This episode is a brief snippet preview of our upcoming second full episode, which features an extended conversation with Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith on civilization: what it is, why it is important to understand, and how it affects our work today. In this brief excerpt, Lierre Keith discussed fighting spirit for militants.
Resistance News
May 8, 2019
by Max Wilbert
Deep Green Resistance
https://www.deepgreenresistance.org
Current atmospheric CO2 level (daily high from May 6th at Mauna Loa): 414.49 PPM
A free monthly newsletter providing analysis and commentary on ecology, global capitalism, empire, and revolution. For back issues, to read this issue online, or to subscribe via email or RSS, visit the Resistance News web page. Most of these essays also appear on the DGR News Service, which also includes an active comment section.
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In this issue:
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Revolution is never practical – until the hour of the revolution strikes. THEN it alone is practical, and all the efforts of the conservatives, and compromisers become the most futile and visionary of human imaginings.
— James Connolly, “Socialism Made Easy” (1909)
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New DGR Podcast: The Green Flame
We are proud to announce a new project: The Green Flame, a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
First episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmZHyll9FtQ
Our first episode features Elisabeth Robson on why she calls The Green New Deal a “moral hazard,” a beautiful interview with the incomparable Saba Malik, who shares stories of gifting and receiving, of embracing and defending communities that are worth fighting for, and a poem by Michelle Lynn Jones that will leave you feeling as integrally a part of this living planet as you actually are.
You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere else you get your podcasts. More episodes coming soon.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-green-flame/id1460594346
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/max-wilbert/the-green-flame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DeepGreenResistance/videos
RSS: https://greenflame.libsyn.com/rss
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A Modern Eco-Sabotage Manifesto
[Link] By Max Wilbert
The woman places an arrow on her bow, draws to her cheek, and fires.
The arrow arcs over a high-voltage electrical transmission line, carrying a non-conductive rope. She jogs to her arrow, and begins to reel in the rope. As she pulls it over the lines, a conductive cable is revealed to be attached to its end. As the cable bridges the three-phase power lines, a short-circuit ripples down the lines. Miles away, an aluminum smelter grinds to a halt.
This is the opening of the new film Woman at War from director Benedikt Erlingsson. The film follows a one-woman ecosabotage campaign against the Icelandic aluminum industry.
Whenever I watch a film, especially a film grappling with the ecological crisis, I expect it to disappoint me. Ethan Hawke’s First Reformed, for example, started with a promising premise and then veered into self-flagellation and misogyny.
Woman at War, however, did not disappoint. Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir gives a masterful performance as Halla, a happy middle-aged woman who appears content with her life as a choir director in an Icelandic city. She moves about her life with grace and serenity, riding her bicycle through the streets, swimming in the ocean, and talking with her sister and other friends.
But Halla leads a double life. Her apparently tranquil existence hides her true mission, a campaign against heavy industry that is destroying Iceland. A portrait of Nelson Mandela hangs on her wall at home, a constant reminder that yesterday’s terrorists may become the freedom fighters of history. This is, no doubt, a reference to the ANC sabotage campaigns that Mandela helped to lead in Apartheid South Africa beginning in 1961.
In his testimony when he was sentenced, Mandela describes his reasoning: “I do not deny that I planned sabotage,” he said. “I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.”
The same reasoning is true for eco-saboteurs today. In the era of climate chaos and government inaction, “extreme” acts like ecosabotage are not extreme at all. They are, in fact, some of the most reasonable responses imaginable.
The argument for sabotage in Woman at War is as undeniably real as the industry it tackles. Iceland’s abundant geothermal energy and hydropower extraction give it very low electricity prices, and has made it a global hot spot for aluminum smelting. The three aluminum smelters in Iceland use a full 73 percent of all electricity generated in the country.
Their power is supplied by geothermal energy harvesting facilities as well as a highly controversial hydroelectric dam that was opposed by environmental and community groups in the courts, via protest, and with direct action and ecosabotage. The smelters themselves are major polluters linked to birth defects, cancer, and bone deformations in nearby communities.
In the film, Halla’s attacks are not spontaneous. Like Mandela, she has obviously conducted a rigorous assessment of the situation. Her actions are meticulously planned. She receives intelligence from a friend high in the Icelandic government. She operates carefully, intelligently, implementing reasonable security precautions while avoiding wholesale paranoia.
At one point, Halla evades her face being recorded by a drone by wearing a Nelson Mandela mask, in an echo of Mandela’s words in his book Long Walk to Freedom: “Living underground requires a seismic psychological shift,” Mandela wrote. “One has to plan every action, however small and seemingly insignificant. Nothing is innocent. Everything is questioned. You cannot be yourself; you must fully inhabit whatever role you have assumed… The key to being underground is to be invisible.”
Like any effective underground figure, she follows the maxim that “Clandestine operational activity must be compartment[aliz]ed, it must be planned, it must be short in duration, and it must be rehearsed (or at least, composed of habitual actions).”
Rebecca Solnit, who has written some wonderful things, critiques Woman at War, writing that “our largest problems won’t be solved by heroes.” But Solnit then lauds Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an organization which (like the entire American environmental movement) has failed to stop even the growth of fossil fuel burning. McKibben’s entire approach hinges on a transition to green technology that, as I explain in my forthcoming book Bright Green Lies, has thus far failed to reduce emissions even by a fraction.
In contrast, eco-sabotage groups like MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) have reduced oil output in Nigeria, Africa’s largest producer, by up to 40 percent on a sustained basis.
