Two hundred species went extinct today. The last individual from each of these 200 species dies each day. Merely fifteen years ago, that number was 150. While extinctions are a natural process, the scale of the current mass extinction is a direct result of industrial civilization. In this article, Rebecca writes about her grief for all her lost kins, and about some groups who are actively working to save some of the remaining ones.
Hearing the last song of a male Kauai ‘O’o tears me up. He was singing for a female who will never come. Now his lovely voice is gone too. I cry for him, and for all the species we have lost. First listed as endangered in 1967, the Kauai ‘O’o lived in the forests of Kaua’i, and was extinct 20 years later, after their habitat was destroyed by human activity.
One in a million species expires naturally each year, but now extinctions are happening 1,000 times faster. Humans are driving species extinct more rapidly than ever before in the history of the planet. Since the dawn of industrial civilization, we have lost eighty-three percent of wild mammals and fifty percent of plants, and a million more species are at risk —all largely as a result of human actions.
Everywhere there is life, there is song.
The planet is always singing. Humans are meant to live in sync, our unique note resounding within the symphony. Instead, our dominant culture is killing all the other voices, one by one, as if removing instruments from an orchestra. Some birds have forgotten their song, like the once abundant regent honeyeater. Now critically endangered, they are unable to find other honeyeaters and hear their songs.
The world needs the bitter and resonant cry of every creature, even our own deep voices, attuning with the song of the world. As a wilderness and soul guide, I invite people to listen to the voices of all the others and remember their own unique notes, the mythic purpose of their souls. I was made for this work. Yet it is not enough to stop the destruction of the last remaining wild species.
Whistling
Did the Kauai ‘O’o know he was calling out to an empty world? “The costs of civilization are too high,” his song pierces me. “Remember the connection we once had.” The first human words sounded like birds. Humans and birds evolved from a common ancestor, a reptile millions of years ago. Both grew to form complex vocalizations and social groups. Rare whistling languages, often called bird languages, used to be found all over the world. The truest voices of our ancestors, they are now heard only in a handful of places with scattered settlements or mountainous terrain.
In south-western Costa Rica, I lived amongst the Guaymi people in rustic dwellings, eating home-grown rice and beans in banana leaves. We taught each other, in Spanish, our first languages. When the Guaymi whistled to each other, the sound traveled a great distance through the rainforest. They looked beautiful with their heads and bodies vibrating, faces and lips moving wildly to form the unusual sounds.
In the foothills of the Himalayas, the Hmong people speak in whistles. In their courtship rituals, now rarely-performed, boys would wander through nearby villages at nightfall, whistling poetry. If a girl responded, the dialogue would continue. The lovers added nonsense syllables to assure the secrecy of their melody.
Longing
“Is anyone alive out there?” the Kauai ‘O’o sings, but there is no reply, nor will there ever be again. Is he sorrowful? That is what I feel when I sense what is happening and read things like of all the mammals now on Earth, ninety-six percent are livestock and humans—only four percent are wild mammals.
Tears flow. I long for a world more alive than the one we inhabit. For rivers to run clear and flocks of birds to fill the sky. Ancient trees to cover the land. Oceans to teem with whales and coral. For machines that mine coal, oil, and trees to be dismantled. For people to stop extracting and start honoring. For lost cultures and species to return, and be driven out no more.
Longing is prayer, and prayer is a conversation. If we listen to nature and our dreams, we can be guided towards the actions that matter most. If we ask and await the mystery, we can receive a response and then embody what is asked. Prayer is what we become when we offer our lives in creative service.
Will civilization collapse first, before the biosphere?
Or after all species and wild places are already gone? Species can’t survive without unspoiled habitat, but there is less every day. Even in the wake of late-stage global capitalism, I long for a sustainable society, rooted in an ethical approach in its relationship with the land, honoring the voices of river, bird, rock, and tree.
These collaborative relationships have existed for millennium. The Yao people still team up with the honeyguide bird in sub-Saharan Africa to hunt for honey. Using a series of special chirps, humans and birds communicate with each other. The honeyguide birds lead the way to hidden beehives, and the Yao people share the sweetness with their avian friends.
Protecting
Is the Kauai ‘O’o aware this is his last message to the world? What will humanity’s last song be? The last passenger pigeon died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. She had a palsy that made her tremble and never laid a fertile egg in her life. In the 19th century, passenger pigeon migrations darkened the sky. Flocks took hours to pass and were so loud that human conversation was impossible. These birds sustained people through the winter. By the mid-1890’s, flock sizes numbered in the dozens rather than hundreds of billions.
