / Deep Green Resistance Australia
Most rational people with even a basic understanding of the scientific process will acknowledge that something is seriously wrong. From climate change and the mass extinction of species, to factory farming and the global violations of human rights, the symptoms should be obvious to anyone brave enough to look. Most will also concede that another few decades of “business as usual” would condemn us to a horrifyingly apocalyptic future.
So considering how adverse to pain, misery and death we all are – and rightly so – these realisations should be providing us with sufficient motivation to bring our collision course with chaos to a swift and permanent halt by any means necessary. Unfortunately this is obviously not the case. In fact, not only are our current environmental movements failing to prevent the accelerating rate of destruction, but upon closer inspection it becomes evident that business is, indeed, continuing as usual. So what’s going on? We have the facts, the mountains of peer-reviewed scientific evidence, and the powerful tools of reason and logic at our disposal – implementing an effective and permanent strategy to save the planet should be the easy part.
Our first problem is that the majority of our current solutions and strategies aren’t addressing or even recognising the root cause of our problems – industrial civilization. If the root cause of a problem isn’t targeted, all efforts are obviously doomed to remain ineffective and temporary solutions at best.
Our second problem is that our persistent failures to acknowledge and implement the only realistic solution available to us lie beyond the reach of reason and logic, deeply embedded in our animal brains. We are, after all, fallible biological creatures, slaves to the natural selection processes that crafted our survival behaviours over millions of years. In this case, the intricate, protective mechanisms of self-deception are to blame. The reality that our way of life requires systematic destruction and death to exist – and therefor needs to be dismantled – is simply too much for us to cope with, and stress hormones trigger a fundamental biological response to restore peace of mind at any cost. The result? We cling to the soothing false hopes that “green” technologies, altering personal consumption habits, or the right political party will somehow save the day.
Writer and environmental activist Derrick Jensen likens this deep aversion to life without industrial civilization to the symptoms of an addiction. “We have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it…A primary reason so many of us do not want to win this war – or even acknowledge that it’s going on – is that we materially benefit from this war’s plunder. I’m really unsure how many of us would be willing to give up our automobiles and cell phones, hot showers and electric lights, our grocery and clothing stores. But the truth is, the system that leads to these things, that leads to technological advancement and our identity as civilized beings, are killing us and, more importantly, killing the planet.”
Coming to terms with these realities is deeply traumatic and destabilizing. FMRI studies have shown that this kind of cognitive distress activates the same areas of the brain that light up when we are being physically hurt: the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. In one study these regions were activated when people experienced social rejection from peers. In another study these same regions were activated in people looking at photographs of former romantic partners they had recently broken up with. Researchers in Italy found that even witnessing the social pain of another individual activated similar pain responses through empathy.
Our innate aversions to pain of any kind will fuel heroic efforts to minimise it. But to avoid mental anguish in a world where unpleasant realities are ubiquitous, we will inevitably spend a great deal of our lives actively censoring and altering the input of information we encounter. At the first sign that our worldviews and beliefs are being threatened, our mental “immune systems” get to work restoring cognitive comfort by changing the facts and biasing the logic, bringing us peace of mind at a severe cost.
Evolutionary theorist and Harvard professor Robert Trivers explores the science behind these firmly embedded defence mechanisms in his book Deceit and Self-Deception, pointing out that “this is way beyond simple computational error, the problems of subsampling from larger samples, or valid systems of logic that occasionally go awry. This is self-deception, a series of biasing procedures that affect every aspect of information acquisition and analysis. It is systematic deformation of the truth at each stage of the psychological process.” To put it bluntly: we manipulate the truth in order to reduce personal responsibility and validate inaction, condemning our responses to remain inappropriate and ineffective. Trivers points out that “the psychological immune system works not by fixing what makes us unhappy but by putting it in context, rationalizing it, minimizing it, and lying about it…Self-deception traps us in the system, offering at best temporary gains while failing to address real problems.”
When confronted with the very real problem of the environmental collapse our culture is causing, a great deal of self-deception and denial is required to justify inaction and simultaneously preserve a self-image that is ethically sound. In these situations we fall victim to the extensively documented self-deceptive processes of confirmation bias: our tendency to interpret any new information as validation for one’s existing beliefs or theories. In one example, researchers at The University of Michigan and Georgia State University found that when people holding beliefs based on misinformation were presented with corrected facts, not only did they rarely change their minds, but were prone to becoming even more convinced by their faulty views.