So which approach is really effective? Show me a country in which mass action has significantly reduced carbon emissions, and perhaps Solnit’s argument would hold more weight. Just two people conducting eco-sabotage against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) were nearly as effective in slowing the construction as tens of thousands were at Standing Rock. Imagine if a few more people had joined them. And a few more. And more.
As director Benedikt Erlingsson said of Halla in a recent interview, “She’s not a terrorist, she’s not creating terror, she’s not harming people. She’s only sabotaging structures. But she is doing what all fighters have been doing: for non-violent protest to work, it always needs to have an economic fist.”
Petitioning those in power to change things simply isn’t working. To have a chance of planetary survival, we need the most direct of direct actions.
Practically, there are a few lessons to be learned from Woman at War. For example, the film showcases perhaps the high end of effectiveness for a single saboteur. By acting in coordinated groups or securely linked cells, a larger number of people could be more effective. Additionally, the film shows the importance of building a culture of resistance. Halla is saved early on by a nearby farmer who detests the transmission lines and police crisscrossing the land his family has lived on for a thousand years. This element shows the importance of building a support network that can house, feed, transport, and otherwise support underground resistance—and won’t ask too many questions.
There is much to love about this film. Aesthetically, it is beautifully done. The music is superb. The Icelandic tundra, glaciers, rivers, hot springs, and stones are a presence all their own, and Halla inhabits this landscape throughout, repeatedly pressing her face into the thick moss as if into the embrace of a dear friend. She also demonstrates quite clearly that, in an asymmetric struggle, bushcrafts, physical fitness, and wilderness travel skills are a serious advantage for clandestine eco-resistance.
Woman at War bypasses American sexualization, casting a strong female lead acting on her own terms, without a hint of objectification. It even tackles prison well, showing that (to quote Mandela once again) “The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s beliefs.”
Ending a movie like this is hard. In reality, revolutionary work is likely to end with prison time, death, or international exile. But Woman at War closes deftly, in the same way it tackles tricky topics like morality, jobs, and family. Halla visits Ukraine to adopt a young girl, and on her return to the airport, is forced to carry her through a slowly-rising flood that has blocked the road. It is tranquil but daunting slow-moving emergency submerging the entire world. A fitting metaphor, then, for the theme of the entire film.
As I finish writing this review, spring is in full bloom. The birds are singing outside my small cabin in the Oregon woods. But I know that the slow-moving floods of climate change, species extinction, toxification, overpopulation, habitat destruction, and refugees are rising. Year by year, we are slipping into a nightmare. Woman at War is not exactly a template, but it is a great beginning point for a movement that could save us from the worst of what is coming, if only we are ready to listen.
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The Legal System Will Not Save the Planet
[Link]
DGR member and lawyer Will Falk explains why the legal and regulatory system is structurally incapable of defending the natural world from threats, because it was never designed to do this. His conclusion is that communities must organize around revolutionary, ecological principles to defend the land themselves. We cannot rely on government to do it for us.
Video here: https://dgrnewsservice.org/resistance/indirect/lobbying/the-legal-system-will-not-save-the-planet/
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The problem with putting a price on nature
[Link] By Beth Robson / Art for Culture Change
I love the cover of the New York Times Magazine, by Pablo Delcan, for this week’s big story, “The Problem with Putting a Price on the End of the World.”
The article discusses the challenge with pricing carbon emissions properly so that we use less fossil fuels: because fossil fuels are so fundamental to every aspect of how we live in this modern culture, to price emissions higher means bringing a world of hurt to people who just want to be able to afford a home, or to commute to work, or put the next meal on the table.
The basic problem with pricing carbon as a solution to climate change is not, as the article states (and most people like to claim), that it is a “market failure”.
The problem is that pricing carbon doesn’t address the underlying issue: that our modern culture is inherently unsustainable, no matter how much we pay for the energy to run it.
The article argues that pricing carbon leads to a sluggish economy, which is bad.
No, what’s bad is the economy, period. Our modern economy is based on continual growth. We can’t “fix” the economy; we have to abolish it. Eliminate it. And to do that we need a vision of what is to replace it (and no, not “clean energy”!!) — because without a vision, people just get angry when they can no longer afford the necessities of life.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, this article pins hopes for the future on “clean” energy (something that doesn’t actually exist), and a growth economy based on renewables, within the framing of shifting away from fossil fuels not because carbon is expensive, but because renewables are a better, cheaper option, cause less pollution and less carbon, and will create jobs (i.e., basically the same argument as The Green New Deal). This approach simply changes the energy source that runs our unsustainable economy; it doesn’t change the underlying problem: the economy and the way we live our lives because of that economy.
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Fighting for the Rights of Southern Resident Orcas
[Link] By Will Falk and Sean Butler / Voices for Biodiversity
On December 18, 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Wild Fish Conservancy threatened the Trump administration with a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for allowing salmon fisheries to take too many salmon, which the critically endangered Southern Resident orcas depend on for food.
The impulse to protect the orcas is a good one. Southern Resident orcas are struggling to survive — only 75 remain. According to the statement by the Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Fish Conservancy, “The primary threats to Southern Resident killer whales are starvation from lack of adequate prey (predominantly Chinook salmon), vessel noise …that interferes with … foraging … and toxic contaminants that bioaccumulate in the orcas’ fat.”