Passenger pigeons were hunted out of existence. After the invention of the telegraph and the railroad, the commercial pigeon industry boomed. Hunters killed them in their nesting grounds and harvested the squabs. No one stopped when their numbers crashed. People slaughtered them until the end. In the 19th century, people did not believe they could drive a species to extinction. This seems to mirror a denial still present today. Most people do not believe humans are destroying the biosphere of the living planet.
“People need these jobs,” the passenger pigeon industry said to avoid restrictions on hunting. Industries today make similar claims, as their mines, dams, and industrial agriculture clear cut and pave over ecosystems, poison rivers and the sea, and dry up underground aquifers.
Indigenous peoples have always been the Earth’s greatest defenders.
Indigenous people protect eighty percent of global diversity, even though they comprise less than five percent of the world’s population. The Earth needs more people to stand in solidarity. I wonder if the Kauai ‘O’o felt as desperate as I do, if he understood that the planet is being plundered. I imagine myself singing alongside him, calling out—are you out there? What will you do to protect the beloved Earth?
Industry plans to destroy a critical corridor for pronghorn antelope and mule deer, nesting ground for golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, and prairie falcons. Lithium Americas is slated to build a lithium mine on Thacker Pass. They say it will provide jobs. Falsely, they call it green to manufacture belief that it somehow will not destroy the biosphere. Five to eight percent of the global population of endangered sage-grouse live there.
The watershed is home to the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout and the endemic King’s River pryg. I invite you to join environmentalists Max Wilbert and Will Falk in protesting the mine. I will be joining them the last two weeks of April.
The songs of eagles, hawks, falcons, and sagebrush are priceless and irreplaceable.
This is the video that inspired Rebecca’s article.
Written By Max Wilbert and originally published on January 25, 2021 in Sierra Nevada Ally. In this article Max describes the plans for an industrial scale lithium mine, the harm this will cause and why we need to protect the area for endangered species.
Thacker Pass landscape. Image: Max Wilbert
On January 15th, my friend Will Falk and myself launched a protest occupation of the proposed lithium mine site at Thacker Pass, Nevada. We have set up tents, protest signs, and weathered more than a week of winter weather to oppose lithium mining, which would destroy Thacker Pass.
You might already be wondering: “Why are people protesting lithium? Isn’t it true that lithium is a key ingredient in the transition to electric cars, and moving away from fossil fuels? Shouldn’t people be protesting fossil fuels?”
Let me put any rumors to rest.
I am a strong opponent of fossil fuels and have fought against the industry for over a decade. I’ve fought tar sands pipelines, stopped coal trains, and personally climbed on top of heavy equipment to stop fossil fuel mining.
Now I’m here, in northern Nevada, to try and stop lithium mining. That’s because, in terms of the impact on the planet, there’s little difference between a lithium mine and an open-pit coal mine. Both require bulldozing entire ecosystems. Both use huge amounts of water. Both leave behind poisoned aquifers. And both are operated with massive heavy machinery largely powered by diesel.
The encampment at Thacker Pass. Image: Max Wilbert
I want people to understand that lithium mining is not “good” for the planet.
Sure, compared to coal mining, a lithium mine may ultimately result in less greenhouse gas emissions. But not by much. The proposed Lithium Americas mine at Thacker Pass would burn more than 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel every day, according to the Environmental Impact Statement. Processing the lithium would also require massive quantities of sulfur—waste products from oil refineries. One local resident told me they expect “a semi-truck full of sulfur every 10 minutes” on these rural, quiet roads.
This is not a “clean transition.” It’s a transition from one dirty industrial energy source to another. We’re making the argument for something completely different, and more foundational:degrowth. We need economic contraction, relocalization, and to stop using and wasting so many resources on unnecessary consumer products.
When people think about wilderness and important habitat, they generally don’t think of Nevada. But they should. Thacker Pass is not some empty desolate landscape. It’s part of the most important Greater sage-grouse habitat left in the state. This region has between 5-8% of all remaining sage-grouse, according to Nevada Department of Wildlife and BLM surveys.
Thacker Pass is home to an endemic snail species, the King’s River pyrg, which biologists have called “a critically imperiled endemic species at high risk of extinction” if the mine goes forward. Burrowing owls, pygmy rabbits, golden eagles, the threatened Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, and hundreds of other species call this place home, watershed, or migration corridor.
Thacker Pass is home to important old stands of Big sagebrush who are increasingly rare in Nevada and threatened by global warming.
One biologist who has worked in Thacker Pass, and who asked to remain unnamed for fear of retaliation, told me the Thacker Pass area “has seen the rapid decline of native shrubland/bunchgrass communities that form the habitat foundation.” He continued, “Those communities (particularly sagebrush) are already under tremendous stress from the dual-threat of invasive annual grasses (especially cheatgrass) and the increased fire returns that those volatile fuels cause.”