We don’t have to look far to see real world examples of this. Every time you encounter someone smoking a cigarette, you are witnessing real-time self-deception mechanisms in action. You simply cannot enjoy an activity while being conscious of the severe harm it is doing to your body, so the decision to continue smoking needs to be rationalized with the deluded justifications we are all familiar with: “I’m just a social smoker,” “I’ll quit before it’s too late,” “those things won’t happen to me.” The same deluded justifications are occurring with climate change deniers, “green” technology advocates, and anyone clinging to the hope that industrial civilization is somehow redeemable to avoid giving up their cosy, bloodstained lifestyles.
If we want any chance of saving what little remains of the natural world, we will need to put our egos and blind optimism aside, take responsibility, and base our actions on reality. As Jensen writes in “Beyond Hope”: “when we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free — truly free — to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins.”
We need to realise that grief and anger are normal emotions when something we love is being threatened or destroyed. These emotions are trying to speak to us. We need to stop burying them in denial and start listening, because they are telling us that a line has been crossed. They are showing us where the limits are for what is ethically acceptable for one species to do to an entire planet. They are exposing the direction our hearts want us to go in, showing us where action is needed for true peace of mind. We need these emotions to fuel our motivations, our drive to never stop fighting for what we love, to never stop fighting for what is right.
We have the solution, we just need to get to work.
Featured image: Combine harvesters crop soybeans during a demonstration for the press, in Campo Novo do Parecis, Brazil, on March 27, 2012. By Phys.org.
Soy has become quite fashionable as a “wonder food.” Praised for its nutritional values, soy has the highest protein content of any bean making it a favorite among vegans, animal defenders and even young hipsters who swear by their morning soy latte. For many, however, soy is an ethical and political choice. By switching to soy, we get to spare our bodies and the planet from the harmful effects of the meat and dairy industry, its extensive use of antibiotics and its heavy contribution to the ever-growing climate crisis.
The problem is, soy production is a veritable criminal enterprise. The impressive bean that so many of us love is grown by multinational corporations that poison soil and water with toxic agrochemicals. What’s more, the bean is a Monsanto genetically modified crop the full impacts of which are still unknown. Soy is also used extensively by livestock producers alongside genetically modified corn as a base for animal feed. On top of this toxic burden, the soy agribusiness industry expropriates Indigenous Peoples. Also it destroys forests. And, like the meat and dairy industry, it’s fueling the climate crisis.
Let’s take a closer look at these four interrelated reasons why we need to move away from soy, in its many forms.
1) THE EXPANSION OF SOY MONOCULTURE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MASSIVE DEFORESTATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Growing soy requires vast extensions of land. In fact, it requires so much land that soy monoculture a leading factor in the destruction of the world’s biodiversity. Soy farms now cover more than one million square kilometers of the world – the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The soy agriculture industry is having an especially devastating impact in Amazonia but also in the Cerrado and the Chaco. Almost 4 million hectares of forests are destroyed every year, 2.6 million in Brazil alone, the world’s leading soy producer.
Compounding this rampant devastation, when forests are transformed into farmland, soil quality deteriorates, leading to increased pollution, increased flooding and increased sedimentation that can clog waterways. This can cause a significant decline in fish populations and other life. Agrochemical residues degrade soil even further, along with the local water table and natural processes such as pollination. Such loss of biodiversity is a key factor of climate change.
2) THE GLOBAL SOY INDUSTRY HAS INDIGENOUS BLOOD ON ITS HANDS
The expansion of soy is made possible through land grabbing and by provoking land conflicts. Indigenous Peoples are often the main victims of this expropriation and dispossession and are often forced into urban poverty as a result. Indigenous resistance, however, is brutally repressed.
In Brazil, the Kaiowá-Guarani peoples have denounced over three hundred assassinations. Indigenous peoples defending their land are being killed by private militias hired by large soy corporations like Raizen, Breyfuss, Bunge, Syngenta and the French-Swiss Louis Dreyfus Commodities. “The soy you consume is stained with Guarani Kaiowá blood,” said Valdelice Veron, the daughter of cacique killed by a soy producer in 2003.
One emblematic case was the brutal homicide of a young leader in the state of Mato Grosso in 2014. Marinalva Kaiowá was stabbed 35 times only two weeks after defending the demarcation of Guyraroká lands in a court ruling at the federal Supreme Court in Brasilia. Her killing is, unfortunately, no exception. It is emblematic of a larger massacre. The Kaiowá-Guarani have a homicide rate nearly 500 times higher than the Brazilian average, exceeding that of countries at war.
One in two assassinations of Indigenous peoples in Brazil is related to the expansion of soy. The state of Mato Grosso do Sul, the world’s largest producer of soy, concentrates nearly 55 % of indigenous homicides in Brazil. Historian Marcelo Zelic told a special parliamentary commission that the state accounted for 377 of the 687 recorded cases of Indigenous peoples killed between 2003 and 2014. In other words, the state at the heart of soy’s agribusiness has a rate of Indigenous homicides three times higher than all other Brazilian states together.
