1) The Problem With…Civilization : http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/27929 (This just sets the scene)

2) If The Economy Doesn’t Shrink, We’re Finished! : http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/28508 (Only just read Garrett’s paper, and I’m pleased – and sad – to know that the economy/emissions link is sound)

Will pass your article round to a few more people.

Cheers

Keith

Published on Sunday, December 20, 2009 by Orion Magazine
50 Simple Ways to Get Off
If you’re in love with the world, fall in love with trying to save it
by Derrick Jensen

Years ago I was interviewed by a dogmatic pacifist (note to self: bad idea), who in his (grossly inaccurate) write-up said he thought I wanted all activists to think like assassins. That’s not true. What I want is for us to think like members of a serious resistance movement.

What does that look like? Well, to start, it doesn’t have to mean handling guns. Even when the IRA was at its strongest, only 2 percent of its members ever picked up weapons. The same is true for the Underground Railroad; Harriet Tubman and others carried guns, but Quakers and other pacifists who ran safe houses were also crucial to that work. What they all held in common was a commitment to their cause, and a willingness to work together in the resistance.

A serious resistance movement also means a commitment to winning, which means figuring out what “winning” means to you. For me, winning means living in a world with more wild salmon every year than the year before, more migratory songbirds, more amphibians, more large fish in the oceans, and for that matter oceans not being murdered. It means less dioxin in every mother’s breast milk. It means living in a world where there are fewer dams each year than the year before. More native forests. More wild wetlands. It means living in a world not being ravaged by the industrial economy. And I’ll do whatever it takes to get there (and if, by the way, you believe that “whatever it takes” is code language for violence, you’re revealing nothing more than your own belief that nonviolence is ineffective).

That’s fine, Derrick, but what do you want me to do?

Part of me wants to tell you to bring down the industrial infrastructure, the engine driving the destruction of the planet, converting so-called raw materials-read: living beings, biomes, and indeed the world-into products for sale. But there’s also a part of me that doesn’t want to suggest that, because I’m guessing you wouldn’t do it anyway. And besides, I don’t know you, and no one who doesn’t know you should ever tell you what to do (and if they do, you shouldn’t listen). In any case, ignoring what I have to say may not be such a bad idea, since what I really want is for people to think for themselves-not to bring down the industrial infrastructure because I tell them it’s killing the world, but rather for them to deeply attend to our current crises and come to their own conclusions about what we must or must not do, what we must unmake and what we must make anew.

But, Derrick, what do you want me to do right now?

Okay, here’s a list:

A lot of the indigenous people with whom I’ve worked have said to me that the first and most important thing any of us needs to do is decolonize our hearts and minds. Decolonization is the process of breaking your identity with and loyalty to this culture-industrial capitalism specifically, and more broadly civilization-and remembering your identification with and loyalty to the real physical world, including the land where you live. It means re-examining premises and stories this culture handed down to you. It means seeing the harm this culture does to other cultures, and to the planet. It means recognizing that we are living on stolen land. It means recognizing that the luxuries of this way of life do not come free, but rather are paid for by other humans, by nonhumans, by the whole world. It means recognizing that we do not live in a functioning democracy, but rather in a corporate plutocracy, a government by, for, and of corporations. Decolonization means recognizing that neither technological progress nor increased GNP is good for the planet. It means recognizing that this culture is not good for the planet. Decolonization means internalizing the implications of the fact that this culture is killing the planet. It means determining that we will stop this culture from doing that. It means determining that we will not fail.

And this is just the absolute beginning of decolonizing. It is internal work that doesn’t accomplish anything in the real world, but it makes all further steps more likely, more feasible, and in many ways more strictly technical.

Next, ask yourself what are the largest, most pressing problems you can help to solve using the gifts that are unique to you in all the universe. People sometimes ask why I write instead of blowing up dams, to which I reply that my only D in college was in quantitative analysis chemistry lab, meaning you don’t want me anywhere near explosives. Some people have said I should be an organizer instead of a writer. These people have never seen my work space; if I can’t keep track of my pens, how would I possibly keep track of anything more complex? Likewise, I’ve filed dozens of timber sale appeals, but it was a very laborious process for me; it took me twelve hours to do what others could do in two. And I write terrible press releases. I can, however, write books. Harness your gifts, and put them in the service of your landbase.