Now the BLM is permitting Lithium Americas corporation to come bulldoze what is left, tear away the mountainside for some 50 years, and leave behind a moonscape.
We are engaging in direct action and protest against this mine because the public process is not working. Despite sustained opposition, BLM ignored serious concerns about this mine and “fast-tracked” this project under the direction of the Trump Administration. We mean to stop the mine with people-power.
If you are interested in joining us, visit our website, to learn more about getting involved. And speak out on this issue. We can’t save the planet by destroying it. Transitioning away from fossil fuels and fixing humanity’s broken relationship with the planet will require a more critical approach. Follow
The first time I saw a coyote with mange my heart broke.
Most of her fur was gone. Her skin, covered with scabs and lesions, had a sickly pink pallor. Her tail seemed stuck between her legs. And, her movements, as she stumbled through a ditch next to a Colorado country road, were lethargic and listless. Just the sight of her made my own skin chafe and itch. As I hugged myself to ward away the horror, my fingernails dug into my own skin, scratching at the backs of my arms. The experience educated me in the realest ways about what the phrase “it made my skin crawl” truly means.
After witnessing this, I had to know more about what I had seen. I learned that this coyote was suffering from what scientists call sarcoptic mange, which is caused by mites who live in the skin of many wild canids. In burrowing into the animals’ skin to lay their eggs, these mites cause intense irritation and itchiness, scabbing, and hair loss. An animal affected by mange can develop secondary bacterial skin infections, too. Worst of all, mange can be fatal for animals if left untreated. With the loss of their fur, animals affected by mange often freeze to death. And, if the cold doesn’t kill them, those secondary bacterial skin infections exacerbated by excessive scratching will.
While mange does occur naturally,
recent research suggests that the widespread use of anticoagulant rodenticides – a type of rat poison – weakens the immune systems of animals and makes them more susceptible to mange. A 2017 study linked anticoagulant exposure to mange in bobcats, for example. Notoedric mange – which affects felines and is closely related to the sarcoptic mange that affects coyotes – ravaged the population of urban bobcats at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in southern California from 2002-2005. After mange was detected in 2001, the average annual survival of these bobcats plummeted by 49%. Mange-infected bobcats were necropsied and 98% of infected individuals had been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides. These bobcats also had greater amounts of anticoagulant rodenticides than bobcats who did not die with mange.
After reading the results of the bobcat study, and against my better judgment, I was compelled to find images of bobcats with mange. I was met with the stares of blue-eyed bobcats, stripped of fur and looking like hairless, Sphynx cats. Unlike Sphynx cats, these bobcats weren’t bred selectively to be hairless. Their hair had been stripped and their skin ravaged by mites because they had eaten rodents who had eaten too many anticoagulant rodenticides.
What exactly are anticoagulant rodenticides?
Anticoagulant rodenticides are widely used as a cheap and effective means for killing rodents. These rodenticides disrupt coagulation and cause fatal hemorrhaging. In simple terms, rodenticides cause the creatures who eat them to bleed more easily. Similar to the way a minor wound to a human taking a blood-thinner can cause a human to bleed out, rodents who have ingested anticoagulant rodenticides bleed to death.
Rodents exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides don’t just bleed to death – they bleed to death slowly. Rodents are very intelligent. They are so intelligent, in fact, that the use of toxins that immediately harm a rodent have proven to be completely ineffective because rodents learn not to eat things that instantaneously kill their kin. Anticoagulant rodenticides are effective because they can be mixed with rodents’ favorite foods as bait and the 3-7 days it takes for exposure to kill rodents makes it very difficult for them to understand what is killing them.
Anticoagulant rodenticides have been in use since the late 1940s, and by the early 1980s, genetic resistance to what are now called “first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides” was reported in rats and mice around the world. These first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides include the chemicals diphacinone, warfarin, coumatetralyl, and chlorophacinone and they killed rodents only after prolonged or repeated exposure. Due to genetic resistance, second-generation anticoagulants developed. These chemicals – which include difenacuom, brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, and flocoumafen – are much more potent, have a longer half-life, and can kill rodents after only one feeding. This potency poses an increased risk of harm non-target species.
Inevitably, predators who eat rodents are exposed to the rodenticides ingested by their prey.
In one study, 70% of mammals tested in California were found to have been exposed to anticoagulants. Anticoagulant rodenticides were detected in 49% of the raptors tested in New York City, including in 81% of the great horned owls tested. A study of three species of owls in British Columbia and the Yukon detected anticoagulant rodenticides in 62% of barn owls, 92% of barred owls, and 70% of great horned owls. In sum, the Canadian researchers detected anticoagulant rodenticides in 70% of 164 owls. They also confirmed that rodenticides killed two barn owls, three barred owls, and one great horned owl.
