By Lierre Keith, Derrick Jensen, and Max Wilbert “The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind,” Rachel Carson wrote.“That, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done.” Silent Spring, which inspired the modern environmental movement, was more than a critique of pesticides, it was a cri de couer against industrialized society’s destruction of the natural world. ...
In these brief series, Max Wilbert explores the #ThackerPass Litium Deposit in Humboldt Count, Nevada which will serve as a lithium clay mining development project propose d by the Nevada government and federal agencies. This project will compromise the flora, fauna and streams of the area just for the sake of “clean” energy and profit. By Max Wilbert https://youtu.be/OKIS6mjf-zg This is the first video dispatch from my trip to the area of two proposed lithium mines in Nevada. I’m working to build awareness of the threats these projects pose and resistance to them. I’ll have more to share next week. ...
In this article published on September 16, 2020 by the Center for Biologocal Diversity, they draw attention to a premeditated act of violence against a rare species of wildflower. The act may be linked to a proposal for an open-pit lithium mine to supply the battery industry. More Than 17,000 Rare Nevada Wildflowers Destroyed Tiehm’s Buckwheat, Under Review for Federal Protection, Loses up to 40% of Population LAS VEGAS— Conservationists discovered over the weekend that someone had dug up and destroyed more than 17,000 Tiehm’s buckwheat plants, a rare Nevada wildflower the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said this summer may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. ...
This is the fourth part in the series. In the previous essays, we have explored the need for a collapse, the relationship between a Dyson sphere and overcomsumption, and our blind pursuit for ’ progress.’ In this piece, Elisabeth describes how the Dyson sphere is an extension of the drive for so-called “green energy.” By Elisabeth Robson Techno-utopians imagine the human population on Earth can be saved from collapse using energy collected with a Dyson Sphere–a vast solar array surrounding the sun and funneling energy back to Earth–to build and power space ships. In these ships, we’ll leave the polluted and devastated Earth behind to venture into space and populate the solar system. Such a fantasy is outlined in " Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis" and is a story worthy of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It says, in so many words: we’ve trashed this planet, so let’s go find another one. ...
Grassroots activist Suzanna Jones observes how even long-time environmentalists can become misled. Faulty: Bill McKibben’s Crisis Logic By Suzanna Jones Vermont has a reputation for producing sturdy New England farm folk – hardscrabble people who lived full lives in challenging conditions. Our neighbors, Frank and Virginia, were prime examples. Living well into their eighties, they never owned a car or a phone, and never went on a vacation; they saved and reused everything, and grew their own food. Despite – or probably because of – the simplicity of their lives, they were happy. ...
Grassroots activist Suzanna Jones challenges the idea that green energy is good and rebukes the corporations and ideologically-captured organizations who promote it. By Suzanna Jones The recently released documentary Planet of the Humans takes direct aim at the major threat to the Earth. It does this by asking fundamental questions: can Nature withstand continued industrial extraction; can humans – particularly those in the dominant West – persist in taxing the natural world to fulfill our own ’needs’ and desires; is ‘green’ energy the savior for our climatic and environmental problems or is it a false prophet distracting us from confronting the gargantuan elephant in the room, what writer Wendell Berry calls “history’s most destructive economy”? ...
In this critical review, Elisabeth Robson reacts to the newly released environmental documentary Planet of the Humans. The film explains why technology won’t save us and leads viewers to question the industrial paradigm. Liberals have been quick to attack the film, mistaking it for a pro-fossil or pro-nuclear fuel argument, and recognizing that critiquing “green” energy undermines the morality of their entire ideological project of “sustainable modern development.” The far-right has attempted to co-opt the message as well. Both are predictable and profoundly mistaken responses. See the end of this review for a few point-by-point rebuttals of these misrepresentations. Our choice is not between “green” energy and fossil fuels. That is a false binary. We must choose between industrial destruction—including both ‘renewables’ and fossil fuels—and creating a biocentric future. We need revolutionary transformation of society, not superficial changes to the energy sources of empire. Planet of the Human s is not without flaws. No piece of media is. But it contributes critically to a movement too long dominated by cornucopian, anthropogenic industrial energy advocates. ...
by Suzanna Jones / Counterpunch Walden, Vermont– In his 2008 book Deep Economy, Bill McKibben concludes that economic growth is the source of the ecological crises we face today. He explains that when the economy grows larger than necessary to meet our basic needs – when it grows for the sake of growth, automatically striving for “more” – its social and environmental costs greatly outweigh any benefits it may provide. Unfortunately, McKibben seems to have forgotten what he so passionately argued just five years ago. Today he is an advocate of industrial wind turbines on our ridgelines: he wants to industrialize our last wild spaces to feed the very economy he fingered as the source of our environmental problems. ...