My third suggestion is to ask yourself: what do I get off on? One reason I don’t burn out as an activist is that I love what I’m doing. I was out one day with a wetlands specialist. We were trying to stop a developer from ruining a forest. The specialist dug into the soil, rubbed some between his fingers, and compared the color to a chart, which would help him determine if these were wetlands. I asked, “Do you get off on this?” He laughed and said digging in dirt was his second favorite thing to do after playing with his dogs. I laughed too and said I wouldn’t like to do that work. I, on the other hand, have condemned myself to a life of homework: I get off on trying to figure out, for example, the relationship between perceived entitlement, exploitation, and atrocity.

My next suggestion is to make protecting the land where you live-and by extension the rest of the natural world, since protecting the land where you live will be insufficient to protect anadromous fish, migratory songbirds, or anyone in a world being burned alive by global climate change-the most important thing in your life. That may sound drastic, but we’re talking about life on the planet here. There can be nothing more important than this.

So, Derrick, what exactly do you want us to do?

I want you to make the time to find what or whom you love-whether it’s salmon, sturgeon, a patch of forest, survivors of domestic violence, your own indigenous tradition, migratory songbirds, coral reefs, or Appalachian mountaintops-and I want you to dig in and defend your beloved with your life, and, if necessary, with your death. I want for your actions to positively contribute to the health and defense of the planet. I want for you to figure out how to make it so the world-the real, physical world-is a better place because you were born, and because you lived here.

All of this leads to the point, which is, put simply, to do something. Several years ago I was giving a talk to several hundred people about bringing down civilization. The audience was excited. The atmosphere was like a rock concert. I suddenly stopped and asked, “How many of you have ever filed a timber-sale appeal?” Four or five. “How many have worked on a rape crisis hotline?” Ten women. “How many have done indigenous support work?” Three or four. And so on. It’s all well and good to talk about the Great Glorious Revolution, but what are you doing right now?

The big dividing line is not and has never been between those who advocate more or less militant forms of resistance, or between mainstream and grassroots activists. The dividing line is between those who do something and those who do nothing.

Do something.

That’s what I want you to do. That’s what the anadromous fish and the Appalachian mountaintops want you to do too.

© 2009 The Orion Society
Derrick Jensen lives in northernmost California and is the author of, most recently, Songs of the Dead.

STAN MOORE DISAGREES — THE WORLD AND MOST SPECIES AT RISK CANNOT BE SAVED BY INDIVIDUAL OR PROBABLY GROUP ACTIONS AT THIS POINT. IT DOES NOT HURT TO TRY, BUT THE PRIMARY FOCUS SHOULD BE TO PREPARE INDIVIDUALLY AND TRIBALLY FOR COLLAPSE. THINK SURVIVAL FIRST AND SAVE THE WORLD IN YOUR SPARE TIME.

Obama to World: “See You in Hell”

President Barack Obama is concerned about global warming. This is, he is concerned that global warming could affect the US economy and thus the ability of the elite financial community to further fleece the American public. So, President Obama maneuvers to create the illusion that he is solving the climate change “problem” by the use of smoke and mirrors.

What Barack Obama is NOT doing is offering to lower US greenhouse gas emissions. What he is NOT doing is taking dramatic steps to build a truly green organic economy with equitable distribution of wealth for all Americans, much less all the citizens of the world.

So, Barack Obama wants to trade emissions, not cap them. He wants to make carbon a commodity that can be sold on the open market, with the financial players creating yet more derivates and hedging their investments to maximize profit, Enron-style. Less carbon in the atmosphere would mean less ability to trade carbon, and that does not suit Obama’s purposes. So, he will only approve an illusory, non-confirmable “cap” on emissions so that the financial “players” can buy and sell, invest and enrich themselves as the world turns into a living hell for many.

This is not the change that many people of the world wanted to believe in. They thought that Obama’s skin color was a reflection of some sort of inner compassion, a hint of some sort of past victimhood, a measure of his universal appeal to the peoples of the world long dominated by rich white men. But Obama is not a black man, and not a white man. He is a chameleon who can make himself into whatever the beholder desires him to be.

The net impact of Barack Obama’s philosophy and policies will be to facilitate the turning of the world into a living hell for many humans.
These include the inhanbitants of his ancestral homeland, if not actual birthplace, Kenya, in Africa. Obama will not lift a finger for his grandmother or even his step-brother. He will not lose a moment of sleep over their fate.

Some Obmma supporters might have hoped that Obama would use his intellect and public conscience to work a new paradigm in which a green economy and an equitable outlook could reverse the selfish capitalist paradigm that has so threatened mankind and put biodiversity at risk. But those supporters were looking at the chameleon and seeing “green”, but of the wrong shade. Obama green is “dollar” green, not environmental green.