As described above, rodents usually do not die for several days after consuming a lethal dose. This means they may continue to move through habitat shared with predators and they may continue to feed on poisoned bait. Additionally, rodents – exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides and who may be hemorrhaging internally – spend more time in open areas, stagger as they move, and sit motionless before death. All of this makes them easier prey for predators.
Coyotes, and especially urban coyotes, rely heavily on rodents for food.
It appears anticoagulant rodenticides are harming coyotes. Scientists in the Denver metropolitan area, for example, researching the effects of anticoagulant rodenticides on coyotes, found a dead juvenile male with no obvious external injuries or other signs of trauma. However, when they necropsied the young coyote, they “found free blood in the abdominal cavity” and “a puncture wound [that] was present on the left side of the body overlying the spleen but not penetrating the abdominal wall.” They determined that the coyote died from “acute severe hemorrhage, disproportionate to the amount of trauma observed.” The coyote’s liver tested positive for an anticoagulant rodenticide. In other words, it’s likely that the rodenticide in the coyote’s body turned a minor injury lethal.
These scientists found another young male coyote dead on a two-lane road “with minor evidence of skin tearing over the ventral neck and chest.” When they necropsied the coyote, they found that the coyote’s chest was filled with blood and they concluded that the coyoted was killed by “severe acute hemorrhage, disproportionate to the mild to moderate trauma received from being hit by a vehicle.” The scientists suspected rodenticide exposure. And, sure enough, the coyote’s liver tested positive for two types of anticoagulant rodenticides. Again, rodenticides turned a small injury into a coyote’s death.
There have been many more studies demonstrating the harmful effects anticoagulant rodenticides have on non-rodent species.
Some of these studies include harmful effects on buzzards, mountain lions, otters, endangered European mink, polecats, and, even, freshwater fish. Anticoagulants, in fact, act on all vertebrates – not just the rodents they’re intended for. Scientists have also discovered anticoagulant rodenticides in raw and treated wastewater, sewage sludge, estuarine sediments, and particulate matter suspended in the air.
For brevity’s sake, I’ll stop here. But, it bears mentioning that as I sifted through study after study describing the havoc anticoagulant rodenticides wreak on natural communities and felt my stomach grow increasingly sour, I learned the literal meaning of another phrase: ad nauseum. It is also important to remember that, despite the amount of studies being conducted on the effects of anticoagulant rodenticides on non-target wildlife, scientists caution us that most of this poisoning remains undetected because the necropsy and liver analysis required is labor and cost intensive. Similarly, unless an animal is being tracked through radiotelemetry, finding dead animals in a non-decomposed state, is difficult.
***
After learning about problems with anticoagulant rodenticides, the torturous manner in which these chemicals kill, and how they are making predators of rodents more susceptible to mange, most people want to know:
What can I do?
This is the wrong question. Don’t ask: What can I do? Ask: What needs to be done? What do bobcats – blue eyes unblinking despite the pain of internal hemorrhaging – need us to do? What do coyotes – scraping their inflamed skin against fence posts, the corners of concrete walls, and rough tree trunks – need us to do? What do rodents – intelligent, sociable, and bleeding to death – need us to do?
Rodents, and all those who eat them, need us to stop the manufacture and application of anticoagulant rodenticides. And, they need this to happen as quickly as possible. This is, of course, much easier said than done.
Individual home or other property owners, as opposed to government or business entities, account for a portion of total anticoagulant rodenticide use. If these individuals could be convinced to live and let rodents live, or to employ non-lethal, non-toxic measures such as blocking holes and other openings rodents use to access buildings, practicing better sanitation, or trapping rodents and removing them to better habitat, then the total use of anticoagulant rodenticides could be reduced.
There are barriers making it unlikely that individual property owners will forego the use of anticoagulant rodenticides:
First, fear of rodents is so pervasive in the dominant culture that there are multiple words to describe this fear including musophobia (fear of mice specifically), murophobia (fear of the taxonomic family Muridae, which includes mice and rats), and suriphobia (which comes from the French souris meaning “mouse”). Similarly, calling someone a “rat” is a grave insult.
Second, anticoagulant rodenticides are simply more economical. Sealing up holes in a house and live-trapping rodents can be costly and can require much more labor than using poison. In fact, a member of California’s Department of Consumer Affairs, Structural Pest Control Board recently estimated that pest control services employing only sanitation, exclusion of rodents, and removal of harborage can be 2-5 times more costly than using rodenticide due to labor and material costs.