You probably assume, when reading that list of primary threats to the orcas, that the threatened lawsuit would demand an end to these harmful activities. But it doesn’t. Instead, the organizations are merely asking the National Marine Fisheries Service — the agency responsible for issuing permits to Pacific coast fisheries — to deal with alleged violations of the ESA.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Wild Fish Conservancy aren’t asking that activities harmful to Chinook salmon, and consequently to the Southern Resident orcas, be stopped. They aren’t asking for noisy vessels that disturb the whales’ foraging behaviors to be prohibited. They aren’t even asking for an end to the toxic contaminants that accumulate in the whales’ fat.
Why aren’t they asking for any of these things? Because under American law they aren’t allowed to ask for them.
All they are asking is that these harmful activities receive the proper permits.
Right now, laws like the Endangered Species Act are the main legal means for protecting threatened species and habitat in the United States. But these laws only allow us to challenge permit applications and ask that projects complete the permit process.
While it may hard to believe, these permits are designed to give permission to cause harm. Regulatory agencies only regulate the amount of harm that takes place. They do not, and cannot, stop ecocide. Instead they allow for softer, sometimes slower versions of ecocide.
To understand this, it helps to know a bit about how the Endangered Species Act actually works. The Act prohibits any person, including any federal agency, from “taking” an endangered species without proper authorization. “Take” is defined as: “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”
You might expect that the Act completely prohibits any activity that “takes” an endangered species. But it doesn’t. Under the Act, federal agencies may harm members of an endangered species as long as the activity is “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species.”
While that may sound more promising, it isn’t. When a proposed action is likely to jeopardize an endangered species, the agency can then issue an Incidental Take Statement (ITS), which merely sets a limit on the number of individuals of an endangered species that can be taken.
In other words, a species that has already endured so much destruction can legally be further harmed if that harm is in compliance with certain terms and the correct forms are filled out.
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All Oppression is Connected
[Link] By Elisabeth Robson / Art for Culture Change
All oppression is related to resource extraction.
Whether that resource is black Africans forced into slavery, a massive energy resource that powered settler-colonial America….
or the resource is women’s reproductive power, exploited by men who restrict women’s bodily autonomy and oppress women in the process….
or the resource is land taken from indigenous cultures and from wild animals for colonial settlers to farm….
or the resource is land taken from indigenous cultures and from wild animals for wind farms and solar farms…
or the resource is iron ore, copper, gold, coal, oil, gas, or sand taken from the land, taken from indigenous cultures and the poor for corporations and the rich people who run them…
or the resource is fresh clean water and fresh clean air, taken from us all by corporations to use as the dumping ground for their pollution, as commerce reigns supreme and supreme courts grant corporations more rights than people…
all oppression is related to resource extraction.
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Contact Deep Green Resistance News Service
[Link] To repost DGR original writings or talk with us about anything else, you can contact the Deep Green Resistance News Service by email, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Email: newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
Twitter: @dgrnews
Facebook.com/dgrnews
Please contact us with news, articles, or pieces that you have written. If we decide to post your submission, it may be posted here, or on the Deep Green Resistance Blog.
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Further news and recommended reading / podcasts
Deanna Meyer of Prairie Protection Colorado—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—May 5, 2019
Leslie Kline of Triple Divide Seeds—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—April 28, 2019
Thomas Linzey of CELDF—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—April 21, 2019
Irakli Loladze: food nutrition collapse—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—April 14, 2019
23 Reasons Not to Reveal Your DNA
Cities are sucking our countryside dry, scientists say
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How to support DGR or get involved
Bring DGR to your community to provide training
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Although we still have a long way to go before an insurrection, we should consider every struggle, however small, as a school of war to prepare us for those decisive revolutionary moments.
– Jimena Vergara
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to those who will find it valuable. Permission is also granted to reprint this newsletter, but it must be reprinted in whole.
We are proud to announce a new project: The Green Flame, a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Our first episode features Elisabeth Robson on why she calls The Green New Deal a “moral hazard,” a beautiful interview with the incomparable Saba Malik, who shares stories of gifting and receiving, of embracing and defending communities that are worth fighting for, and a poem by Michelle Lynn Jones that will leave you feeling as integrally a part of this living planet as you actually are.
Song: Keep her Safe by Lydia Violet, featuring Joanna Macy
https://lydiafiddle.com/track/1081767/keep-her-safe-feat-joanna-macy
You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere else you get your podcasts. More episodes coming soon.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-green-flame/id1460594346
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/max-wilbert/the-green-flame
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DeepGreenResistance/videos
RSS: https://greenflame.libsyn.com/rss
By Max Wilbert
The woman places an arrow on her bow, draws to her cheek, and fires.
The arrow arcs over a high-voltage electrical transmission line, carrying a non-conductive rope. She jogs to her arrow, and begins to reel in the rope. As she pulls it over the lines, a conductive cable is revealed to be attached to its end. As the cable bridges the three-phase power lines, a short-circuit ripples down the lines. Miles away, an aluminum smelter grinds to a halt.
This is the opening of the new film Woman at War from director Benedikt Erlingsson. The film follows a one-woman ecosabotage campaign against the Icelandic aluminum industry.
Whenever I watch a film, especially a film grappling with the ecological crisis, I expect it to disappoint me. Ethan Hawke’s First Reformed, for example, started with a promising premise and then veered into self-flagellation and misogyny.
Woman at War, however, did not disappoint. Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir gives a masterful performance as Halla, a happy middle-aged woman who appears content with her life as a choir director in an Icelandic city. She moves about her life with grace and serenity, riding her bicycle through the streets, swimming in the ocean, and talking with her sister and other friends.