Soy expansion is also forcing Indigenous peoples into smaller territories. There are 24 Indigenous territories in Mato Grosso do Sul, but lands for non-Indigenous peoples is 4 inhabitants per sq kilometers, 96 per sq/km for Terena Indians, and 34 per sq/km for the Guarani-Kaiowá.
The expansion of soy on Indigenous territories is feeding a devastating death toll and governments are often accomplice. In Brazil, Congress pleased the soy sector with a new bill (PEC 215) facilitating the redefinition of previously demarcated Indigenous territories into farmland. The law, accused of being unconstitutional, was designed to pursue an even more aggressive expropriation of Indigenous lands in Amazonia.
3) SOY IS A BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY THAT CONCENTRATES LAND AND ACCENTUATES INEQUALITY
Make no mistake. Soy is a massive commercial enterprise that is controlled by a few major landowners and corporations that don’t have our best interests at heart. In Brazil, many farms average 1,000 ha and some reach 50,000 ha (for the soccer aficionados out there, that is about 70,000 soccer fields). In Argentina, the world’s third producer after the USA, soy has replaced small farming, provoking rural migration to the cities and the disappearance of small towns in the Chaco region.
There are no labor benefits either. Since land is concentrated into the hands of few, mechanization drastically reduces farm jobs. When there is labor, it is prone to abuse. For instance, Greenpeace has documented workers being duped into coming to ranches where their papers are taken away and they are forced to work in soy farms.
4) SOY IS PLAIN BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH
Most soybeans are genetically modified to tolerate agrochemical farming, which means they are not only nutritionally inferior but also contain toxic chemicals. While there is little scientific data available on the physiological impacts of GMOs on the human body, GMO soy production is dependent on the heavy use of chemicals that poison our bodies and the environment. A study in Brazil’s Mato Grosso, for example, tested 62 samples of breast milk and found traces of one or more toxic agrochemicals in each and every sample. Not surprisingly, a documentary investigating the impacts of growing soy in South America to feed factory farms in Europe is called Killing Fields.
Monsanto crops have poisoned Argentina. The country’s entire soy crop is genetically modified which has skyrocketed the need for agrochemicals. Today, Argentine farmers apply an estimated 4.3 pounds of agrochemical concentrate per acre, more than twice what farmers in the U.S. rely on. The arrival of Monsanto crops brought birth defects and high rates of cancer among the rural population. But it doesn’t end there. Argentina exports most of its soy to Europe. If you live in Europe, chances are your morning soy latte and that tasty slice of in-house tofu cheesecake you had at lunch is made with Monsanto crops farmed in Argentina.
It’s almost impossible to avoid GM soy these days. Since it was first introduced in 1996, GM soy now dominates the industry comprising some 90% of all soy production. Countries like Argentina and the United States rely almost entirely on GM soy. More than a few local organic soybean businesses have collapsed because their soybeans were allegedly accidentally contaminated with patented strains of GM soy. Some claim that just 0.1% of world production is certified organic soy.
Soy is everywhere and we often eat it without our knowledge or consent. The overwhelming majority of the global soy production (80%) goes to feed animals, especially chickens and pigs, which means we are eating it too. The same goes for dairy products, since soy is also used in cattle feed. Soy is also the second most consumed oil in the world (after palm oil). If you check the labels in your kitchen cupboards you’re bound to find it.
It’s laudable to boycott the global cattle industry for its many harms to the earth, but we cannot reject one contaminating industry to endorse another. That is, unless our goal is to perpetrate a fraud at the expense of Indigenous Peoples, ecosystems and our own bodies.
If that’s not the sort of thing you can stomach we have no choice but to go conflict free. It’s not easy; but, then, nothing good in life ever is.
Modern society — industrial civilization — is built on violence.
This violence goes largely unnoticed. When it is noticed, it’s often seen a series of isolated incidents, rather than a fundamental part of the dominant culture.
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Here is an average morning inside of this culture.
First, you wake up on top of a foam mattress offgassing toxic VOCs that will not biodegrade in 10,000 years. You sit up and put on your clothes — all with tags reading “Bangladesh” and “Puerto Rico” and “Dominican Republic.” These clothes were made by virtual slaves.
You walk downstairs and fill a glass with water from the tap. The water comes from a local river that was dammed 127 years ago. Ever since, native species in the watershed have been in decline. You drink the water.