I want to be clear here: I am not saying we shouldn’t try to convince everyone we can to stop using anticoagulant rodenticides. This is, of course, one reason I wrote this piece. I am saying, however, that coyotes, bobcats, other predators of rodents, and rodents, themselves, need us to do much more than to simply refuse to stop using anticoagulant rodenticides in our own homes.
Many people assume that if homeowners stopped using these rodenticides the problem would go away. Unfortunately, this is not the case. National and global anti-rodenticide market data are protected by business privacy laws as
“confidential business information.”
However, it’s safe to say that while individual, residential use of anticoagulant rodenticides accounts for a portion of global rodenticide use, governments and agricultural corporations are likely the biggest users of anticoagulant rodenticides.
Statistics from California tend to support this point. In 2012, California imposed stricter regulations on second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides including restricting sales of these chemicals to the general public. Then, in 2014, they imposed a new round of restrictions that were specifically intended to restrict the access of homeowners to second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. But, using data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s Pesticide Use Reporting database, it does not appear that the amount of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides applied between 2012-2017 was significantly reduced despite the new regulations.
So, if homeowners are only part of the problem, and governments and corporations are the worst offenders, how do we stop governments and corporations from using anticoagulant rodenticides?
A common response is: change the law. It is highly unlikely, however, that governments will ever impose a true ban on anticoagulant rodenticides. The agricultural lobby is one of the most powerful political forces in American politics. Meanwhile, in the United States, rodents are responsible for an estimated $19 billion in economic damages annually through the consumption and contamination of stored grains. Rodents don’t just pose a threat to agricultural interests, either. A British study, which attempted to determine the cost of physical damage to the built environment caused by rodents, estimated that rodents cost the British economy £200 million per year.
An astute reader may be saying to herself: “Didn’t California recently ban anticoagulant rodenticides?” And, of course, despite the headlines, California did not ban anticoagulant rodenticides. To understand this, we must look to the actual text of the California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2020 (also known as Assembly Bill No. 1788). Courts applying law do not rely on newspaper headlines – they rely on what a piece of legislation actually says.
The pertinent section (12978.7(c)) reads:
“Except as provided in subdivision (e) or (f), the use of any second generation anticoagulant rodenticide is prohibited in this state until the director makes the certification described in subdivision (g).”
So, first, the prohibition only applies to second generation anticoagulant rodenticides and excludes the less potent but still deadly first generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
Second, if we scroll down to the exceptions provided in subdivisions (e) and (f), we see how hollow this “prohibition” really is. Subdivision (e) declares that the prohibition does not apply to governmental agency employees who use second generation anticoagulant rodenticides for public health activities or for protecting water supply infrastructure and facilities; to mosquito or vector control districts; to efforts to eradicate nonnative invasive species on offshore islands; to efforts to control an actual or potential rodent infestation associated with a public health need, as determined by a declaration from a public health officer; or for further research into the dangers posed by second generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
Subdivision (f) creates exceptions to the prohibition for medical waste generators and for “agricultural activities” conducted at warehouses used to store foods for human and animal consumption; slaughterhouses; canneries; factories; breweries; an agricultural production site housing water storage and conveyance facilities; and agricultural production sites housing rights-of-way and other transportation infrastructure.
The power of agricultural interests should be clear from these lists of exceptions to this so-called “prohibition” on second generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
It should also be clear that the California Ecosystems Protection Act of 2020 has not banned anticoagulant rodenticides. At best, the law simply prevents individual homeowners and property owners from using a subset of anticoagulant rodenticides while exempting those who likely use second generation rodenticides the most.
To repeat, it is unlikely that governments will ever truly ban anticoagulant rodenticides. This does not mean that we have no power to stop the manufacture and application of these poisons. It is true that we must raise awareness about the harms of anticoagulant rodenticides. And, anyone who reads this, please, please stop using these toxic chemicals. Similarly, pushing for legislation to limit the use of anticoagulant rodenticides can help. But, if we truly want to protect rodents, and the predators who eat them, from horrible deaths, and if we truly want to keep these poisons out of the natural communities we depend on for life, we will have to do it ourselves.
As with any truly effective tactic that impedes humans’ ability to destroy the natural world, stopping anticoagulant rodenticides will require exceptional bravery. To find that bravery, I return to the first mangy coyote I saw. If it was me, and my skin was covered in itchy sores and lesions, my organs were hemorrhaging blood, and my movements were growing ever slower, I’d likely give in, lay down, and let death take me.
But, that first mangy coyote I watched struggle to keep moving through a roadside ditch did not give up. She kept moving in an effort to fulfill her species’ ancient role as a trickster lesson-giver. She wanted us to see her. She wanted us to know what happened to her. And, she wanted us to stop those who hurt her.