But Halla leads a double life. Her apparently tranquil existence hides her true mission, a campaign against heavy industry that is destroying Iceland. A portrait of Nelson Mandela hangs on her wall at home, a constant reminder that yesterday’s terrorists may become the freedom fighters of history. This is, no doubt, a reference to the ANC sabotage campaigns that Mandela helped to lead in Apartheid South Africa beginning in 1961.
In his testimony when he was sentenced, Mandela describes his reasoning: “I do not deny that I planned sabotage,” he said. “I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.”
The same reasoning is true for eco-saboteurs today. In the era of climate chaos and government inaction, “extreme” acts like ecosabotage are not extreme at all. They are, in fact, some of the most reasonable responses imaginable.
The argument for sabotage in Woman at War is as undeniably real as the industry it tackles. Iceland’s abundant geothermal energy and hydropower extraction give it very low electricity prices, and has made it a global hot spot for aluminum smelting. The three aluminum smelters in Iceland use a full 73 percent of all electricity generated in the country.
Their power is supplied by geothermal energy harvesting facilities as well as a highly controversial hydroelectric dam that was opposed by environmental and community groups in the courts, via protest, and with direct action and ecosabotage. The smelters themselves are major polluters linked to birth defects, cancer, and bone deformations in nearby communities.
In the film, Halla’s attacks are not spontaneous. Like Mandela, she has obviously conducted a rigorous assessment of the situation. Her actions are meticulously planned. She receives intelligence from a friend high in the Icelandic government. She operates carefully, intelligently, implementing reasonable security precautions while avoiding wholesale paranoia.
At one point, Halla evades her face being recorded by a drone by wearing a Nelson Mandela mask, in an echo of Mandela’s words in his book Long Walk to Freedom: “Living underground requires a seismic psychological shift,” Mandela wrote. “One has to plan every action, however small and seemingly insignificant. Nothing is innocent. Everything is questioned. You cannot be yourself; you must fully inhabit whatever role you have assumed… The key to being underground is to be invisible.”
Like any effective underground figure, she follows the maxim that “Clandestine operational activity must be compartment[aliz]ed, it must be planned, it must be short in duration, and it must be rehearsed (or at least, composed of habitual actions).”
Rebecca Solnit, who has written some wonderful things, critiques Woman at War, writing that “our largest problems won’t be solved by heroes.” But Solnit then lauds Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an organization which (like the entire American environmental movement) has failed to stop even the growth of fossil fuel burning. McKibben’s entire approach hinges on a transition to green technology that, as I explain in my forthcoming book Bright Green Lies, has thus far failed to reduce emissions even by a fraction.
In contrast, eco-sabotage groups like MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) have reduced oil output in Nigeria, Africa’s largest producer, by up to 40 percent on a sustained basis.
So which approach is really effective? Show me a country in which mass action has significantly reduced carbon emissions, and perhaps Solnit’s argument would hold more weight. Just two people conducting eco-sabotage against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) were nearly as effective in slowing the construction as tens of thousands were at Standing Rock. Imagine if a few more people had joined them. And a few more. And more.
As director Benedikt Erlingsson said of Halla in a recent interview, “She’s not a terrorist, she’s not creating terror, she’s not harming people. She’s only sabotaging structures. But she is doing what all fighters have been doing: for non-violent protest to work, it always needs to have an economic fist.”
Petitioning those in power to change things simply isn’t working. To have a chance of planetary survival, we need the most direct of direct actions.
Practically, there are a few lessons to be learned from Woman at War. For example, the film showcases perhaps the high end of effectiveness for a single saboteur. By acting in coordinated groups or securely linked cells, a larger number of people could be more effective. Additionally, the film shows the importance of building a culture of resistance. Halla is saved early on by a nearby farmer who detests the transmission lines and police crisscrossing the land his family has lived on for a thousand years. This element shows the importance of building a support network that can house, feed, transport, and otherwise support underground resistance—and won’t ask too many questions.
There is much to love about this film. Aesthetically, it is beautifully done. The music is superb. The Icelandic tundra, glaciers, rivers, hot springs, and stones are a presence all their own, and Halla inhabits this landscape throughout, repeatedly pressing her face into the thick moss as if into the embrace of a dear friend. She also demonstrates quite clearly that, in an asymmetric struggle, bushcrafts, physical fitness, and wilderness travel skills are a serious advantage for clandestine eco-resistance.
Woman at War bypasses American sexualization, casting a strong female lead acting on her own terms, without a hint of objectification. It even tackles prison well, showing that (to quote Mandela once again) “The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s beliefs.”
Ending a movie like this is hard. In reality, revolutionary work is likely to end with prison time, death, or international exile. But Woman at War closes deftly, in the same way it tackles tricky topics like morality, jobs, and family. Halla visits Ukraine to adopt a young girl, and on her return to the airport, is forced to carry her through a slowly-rising flood that has blocked the road. It is tranquil but daunting slow-moving emergency submerging the entire world. A fitting metaphor, then, for the theme of the entire film.
As I finish writing this review, spring is in full bloom. The birds are singing outside my small cabin in the Oregon woods. But I know that the slow-moving floods of climate change, species extinction, toxification, overpopulation, habitat destruction, and refugees are rising. Year by year, we are slipping into a nightmare. Woman at War is not exactly a template, but it is a great beginning point for a movement that could save us from the worst of what is coming, if only we are ready to listen.