Editor’s note: This is the second part of an edited transcript of a talk given at the 2017 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. Read Part One here. Watch the video here. by Erin Moberg, Ph.D., and Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Eugene A question that a lot of radical environmentalists ask ourselves is, “where is your threshold for resistance?” Particularly given the recent U.S. presidential election, people in so many communities with a lot at stake, with a lot to lose, and not a lot of choice, have been doing much of the harder and riskier work as front-line activists.Latinos are taking action in courts, schools, and town halls. Women of color are taking action, black and brown people are taking action, and indigenous people are taking action. Since the U.S Presidential election it has been good to see other people with less to lose take steps, and sometimes leaps, out of the spaces of privilege they occupy in order to stand up and speak up against injustice–against violations of people of color, of women and girls, of Spanish-speakers, of immigrants, of undocumented people, and so many others. In Eugene, Oregon, I’ve also seen many people new to activism come out to learn about direct action and community organizing, because they want to defend the land they love, but a lot of times don’t know how.This gives me brief moments of hope and yet I’m still terrified, and still very certain that nothing short of a unified global movement of all kinds of people ready to resist and fight back, to protect the land they love, the air we breathe, the water we need, and all of the animals on the planet, will be enough to give us any say at all in how and when this culture collapses.Some of the ramifications of environmental activists and movements dedicating themselves to promoting energy efficiency include strengthening the existing culture, i.e., industrial civilization, by correcting contradictions that stand out between ideals and practices, or policy and practices, within the dominant culture.This also provides an unproductive outlet for activist revolutionary anger that only serves to pacify us and detract us from more materially impactful work that we could be doing as activists. Thinking about the global crises that we are currently facing, including deforestation, peak oil, water drawdown, soil loss, food crises, overfishing, desertification are often framed in the media and in popular and academic discourse as disparate or coincidental issues.We know, however, that all of these crises are interrelated. These are some of the ways in which we can collectively characterize these crises: ...
Featured image: Tesla gigafactory construction near Reno, Nevada Editor’s note: This is the first part of an edited transcript of a talk given at the 2017 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. Read the second part here. Watch the video here. by Erin Moberg, Ph.D., and Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Eugene In this culture, and in the environmental movement in particular, there is an increasing emphasis placed on promoting and implementing so-called “energy efficiency,” or “green energy practices” into all areas of human life on the planet; from commerce to agriculture, from corporations to individual homes, from the economy to the legislative arena, and from academia to activism.In many cases, striving toward efficiency is viewed and proposed as the only solution from the outset, mainly because it effectively serves as a means to perpetuate this culture as we know and live it. In some of these contexts our current obsession with efficiency is motivated by a genuine desire to halt climate change and the destruction of the planet. Yet at best, the proponents and practices of energy efficiency as a solution to the planet crisis conflate efficiency and sustainability. At worst, the pro-efficiency movement helps to obfuscate the real causes and impacts of human-caused climate change, towards the end of maintaining capitalism and the socio-political hierarchies on which capitalism depends. From a corporate and economic standpoint, efficiency is generally proposed as the only viable solution to increasingly scarce resources, population explosion, and health issues. In most articulations of the merits of efficiency, the focus and incentive are anthropocentric, explicitly grounded in preserving and furthering civilization, the global economy, and everyday human comforts.As activists, and also as people concerned with the health of the planet, we find significant ideological and material disconnects between the realities of climate change and the oft-accepted approach of energy-efficiency measures as a means to a more sustainable world and planet.Economic efficiency as a means to saving the planet is a myth. Instead, that efficiency promotes and perpetuates capitalism because it aims to make more energy available for other uses. Energy efficiency measures ultimately increase the amount of energy being used overall, thereby causing more harm to the planet. As a foundational premise, the health of the planet is primary rather than just the health and lives of human beings.Depending on the dictionary, the word “efficient” is defined in multiple ways, but we will focus on the two that are relevant to this discussion: ...