Will Falk is a DGR member, lawyer for the natural world and is currently journeying in conversation with the Ohio River. You can read about Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.
Paintings in this post are by Micaela Amateau Amato from Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era.
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House —Audre Lorde
As with our shift from our systemically racist culture to one rooted in mutual respect for multiplicity and difference, we must practice caution during our transition out of our global petroculture. This vigilance should not be based on the motivation, but on the underlying false assumptions and strategies that perceived sustainability and “alternative” agendas offer. The implicit assumptions embedded in the concept of sustainability maintains the status quo. At this juncture of geopolitical, ecological, social, and corporeal catastrophes, we must critically question clean/green solutions such as the erroneously-named Renewable Energies Revolution. I suggest we face both the roots and the implications of how perceived solutions to our climate crisis, like “renewable” energies, may unintentionally sustain ecological devastation and global wealth inequities, and actually divert us from establishing long-term, regenerative infrastructures.
On the surface, sustainability agendas appear to offer critical shifts toward an ecologically, economically, and ethically sound society, but there is much evidence to prove that #1: these structural changes must be accompanied by a psychological shift in individuals’ behavior to effectively shut down consumer-waste convenience culture; and, #2: the core of too many green/clean solutions is rooted in the very essence of our climate crisis: privatized, industrialized-corporate capitalism. For example, in his The Age of Disinformation1, Eric Cheyfitz alerts us: The Green New Deal is a “capitalist solution to a capitalist problem.” It claims to address the linked oppressions of wealth inequity and climate-crisis, yet its proposed solutions avoid the very roots of each crisis.
My challenge is rooted in three interrelated inquiries:
How are our daily choices reinforcing the very racist systems we are questioning or even trying to dismantle?
How are the alternatives to fossil-fuel economies and environmental racism reinforcing the very systems we are questioning or even trying to dismantle?
What can we learn from indigenous philosophies and socialist ecofeminist movements in order to establish viable, sustainable, regenerative infrastructures—an Ecozoic Era?
As we transition to supposedly carbon-free electricity, we must be attentive to the ways in which we unconsciously manifest the very racist hegemonies we seek to dislodge; we must be cautious of the greening-of-capitalism that manifests as “green colonialism” through a new dependency on what is falsely identified as “renewable” energies. Currently, human and natural-world habitat destruction are implicit in the mass production and disposal infrastructures of most “renewable energies:” solar, wind, biomass/biofuels, geothermal, ethanol, hydrogen, nuclear, and other ostensible renewables2.
This includes our technocratic petroleum-pharmaceutical addictions that use technologies to create “sustainability.” Even if policy appears to be in alignment with environmental ethics, we are consistently finding that policy change simply replaces one hegemony, one cultural of domination, with another—particularly within the framework of neoliberal globalization. Only when we acknowledge the roots of our Western imperialist crisis, can we begin to decolonize and revitalize all peoples’ livelihoods and their environments.
Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era3, my climate justice book that explores the perils of the Anthropocene, challenges cultural habits deeply embedded in our calamitous trajectory toward global ecological and cultural, ethnic collapse. The book’s main character reflects: “We have this crazy idea that anything ‘green’ is good—but we know that there is no clear-cut good and evil. What happens when the very solution causes more problems than the original problem it was supposed to fix?”
How we measure our ecological footprint4 and global biocapacity is often riddled with paradox—particularly in the face of green colonialism, or what I call humanitarian imperialism5. The litany of our collusion with corporate forms of domination is infinite within the Anthropocene Era (increasingly characterized as the Plasticene). Disinformation campaigns spread by fossil-fuel interests deeply root us in assimilationist consumerism. The Zazu Dreams’ characters witness social and environmental costs of subjugating others through both fossil-fuel-obsessed economies and their “green” replacements. Vaclav Smil warns us of this “Miasma of falsehood.” This implies replacing one destructive socializing norm—petro-pharma cultures sustained by fossil-fuel addicted economics—with another: purportedly “renewable” energies. These energies (I don’t call them renewable, because they are not “renewable” and not carbon-free)6, like fossil-fuels, are rooted in barbaric colonialist extractive industries. Once again, the “solution” is precisely the problem. Greenwashing is a prime example of the ways in which capitalism dictates our alleged freedom. Free market is a euphemism for economic terrorism. The “green economy has come to mean…the wholesale privatization of nature.”7 Consumerism becomes the default for making supposedly ethical choices.