—
Max Wilbert is a third-generation organizer who grew up in Seattle’s post-WTO anti-globalization and undoing racism movement. He is the author of two books.
Resistance News
April 9, 2019
by Max Wilbert
Deep Green Resistance
https://www.deepgreenresistance.org
Current atmospheric CO2 level (daily high at Mauna Loa): 411.33 PPM
A free monthly newsletter providing analysis and commentary on ecology, global capitalism, empire, and revolution. For back issues, to read this issue online, or to subscribe via email or RSS, visit the Resistance News web page. Most of these essays also appear on the DGR News Service, which also includes an active comment section.
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In this issue:
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“[Laws like the Endangered Species act] exist not to protect the natural world, but to neutralize revolutionary energy”.
– Will Falk
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With China no longer accepting used plastic and paper, communities are facing steep collection bills, forcing them to end their programs or burn or bury more waste
[Link] Editor’s note: this article illustrates how recycling is a profit-driven industry operated by and for corporate power. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, recycling will sometimes become more profitable, and sometimes collapse under situations such as this.
By Michael Corkery
Recycling, for decades an almost reflexive effort by American households and businesses to reduce waste and help the environment, is collapsing in many parts of the country.
Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it.
Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases.
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Seattle: A City on the Cutting Edge of Empire
[Link] by Max Wilbert
Seattle is the “cutting edge” of hyper-modern industrially-outsourced capitalism.
This is why, despite having the most progressive city government of any big city in the country, Seattle has been unable to address a crisis of homelessness or pass taxes on big corporations. The liberal, progressive culture of Seattle will never provide real solutions to the problems of capitalism and industrial civilization.
Despite any claims to the contrary, Seattle is an oligarchy run by the rich, for the rich. The city was created as an imperial outpost of a society hellbent on logging all the old growth forest and stealing all the land from the indigenous inhabitants. Today, it has morphed from primarily a lumber and salmon extraction site to a central managerial site for global techno-capitalism.
The psychology of an exploitative colonial state is reflected in Seattle’s dominant news organizations.
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Party With Ecocentric Values Challenges the Political Orthodoxy in Tasmania
[Link] by Dr. Geoff Holloway
Ecocentrism is an all-encompassing concept that covers geo-diversity and biocentrism but extends the latter. Also, by definition, eco-centrism is the basis of calls for the Rights of Nature and is the fundamental basis of Deep Ecology (including Deep Green Resistance). Eco-centrism is the opposite of anthropocentrism. This creates a divide within the Green/environment/conservation movement – but a largely unacknowledged divide (however, United Tasmania Group [UTG] has experienced clashes with the anthropocentric section of this movement).
As Kopnina et al point out (2018), anthropocentrism supports and is based on utilitarianism and human self-interest. They also argue that there is no such thing as ‘good’ anthropocentrism or, for that matter, ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ human interests. I have argued elsewhere about the limitations and consequences of utilitarian and bureaucratic attempts to redefine wilderness (Holloway 2018).
Anthropocentrism is not just about capitalism and economic elites, it is about the ideology that privileges humans above the rest of nature (Kopnina et al, 2017). Also, often over-looked conveniently by leftie conservationists is the fact that ‘socialism’, however defined, is based on (over) exploitation of nature.
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Indigenous Peoples Call for Help After Devastating Wildfires Sweep Through Their Communities
[Link] by Ana Barón / Intercontinental Cry
Este artículo está disponible en español aquí
An unprecedented wave of wildfires has swept through indigenous communities in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Three deaths have been reported, and up to 700 people have been listed in critical condition. In the aftermath of the fires, the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo Peoples have declared a state of emergency and turned to the international community for help.
Located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is one of the world’s highest coastal ranges. Its millenary guardians are the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo, the four indigenous descendant communities of the ancient Tayrona civilization.
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Surviving the Violence of Transactivism: Interview with Ana Marcocavallo from Argentina
[Link] by Luis Velázquez Herrera / FRIA (Independent Radical Feminists of Argentina)
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a group of radical women are about to speak in the middle of a crowd at the assembly “Ni Una Menos” (Not one more woman) that took place anticipating preparations for the coming March 8th, you can listen to the noise and a unison shout against them to “go away!”
There is a man standing beside them yelling with a defying fighting pose, pointing at them aggressively. He is dressed in a plaid miniskirt and white shirt. He is far taller than the average women present.
From the multitude of radical women that are preparing to speak, a woman with a calm expression appears, she wears a black blouse and short hair, asks for the microphone: “Freedom of speech, female partners, freedom of speech”!
Her name is Ana; she knows she is unwelcome, as are her partners from FRIA/Feministas Radicales Independientes de Argentina (Independent Radical Feminists of Argentina) and RADAR Feministas Radicales de Argentina (Radical Feminists of Argentina). They are attending what they thought was a democratic assembly to present their abolitionist stance against sexual exploitation. The man dressed in a miniskirt, who hasn´t stopped threatening them through shouts and flinging fists in the air, throws himself over her to take away the microphone.
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WWF-Funded Guards Helped Poachers, Then Tortured Informant Who Tried to Stop Them
[Link] by Survival International
Park officials in India’s Rajaji Tiger Reserve colluded with poachers in the killing of endangered leopards, tigers and pangolin, according to an investigation by a senior wildlife officer.