Many perons in the US and around the world were waiting for Obama to finally unleash his goodness in Oslo and then in Copenhagen. Instead, they saw Obama unleash his inner, warmongering, ecocidal capitalist.

Soon, people of conscience will have to decide whether they can afford to waste more time and resources in supporting their mortal enemy. Soon, the people of the world will have to say “Enough!” and recognize that Obama is their wsrst nightmare and must be exposed, opposed and deposed.

And then you conclude with naming your intentions and vision: “… And those neighbors aren’t just humans. They’re animals and plants, soil and water. We need to protect and honor them as we do our own children. We need to harbor them from the ravages of war, and also from an economy built on war. We need to live outside the industrial economy and within the real world of honest work, honest play, simple pleasures, and paying the consequences of our daily actions. We need to abandon a political system that takes without giving, long after it abandoned us. At the most fundamental level, we need to re-structure society so that children understand and value the origins of food, and life… It’s no longer just the living planet we should be concerned about. It’s us…”

I really liked, too, how many links you had in this piece. It is interesting that you linked to the film, What a Way to Go, http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/trailers-and-reviews/ which likens the experience of living at this time in the planet’s history and this time of industrial collapse and ecological collapse, to travelling on a train that’s headed over a cliff. I saw that film and strongly recommend it to other readers.

… And I have one problem with that film, which I think you may appreciate. In the train are wealthy, over-fed, medicated people partying away, obviously oblivious to their fate. The point the film makes pretty well is that the train has to be stopped. My problem with the film is relevant to the comments above, and to the apparent refusal by so many to ask themselves *your* very relevant question, rather than RESIST your question. The problem is this: Since the train is filled with those who are the symbol, in the movie, of the destructive industrial economy, and if the train is about to go over the cliff, if those in the industrial economy were the only ones to go be lost to the cliff, it would save the rest of the planet.

But the real case is this: Those on the train are not merely blithe about their own death, AND they are not merely going over the cliff. They are along the way, murdering and maiming billions of others in the community of life, while they deny this, and party on. That train has killed too many, and whether or not it goes over that cliff is not as relevant as how much more life will be destroyed along the way to killing those on the train, and how capable we are of envisioning a living planet, before there is nothing left. The train then, has to be stopped, and there are numerous ways to stop it, and given that fact, This “… The moral question, then: What are you going to do about it?…” is what we all need to be asking ourselves, constantly, relentlessly, unfailingly, if we have any sense of integrity at all.

Thank you very much–I look forward to more of your work to stop that train.

First of all, I wonder what you exactly mean by “bringing down the system”. Are you advocating violence as does Jensen? What would this look like? Random acts of eco-terrorism? A cell phone tower here, a utility pole there? Perhaps burning down a McDonalds or a McMansion? Maybe a dam? Does it mean suicide bombers? Snipers? Assassinations? Setting oneself on fire on the steps of the White House, perhaps? What would acts such as these actually accomplish? I think back to the late 60′s and 70′s and remember the futile terror of radical groups in Germany (Baader Meinhof) and to a lesser extent here in the U.S (Weathermen). And now, how accustomed we are to the daily acts of terror perpetrated around the globe.

Violent resistance is a meaningless exercise. Our dominant culture (industrial society) will ruthlessly and with overwhelming force crush any such activity while the mainstream media spins it away, obscuring any “moral message” of environmental responsibility. Furthermore, when we speak of “industrial society” to whom do we refer? How about the neighbor next door, that really nice guy who has a pickup truck, two cars and a big motor boat. And actually, we need look no further than that person in the mirror, cell phone and IPod pocketed neatly away. We are all implicated in the crimes of our civilization, we all have blood on our hands, and the idea that we exist apart from society any meaningful way is a fantasy.

Violence is especially futile if we accept that our chance of “saving” the planet from the ravages of climate change and resource depletion passed years ago. I believe both you and John Michael Greer place that date as being 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president and it was morning again in America. The system is currently collapsing, as seems clearer and clearer with each passing day. What will violence do to hasten its demise?

I share your angst regarding the continued rape of the Gaia, our Mother. However, our acts in response are critically important. Violence, it seems to me, is an option that has no future whatsoever. The great unchanging law of karma surely bears this out.

Driving down the road today a realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Our entire economy is controlled by capitalist pigs who are not only predatory, but parasitic. They eat the underclass alive, and then successfully beseech the government for reimbursement when their complex financial schemes, such as the unregulated derivates market predictably go awry.