In Deep Green Resistance, Lierre Keith urges us: “We can’t consume our way out of environmental collapse; consumption is the problem”. Even within the 99%, consumers are capitalism. Without convenience-culture/mass consumer-demand, the machine of the profit-driven free market would have to shift gears. We can’t blame oil companies without simultaneously implicating ourselves, holding our consumption-habits equally responsible. How can we insist government and transnational corporations be accountable, when we refuse to curb our buying, using, and disposal habits? We don’t have to go far back in our cross-cultural histories of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience to learn from world-changing examples of strikes, unions, boycotts, expropriation, infrastructural sabotage, embargoes, and divestment protests.
Yet, most contemporary transition movements are founded in the very system they are trying to dismantle. Our perceived resources, these alternative forms of energy proposed to power our public electrical grids, are misidentified under the misleading misnomers: labels such “renewable”/ “sustainable” / “clean”/ “green”. How is “clean” defined? For whom? There is not a clear division between clean energy and dirty energy/dirty power—clean isn’t always clean. Neoliberal denial of corporeal and global interrelationships instills conformist laws of conduct that continually replenish our toxic soup in which we all live. One perceived solution to help us transition is to create alternatives to fossil fuel-addicted economies, as proposed, for example, through The United States’ proposed Green New Deal and its focus on allegedly “renewable” energies. However well-intentioned, these supposed alternatives perpetuate the violence of wasteful behavior and destructive infrastructures. Even if temporarily abated, they ultimately conserve the original crisis.
Below I address specific technologies that are falsely identified as “renewable” energy; technologies that actually reinforce the very problem they are trying to solve.
1. Solar/Photovoltaic and Wind Technologies: Given the proposed solutions using industrial solar and wind harvesting, Western imperialism has and will continue to dominate global relations. “Clean energy” easily gets soiled when it is implemented on an industrial scale. Western imperialist practices are implicit in solar cell and storage production (mining and other extractive industries) and disposal infrastructures. Congruently, industrial wind farms—aka: “blenders in the sky,”(chopping up migrating birds & bats) use exorbitant resources to produce and implement (both the wind turbines and their infrastructure), and devastate migrating wildlife (bats and birds, critical to healthy ecosystems and some of whom are endangered species).
Both wind and solar energies require vast quantities of fossil fuels to implement them on a grand scale. As we have seen throughout both California and China (two examples among too many), massive solar-energy sites/solar industrial complexes strip land bare—displacing human populations and migration routes of both wildlife and people for acres of solar fields, substations, and access roads—all of which require incredibly carbon-intensive concrete. Consuming massive tracts of land, 100-1000 times more land area is required for wind and solar, as well as for biofuel energy production than does fossil-fuel production.
2. Hydro-Power Technology: Large-scale dams for hydro-power have also historically had cataclysmic effects on indigenous peoples and their lands. Although macro-hydro, like fracking, has
finally been recognized for its calamitous consequences, perversely, it is still proposed as a viable alternative to fossil-fuel economies.
3. Battery Technology: Let’s begin with a California-based scenario: According to the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) in California, fine particulate pollution harms African-American communities 43% more than predominantly white communities, Latino 39% more, and Asian-American communities 21% more. As if tailpipe emissions are the only humanitarian catastrophe, one “clean solution” is the electric vehicle for public transportation and for personal consumption. Completely ignoring the embodied energy involved, this perceived solution displaces the costs of environmental racism—once again exported out of the US into the global south—in this case to Boliva where lithium (essential for battery production) is primarily mined. Cobalt, also essential to battery production, is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Like lithium, cobalt’s environmental and humanitarian costs are unconscionable—including habitat destruction, child slavery, and deaths. Eventually, production is followed by solar technology and battery e-waste dispersed throughout Asia, South America, and Africa. Additionally, rarely considered are the fossil-fuel sources used to supply the electricity for those private and public electric vehicles. And, of course most frequently, the poorest US populations work in and live near those coal mines/power plants/fracking stations.
The Renewable Energies Movement claims that our global addiction to oil (“black gold”) should be replaced by lithium (“white gold”). What we are not considering is that extracting lithium and converting it to a commercially viable form consumes copious quantities of water—drastically depleting availability for indigenous communities and wildlife, and produces toxic waste (that includes an already growing history of chemical leaks poisoning rivers, thus people and other animals). Paul Hawken‘s phrase “renewable materialism” counsels us that this hyper-idealized shift from a fossil-fuel paradigm to “renewable” energies is not a solution. Furthermore, these energies are LOW POWER DENSITY: they produce very little energy in proportion to the energy required to institutionalize them.
As the main character in Zazu Dreams prompts: “Even if we find great alternatives to fossil fuels, what if renewable energies become big business and just maintain our addiction to consumption? (…) Replacing tar sands or oil-drills or coal power plants with megalithic ‘green’ energy is not the solution—it just masks the original problem—confusing ‘freedom’ with free market and free enterprise”. We must now act on our knowledge that the renewable “revolution” is dangerously carbon intensive. And, as the authors of Deep Green Resistance caution us: “The new world of renewables will look exactly like the old in terms of exploitation.”