The accused officials range from the park director to junior guards. WWF-India boasts that it trained “all Rajaji frontline staff in skills that were vital for protection,” including law-enforcement. It also provided vehicles, uniforms and essential anti-poaching equipment to the guards.
The investigation, reported in India’s Down to Earth magazine, found that not only were officials helping to hunt down and kill wildlife, they also beat and tortured a man named Amit – an innocent villager who was trying to stop the poaching.
Officials are reported to have arrested Amit under false charges, resulting in him being detained for up to a month. He was also beaten and given electric shocks by a wildlife warden and two range officers.
These revelations of serious human rights abuses by guards trained and supported by WWF follow the recent Buzzfeed exposés that WWF funds guards who kill and torture people.
The involvement of those supposed to protect wildlife in hunting is common. A UN report in 2016 confirmed that corrupt officials are at the heart of wildlife crime in many parts of the world, rather than tribal peoples who hunt to feed their families.
Stephen Corry, Survival International’s Director, said today: “Rangers who poach as well as violate human rights won’t surprise those environmentalists who’ve been speaking against fortress conservation for years. Corrupt rangers often collude with poachers, while tribal people, the best conservationists, bear the brunt of conservation abuses.”
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Contact Deep Green Resistance News Service
[Link] To repost DGR original writings or talk with us about anything else, you can contact the Deep Green Resistance News Service by email, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Email: newsservice@deepgreenresistance.org
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Please contact us with news, articles, or pieces that you have written. If we decide to post your submission, it may be posted here, or on the Deep Green Resistance Blog.
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Further news and recommended reading / podcasts
Will Falk—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—March 24, 2019
Karla Mantilla: author of Gendertrolling—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—March 31, 2019
Andrew Glikson, Earth & Paleo-climate scientist—Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio—April 7, 2019
White Shamans & Plastic Medicine Men
Cherry Smiley on Indigenous Feminism
Porn, Trafficking and the Social Construction of Masculinity
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How to support DGR or get involved
Bring DGR to your community to provide training
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“The tough gangster type of detective fiction was of little use [in underground operations], and, in fact, likely to be a danger. Help and support to the Norwegian resistance could only be provided by [people] of character, who were prepared to adapt themselves and their views—even their orders at times—to other people and other considerations, once they saw that change was necessary. Common sense and adaptability are the two main virtues required in anyone who is to work underground, assuming a deep and broad sense of loyalty, which is the basic essential.”
– Colonel John S. Wilson, leader of the Norwegian Section of the Special Operations Executive in British Exile during WWII
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Featured image: Northwest Tasmania. Photo by Joanna Pinkiewicz, Deep Green Resistance Australia.
by Dr. Geoff Holloway
Ecocentrism is an all-encompassing concept that covers geo-diversity and biocentrism but extends the latter. Also, by definition, eco-centrism is the basis of calls for the Rights of Nature and is the fundamental basis of Deep Ecology (including Deep Green Resistance). Eco-centrism is the opposite of anthropocentrism. This creates a divide within the Green/environment/conservation movement – but a largely unacknowledged divide (however, United Tasmania Group [UTG] has experienced clashes with the anthropocentric section of this movement).
As Kopnina et al point out (2018), anthropocentrism supports and is based on utilitarianism and human self-interest. They also argue that there is no such thing as ‘good’ anthropocentrism or, for that matter, ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ human interests. I have argued elsewhere about the limitations and consequences of utilitarian and bureaucratic attempts to redefine wilderness (Holloway 2018).
Anthropocentrism is not just about capitalism and economic elites, it is about the ideology that privileges humans above the rest of nature (Kopnina et al, 2017). Also, often over-looked conveniently by leftie conservationists is the fact that ‘socialism’, however defined, is based on (over) exploitation of nature.
The key ecocentric authors are Helen Kopnina and Haydn Washington (but there are many others), and the key journals are The Ecological Citizen (peer reviewed) and The Ecologist, which also has an email-based discussion group for ecocentrics.
Interview River, northwest Tasmania. Joanna Pinkiewicz
According to year 2000 World Values Survey, the majority of people across the world are concerned for nature first – 76% of respondents across 27 countries said that humanity should co-exist with nature, and only 19% said the humanity should ‘master’ nature (Leiserowitz et al 2005). However, breaking down this positive attitude reveals importance differences. For example, ecocentrism is at variance with scientism, the belief that sentient animals have intrinsic value, or biocentrism, the belief that not just animals but plants also have intrinsic value. As Mikkelson (2019) points out, scientism and biocentrism are both committed to moral individualism; whereas ecocentrism holds that “in addition to the well-being of its constituents parts… overall diversity and integrity within species or ecosystems” count as well. Ecocentrism is the only approach that is totally non-utilitarian or humanity-first in its orientation. Ecocentrism includes maintaining geodiversity and biodiversity (see Washington, 2018, page 137).
The following definition of ecocentrism comes from Gray et al (2018) in The Ecological Citizen:
Ecocentrism see the ecosphere – comprising all the Earth’s ecosystems, atmosphere, water and land – as the matrix which birthed (sic) al life and as life’s sole sustenance. It is a worldview that recognises intrinsic value in ecosystems and the biological and physical elements that they comprise, as well as in the ecological processes that spatially and temporally connect them.
Ecocentrism thus contrasts sharply with anthropocentrism, the paradigm that currently dominates human activities, including responses to ecological crises such as the sixth mass extinction.