You pour yourself a bowl of cereal. The cereal is made of wheat and corn grown in what was once the tallgrass prairie of the eastern Great Plains. Ninety nine percent of that habitat – millions of acres – was plowed and utterly destroyed to grow those crops. The soil is gone now; your meal is only possible through fossil fuel fertilizers.
You add milk; it comes from a factory farm nearby, where cattle are packed in next to each other in squalor and pumped full of antibiotics and rBGH (genetically modified growth hormone) to increase production. The cows are in pain; their imprisonment is fouling the land around them. The cereal tastes good.
It’s almost time for work, so you walk down to your car. You’re somewhat environmentally conscious, so you’ve bought an electric car. It makes you feel a lot better. The car has 1000 pounds of lithium-ion batteries under the hood. The lithium for those batteries was strip-mined in the Peruvian desert; the pollution and land destroyed by the mine has devastated local people’s traditional livelihoods. You get inside the car and start the engine. It’s a push-button startup system; there is a fancy LCD screen inside. It’s modern and sleek; you pull away from the curb.
You drive on paved streets to your destination. Under those streets are indigenous burial grounds. There used to be thick old-growth forest here; now it’s a trendy, up-and-coming neighborhood. There are a few run-down houses here and there; the poor people who used to live in this neighborhood and are being forced to move, many after generations here; it’s just the latest set of refugees that have walked through this place.
You pass a police officer. The precursor of the modern police force was the slave patrol in the antebellum South. Many people live in constant fear of them.
It’s cold outside, but inside the car you’re warm and happy. You’re listening to the radio; the transmission towers are responsible for a few hundred thousand bird deaths a year. The radio is on a news station. The news person is talking about the latest bombing campaign your government is conducting. It’s taking place far away; you don’t think about it too much.
You’ve arrived at work. You work at a hospital. The hospital is on a hill. Before the concrete and buildings, there was a meadow here. It was full of flowers in the spring. Insects came from a long way away to eat from the flowers. It made the flowers happy. Many people walked through the meadow in those days. There was a good view from there. Sometimes lovers would walk there to be alone. That all changed when the settlers came with their earth-movers and road-builders.
You park your car, then walk inside. The sun is shining. It’s a nice day. You pass the gardeners working outside, spraying herbicide on the weeds. It wouldn’t do to have weeds. The gardeners have brown skin. They came from Mexico. They used to grow their own food and sell the rest in the village down the road, but after the free trade agreements opened them up to competing with Cargill, they couldn’t stay anymore. They became refugees and crossed the border. Technically, they’re in the country illegally. The land they’re on was part of Mexico before the war.
Inside the hospital, there are people waiting to be seen for appointments. They’re reading magazines. Most the magazines have pictures of women in them. The women aren’t wearing many clothes. They’re being used to sell products. A girl is reading one of the magazines. She looks about 10 years old. The leading cause of death for girls a few years older than her is eating disorders.
Another woman is hoping to have an abortion. She is only 19 years old. The hospital has Catholic roots; she won’t be allowed that level of control over her body and her future.
You walk past them, past examination rooms and surgical rooms and recovery rooms. There are receptacles everywhere for gloves, needles, and other medical waste. All the garbage from this hospital is shipped to an incinerator; it’s illegal to send it to a landfill. The incinerator is located in the middle of a poor neighborhood two states away. The smoke that comes out of its smokestack contains some of the most toxic substances known to science. There is a school a block away from the incinerator. They keep their windows closed and keep the kids inside when the smoke is rising from the facility. It doesn’t help much.
You get to your office. You touch the door as you walk in. It’s made of dense chipboard. The wood in the chipboard used to be an old-growth boreal forest. Formaldehyde and other chemical glues hold it together. Like the light switch, the computer, the examination table, the chairs, the desk, the floor tiles, and the light fixtures, the paint on the door is made from oil. The oil used in these specific light fixtures and floor tiles came from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and Texas and Canada.
You sit down and get to work.
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This was a very partial description of the violence in modern society. Make no mistake: this is a war.
When we are honest about the level of violence in this culture, not resisting becomes a sickening thought.
But false solutions abound; almost all of the solutions put forth to solve these problems of violence continue it in another form, or simply displace it to another area of the world or a new type of impact.
True solutions undermine the ability of industrial civilization to continue its destruction. A longtime military maxim has been that victory requires removing the ability or will of the enemy to continue their fight. This is a situation of planetary self-defense. All options are on the table, from revolutionary law-making to strategic non-violence to coordinated sabotage of industrial infrastructure.
If you’re contemplating entering the fight, remember what Andrea Dworkin famously wrote: “Resist, do not comply.”
The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.