Surrogate band-aids that are frequently equal to or worse than what is being replaced include: bioplastics, phthalates replacements, and HFC’s. 1.Compostable disposables, also known as bioplastics, are most frequently produced from GMO-corn monoculture and “composted” in highly restricted environments that are inaccessible to the general public. Due to corn-crop monoculture practices that are dependent on agribusiness’s heavy use of pesticides and herbicides (for example, Monsanto’s Round-Up/glyphosate), compostable plastics are not a clean solution. Depending on their production practices, avocado pits may be a more sustainable alternative. But, the infrastructure and politics of actually “composting” these products are extraordinarily problematic. These not-so eco-friendly products rarely make it into the high temperatures needed for them to actually decompose. Additionally, their chemical compounds cause extreme damage to water, soil, and wildlife. They cause heavy acidification when they get into the water and eutrophication (lack of oxygen) when they leach nitrogen into the soil. 2.The trend to replace Bisphenol A (BPA) led to even more debilitating phthalates in products. 3.Lastly, we now know that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), “ozone-friendly” replacements, are equally environmentally destructive as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
The term “carbon footprint” was actually normalized through shame-propaganda by BP’s advertising campaigns. “The carbon footprint sham: A ‘successful, deceptive’ PR campaign,” Mark Kaufman, https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham/
Under the guise of the common good and universal values, humanitarian imperialism has emerged as a neo-colonialist method of reproducing the unquestioned status quo of industrialized, “First World” nations. For a detailed deracination of these fantasies (for example, taken-for-granted concepts of equality, poverty, standard of living), see Wolfgang Sachs’ anthology, The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. Although the term humanitarian imperialism is not explicitly used, all of the authors explore the hierarchical, ethnocentric assumptions rooted in development politics and unexamined paradigms of Progress. As public intellectuals committed to the archeology of prohibition and power distribution, we must extend this discussion beyond the context of international development politics and investigate how these normalized tyrannies thrive in our own backyard.
The air and sun are renewable, but giant wind and solar installations are not.
“For years, land and environmental defenders have been the first line of defence against climate breakdown. Yet despite clearer evidence than ever of the crucial role they play, far too many businesses, financiers and governments fail to safeguard their vital and peaceful work.” Globalwitness.org
Colombia, is a country with amazingly diverse ecosystems.
There are also a huge diversity of cultures. In 2019, Colombia was the worst country to be an environmental activist. There was hope this would improve in 2020 but sadly this was not the case. Worse still, Colombia started on new year’s day in 2021 with the murder of young people who were who fought with the guerrilla organization The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and had demobilized to return with their family after the peace agreement was signed in June 2016. FARC signed a ceasefire accord with the President of Colombia. A year later, FARC handed over its weapons to the United Nations. At this point it ceased to be an active, armed group.
The first day of this year started with the execution of a former member of the FARC, Yolanda Mazo aged only 22 and Reina her 17 year old sister. They were murdered in the early morning Friday, January 1st 2021. Yolanda is one of hundreds of activists who have been killed since the signing of the Accords between the Colombian state and the FARC. In addition to the deaths of two young women two union leaders have also been murdered.
Environmental activist found dead.
Most recently, Gonzalo Cardona, the first environmental activist and forest ranger who worked in the protection of the paramo ecosystem was murdered. These ecosystems are regions considered to be “evolutionary hot spots“. The ranger worked to protect this area and several endangered species of birds. He stood for the conservation of the habitat of the yellow eared parrot “loro orejiamarillo” and for the preservation of the natural world from the mining the deforestation and the industrial agriculture.
The systemic and systematic violence on the land and towards the Colombian people is brutal. It is the consequence of the capitalist system, of greed and profit over the health of the natural world and the humans and non-humans that inhabit it. The dominant, violent system depends upon inequality, poverty and repression of social movements to remain in power and when the profit or the power is threatened, they remove the threat.
Who is responsible?
The Colombian government, the military forces, the paramilitary groups and other armed groups are responsible for these deaths, for these murders. All this violence has its roots in land control, exploitation of natural resources and silencing of social movements. The Colombian government, in collusion with national and multinational corporate interests, continue to profit from the destruction of the natural world. They gain political benefits through mining contracts, fracking developments and widespread industrial agriculture. Those in power ensure the elites own the land, reducing the power of the poeple to defend land.
The Colombian government and those who benefits on the land exploitation, continue to attack and discredit social and environmental movements and when they feel threatened people die.