There is a simple questionnaire in The Ecological Citizen, Vol. 1, No 2, page 131, if you would like to assess whether you are deep green or ecocentric. There is also a Deep Ecology eight-point platform in The Ecological Citizen, Vol. 2, No 2, 2019, page 182) which may be of interest.
How does one arrive at an ecocentric perspective?
Ecocentrism finds intrinsic value in all of nature – that includes living and non-living parts of nature. Ecocentrism goes beyond biocentrism, which focuses on only living things, not ecological and geological aspects of nature. Scientism and perhaps biocentrism is represented in groups such as Animals Tasmania and its affiliate, the Animal Justice Party. Ecocentrism is an all-encompassing term in contradistinction with anthropocentrism, which is based on utilitarian, human-centred values. Anthropocentrism values non-human life forms through the lens of values for human well-being, interest and profits (Washington et al 2017).
Native orchid, northwest Tasmania. Joanna Pinkiewicz
A few of the key players in the historical development of ecocentrism
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862; Civil Disobedience 1849 and Walden 1854) and John Muir (1838-1914; co-founder of the Sierra Club 1892) are arguably the founders of the wilderness conservation movement in the USA and staunch advocates of the intrinsic value of wilderness, which is the foundation of ecocentrism.
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) – who pointed out in A Sand County Almanac that ‘conservation’ in his day almost invariably focussed on economic interests (Bassham).
Arne Naess (1912-2009) – distinguished between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ ecology. Shallow ecology is human-centred and resonates with the environment movement in Tasmania today. On the other hand, deep ecology is focussed on the inherent value of all things, including flora, fauna, ecosystems, rivers, mountains and landscapes.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964; Silent Spring 1962), Paul R. Ehrlich (1932- ; The Population Bomb 1968), E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977; Small is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered 1973), and Christopher Stone (Should trees have standing? 1972). It was from Stone that UTG first drew its ecocentric set of values, as enunciated in A New Ethic (first published in 1972).
Douglas Tompkins (1943-2015) and Kristine Tompkins (1950- ): The most notable, and practical, of deep ecologists in recent times have been Douglas and Kristina Tompkins who have created millions of acres of national parks and reserves by purchasing vast areas of land in Chile and Argentina then handing them back to the respective governments as national parks. In the world’s largest private donation of land in the world the Tompkins handed over more than a million acres of land to Chile on condition that the Chilean government contributes nearly nine million acres of federally owned land – which it did in 2018, representing an area about the size of Switzerland – as National Parks preserved for posterity (National Geographic 2018). The Tompkins also donated vast areas in Argentina, including 163 thousand acres to Monte Leon National Park, 37 thousand acres to Perito Moreno National Park and 370 thousand acres of land in the Estuaries of Iberá, the second largest wetland on the planet.
David Brower (1912-2000): first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, 1952-1969, which is left and founded the international organisation, Friends of the Earth, in 1969. He came to Tasmania in 1974 and said that he was very impressed with UTG who hosted him.
Christopher D. Stone (1937- ), Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects (1972): This was a seminal article that set the scene for what has recently become an explosion of interest in granting legal rights to non-human species and nature generally. Stone’s publication had a big impact on UTG and is the basis of UTG’s original adherence to ecocentrism.
Since Stone’s seminal work Nature’s Rights have been expanding fast across the world, especially in recent times, but mainly to rivers and lakes. In 2008 Ecuador became the first country to enshrine nature’s rights in its constitution – but implementing these rights is another matter. In 2012 Bolivia also adopted nature’s rights in law, but again, fails to implement them when they clash with development. In 2010 Bolivia passed its own constitutional reform, including the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth but implementation of the principles has been distinctly lacking.
Recent victories include Nature’s Rights for the Vilcabamba River in Ecuador, the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Atrato River in Colombia (May 2017), and since then the entire Colombian Amazon (April 2018) and just recently for Lake Ohio, USA (March 2019). The Colombian Amazon is notable as it was initiated by a group of Colombian young people (Moloney, 2018). This is now being called “the next great rights-based movement” (Wilson and Lee, 2019).
There are on-going campaigns in Mexico, Nigeria and Serbia (where 800 dams are planned!) and several other US communities. In Australia there is the Australia Earth Laws Alliance, which was established in 2012 (Director and co-founder is Dr. Michelle Maloney).
Northwest Tasmania. Joanna Pinkiewicz
Tasmania
While Tasmania used to be at the forefront ecocentrism and Nature’s rights it has been going backwards over recent times. It could be argued that this is largely due to a ‘boys club’ (photo on UTG facebook site) that dominates the movement here. This ‘club’ has seen a shift to what Helen Kopnina and Haydn Washington refer to as ‘anthropocentric conservation’. As they point out, “it is anthropocentrism that hinders an ecologically sustainable solution” to the key battleground for ecocentrism – protected ecosystems, ie, wilderness and national parks and reserves and their management (Kopnina et al, 2017). These anthropocentric conservationists “(who likely consider themselves traditional in their conservation orientation) argue avidly for protecting ‘ecosystem services’ (i.e. services to humanity) are decidedly (if implicitly) anthropocentric” (Washington, 2015). In the Tasmanian context these ‘services’ include bureaucratic management plans, which includes reducing wilderness to a category (as argued by Holloway 2018).
The position held by anthropocentric conservationists is only going to get worse with 1,200 species of birds, mammals and amphibians about to be wiped out across the world (The Guardian, 2019).