And guess what — the balance sheets of all the bankrupt banks are still and will never be balanced. The toxic assets are still lying there, not accounted for, not paid off, not reduced to nothingness, but waiting for yet more bailouts when needed. The same is true in the residential and (later) the commercial mortgage markets as relates to foreclosures. The banks are not foreclosing on their assets, but leaving them in limbo and listing them positively on the balance rolls as assets, even without income from the financing. This allows accounting trickery and no accountability for the humongous losses involved.

Every stop of the way, the American people are being hoodwinked, stolen blind, leached of their blood molecules and misled by the compliant media. The government “of the people, by the people and for the people” is no such thing. The predatory parasites (or is it the parastic predators) are in charge and the people are victimized over and over even as they are bamboozled into thinking things will get better.

It is interesting to hear how astute foreigners have been on the American shenanigans in Copenhagen. It is absolutely clear that Obama and his government intends to try to bamboozle the world into thinking they have a “solution” to climate change, which will consist of pollution as usual and a few “smoke and mirror” tricks to make it appear that the problems are being “offset” by mitigation and that the rest of the world is being taken care of. Obama wants to do for the rest of the world what he is doing for Iraq and Afghanistan — screw them and claim he is working hard for their best interests.

It is amazing that a skinny guy like Obama can produce so much hot air with not a shred of honesty and not a hint of integrity. Obama talks the talk and flies (not walks) at high speed in the opposite direction of his words.

I wonder what it is like to sit in on an Obama cabinet meeting. No, I guess I don’t want to know.

What I do know is that the frog is in the pot and the water is starting to boil. The frog is going to die, and as of yet, he thinks how happy he should be to have gotten out of that cold, cold pond.

In the raptor world, when prey is scarce, sometimes parents eat their own young. Some eagles exhibit “Cain and Abel Syndrome”, where two eggs are laid, and the older hatchling invariably pecks its younger sibling to death.

Evolution itself is unfeeling, cruel, amoral, unjust. Evolution made humanity what it is and what we are seeing now is the outworking of many generations of survival of humankind. The survival of the fittest is as work in our industrial economy. The strong prey on the weak and the weak depend on strength of numbers for individual survival. And a bit of luck.

I watched a mass of blackbirds in a vineyard the other day, balling up in clouds of small bodies as a falcon flew above, flew through the mass of birds, and picked off one for its meal. To that bird, the falcon was cruel; to the others, the one bird was unlucky.

The industrial civilization gave us penicillin, botox, and dieldrin. It gave us jobs, hospitals, and filled the hospitals with people working their jobs.

Industry allowed unprecented levels of human prosperity, and unprecented levels of obesity. Pollution and global warming threaten human lives, but solving them threatens human jobs and prosperity.

Industrial corporations have successfully battled environmentalists and environmentalism by telling the public that their choice would be between their job or their health. Many people chose their jobs and did not choose to enforce pollution regulations.

Of cource, there are many false choices offered people. A favored trick of industry and corporations is to utterly ignore the concept of equity. Wages and salaries and bonuses are never equitable, nor is wealth distributed equitably across the society. Poor or working class people have more to lose by a small loss of income by percentage, so they are vulnerable to coercion through fear of losing what they have or what they earn.

The entire system is rigged to the advantage of the few, like a Las Vegas casino. But the little people flock in huge numbers to the casinos, because they love the manufactured glamor and excitement and entertainment of watching the spectacle, even as they are being fleeced.

But it is all part of the evolutionary development of our species. It only occurs because it evolved to occur, and industrial society ultimately overwhelms and overtakes and displaces healthy, sustainable ones.

And the industrial society has evolved to the point of unsustainability and will falter and then fail. Many lives will be lost.

We do not have to bring down the system, nor can we. It will take care of itself. It need not bring down the entire species, though it can and it may.

We do have hope of surviving the collapse and temporarily existing in a changed world. And then the process will start all over again.

Within the flow of societal evolution there are many eddies and swirls and vortices and some are good, just, equitable, and admirable. There is always the fight for justice by the few. There is the struggle for freedom and for sustainability and the struggle for peace and for human dignity. All of these are worthwhile subcomponents of the larger civilization, but they cannot control or change the overall direction of the larger civilization overall.

Barack Obama appears to be the penultimate expression of the manipulation of this society over the masses. He is a pacifier, not a reformer. His job is to make the fleecing more palatable for as long as possible. And he is very good at his job and very successful. The culture of make believe is working as engineered and Obama is a make believe agent of reform.

And the people adore the spectacle, even as they continue to be fleeced right down to the shirt on their backs and the house they used to live in. This is the stuff of human evolution and it is amoral and cruel and as real as death itself.

Stan Moore