Democracy and ecocentrism
Anthropocentric conservationists are very much tied to what Eckersley (2019) calls ‘environmental democracy’ which seeks to work within institutionalised, liberal democracy and has been a spectacular failure in addressing issues beyond local communities or states. ‘Ecological democracy’, on the other hand, offers a critique of these institutionalised politics and seeks to extend human rights to nature. This has given rise to some new organisations, such as Deep Green Resistance, which is developing a new form of radicalism.
Environmental democracy, which began around the time of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and other such publications, has run its course and the result is an increasing number of failures in environmental campaigns (the most notable being climate change). Also, environmental democracy tends to focus on procedural rights and legal processes with less and less achievement in terms substantive environmental rights and environmental successes (Eckersley 2019, page 7) – again, this can be traced back to a failure to endorse ecocentrism.
Another example of the limitations of environmental democracy is what I call the 10% barrier, which afflicts most Green parties across the world. This barrier is rarely crossed – despite nearly fifty years of Green parties. For this reason UTG is developing into a new form of political organisation – a network of autonomous but linked, non-hierarchical, community campaigns, rather than the oligarchical branch structure of the old parties and environment organisations (which includes the Greens).
As Eckersley (2019, page 11) summarises it,
Unlike the first iteration of ecological democracy, this new iteration seeks to connect ecology and democracy in everyday life by creating new and more ecologically responsible material practices in collective, embodied, and prefigurative ways. This is a marked shift in focus away from representative democracy ‘from above’ and towards more radical and participatory forms of democracy ‘from below’ through the creation of ‘publics’ and self-organising movements.
As Lepori points out (in Eckersley 2019), “…whereas institutionalised democracy is mostly simulated and excludes ordinary people; it is ‘where democracy goes to die’” (my emphasis).
How has this slow death come about?
Unfortunately, much of the energy of the ecocentrism of the 1970s seems to have dissipated in the smoke trails of hippy communities, Eastern mysticism and the romanticisation of indigenous peoples ‘Earth-wisdom’ – and that continues today in some parts of the Nature’s Rights movement. This is not to say that there is no Earthwisdom within indigenous communities, just that I am not sure about various interpretations. Also, it is debatable as to whether indigenous perspectives are ecocentric, especially given survivability issues concerning some species (e.g. mutton birds).
The indigenous starting point is that there is no such thing as ‘wilderness’ (even though it is accepted by the IUCN that indigenous people living in wilderness areas does not preclude an area being declared a wilderness, not to mention having World Heritage status).
Given the exploitative threats by tourism wilderness and national park exploitation strategies and the rapidly accelerating impacts to climate change there is a need to work together, with ecocentrism having primacy. As Washington et al (2018) have argued, there can be no ecojustice without ecocentrism and as Washington et al (2017) have also argued “ecocentrism is the key to sustainability”.
References
AIDA Americas, 2016. https://aida-americas.org/en/blog/invaluable-legacy- douglastompkins
Bassham, Gregory. Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic: A Critique. Chapter 6.
Eckersley, Robyn, 2019. Ecological democracy and the rise and decline of liberal democracy: looking back, looking forward, Environmental Politics, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1594536
Gray, Joe, Ian Whyte & Patrick Curry, 2018. Ecocentrism: what it means and what it implies. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 1, No 2.
Holloway, Geoff, 2018. Review. Refining the definition of wilderness, Tasmanian Times, https://tasmaniantimes.com/2018/08/refining-the-definition-of-wilderness-by-hawesdixon-bell/
Kopnina, Helen, 2017. Ecocentrism: a personal story. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 1, Supplement A.
Kopnina, Helen, Haydn Washington, Joel Gray & Bron Taylor, 2017. “The ‘future of conservation’ debate: Defending ecocentrism and the Nature Needs Half movement”, Biological Conservation, January 2018.
Kopnina, Helen, Haydn Washington, Bron Taylor & John Piccolo, 2018. Anthropocentrism: More than just a misunderstood problem. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Volume 31, Issue 1.
Leiserowitz, Anthony, Robert Kates & Thomas Parris, 2005. Do global attitudes and behaviors support sustainable development? Environment, Volume 47, Number 9.
Mikkelson Gregory, 2019. Holistic versus individualistic non-anthropocentrism. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 2, No 2.
Moloney 2018
National Geographic, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/chile-newnational-parks-10-million-acres-environment/
The Guardian 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar /13/almostcertain-extinction-1200-species-under-severe-threat-across-world
Washington, Haydn, 2015. Demystifying Sustainability: Towards Real Solutions. Routledge, London.
Washington, Haydn, 2018, The intrinsic value of geodiversity. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 1, No 2.
Washington, Haydn, Bron Taylor, Helen Kopnina, Paul Cryer & John Piccolo, 2017. Why ecocentrism is the key pathway to sustainability. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 1, No 1.
Washington, Haydn, Guillaume Chapron, Helen Kopnina, Patrick Curry, Joel Gray & John Piccolo, 2018. Foregrounding ecojustice in conservation. Biological Conservation. Volume 228.
Wilson, Grant & Darlene May Lee, 2019. Rights of rivers enter the mainstream. The Ecological Citizen, Vol 2, No 2.
Geoff Holloway is an Australian author, poet, conservationist and political activist.
He is a sociologist, as well as activist within the United Tasmania Group in its earlier iteration, and later
He was one of the individuals present at the change of the focus of the former South West Tasmania Action Committee that led to the founding of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society in 1976.
He is also author of works about conservation and environment groups in Tasmania.
Geoff is also an active political ally to women in Women Speak Tasmania group.