#EPICFAIL in Paris: COP21

Julian Langer / Deep Green Resistance UK

The President of the USA, Obama, is describing the Paris Climate Deal as a turning point for the world. The delegates stand up and applaud, in congratulations of this supposedly historic event in contemporary political history.

…… I’m sorry, but, what?!

James Hansen, among other experts, has already articulated criticism of this deal – “It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit …” and honestly, do we need more bullshit?

Al Gore and business leaders are claiming this deal might be the trigger for the end of the fossil fuel era, but emissions aren’t expected to peak until 2030. That’s more than 5000 days before peak emissions, 5000 days of everything getting even worse. Civilization is already driving 200 species extinct every day – to quote Lierre Keith “They were my kin. They were yours too”.

Even from a purely anthropocentric perspective, the situation is bad and getting worse. Low-lying coastal states are already at a critical point, facing the cost of rising sea levels in their daily lives. Even the UK, in a far better situation to respond to this worsening crisis, is facing the devastating consequences of this culture’s way of life. We’ve seen climate change trigger the current refugee crisis in Europe, and today's business-as-usual will make the future crisis even worse.

I’ll rephrase my previous question – can we afford (in terms of lives, not money) more bullshit?

It is time for us to reclaim environmentalism from the clutches of those wishing to make the destruction of our planet “sustainable.” It is time to create a culture of resistance to protect the natural world from the demands of this culture.

Are You Ready To Resist Roundup?

Deep Green Resistance member Raven Gray is actively writing for her new blog, Wild Awake, on subjects ranging from "reskilling" and permaculture to listening to the land and protecting it against industrial civilization. Her whole blog is worth following and exploring, but we wanted to especially highlight her recent piece about planned use of Roundup and other broad spectrum herbicides along the Point Reyes National Seashore: Are You Ready To Resist Roundup? Following on a prior look at Invasive Plants: Friends or Foe?, Gray explores how legitimate concern for the health of native plant communities has been twisted into its toxic mimic: support for the widespread application of poison. This provides a quick-fix "solution" while not coincidentally feeding profits of companies like Monsanto which heavily fund anti-"invasive" propaganda.

For those with much exposure to permaculture, the notion of so-called invasive plants as healers of civilization's multitudinous damages to our soils is not new. But as with so much other greenwashing promulgated by mainstream environmental groups on behalf of their corporate partners ― renewable energy technologies are good for the planet, clearcuts are good for the environment, and on and on ― many people accept the carefully crafted message: "We must poison to preserve life." Gray's articles debunk this variant of the notion that humans know best how to "manage" the land.

The evidence is mounting, and it is too large to ignore. Glyphosate has wide-ranging adverse effects on all of life. Several countries have banned (or are in the process of banning) glyphosate. But while the rest of the world appears to be waking up to its dangers, it’s business as usual in the US.

What is the true cost of polluting our world with toxic chemicals? What if Roundup is the next DDT, and responsible for the new Silent Spring? How exactly is Roundup going to protect the endangered plants, birds and animals that live in the Point Reyes National Seashore? The red-legged frog? The snowy plover? Tidestrom’s lupine?

Roundup does not serve plants or animals. It does not serve the public interest. It does not serve life. It serves the US biotech industry and the US government who are pushing glyphosate around the world in an attempt to dominate global agriculture.

Reality check on resource requirements of wind power

As we've pointed out in our Green Technology & Renewable Energy FAQs, so-called "clean" energy sources such as solar and wind become anything but, when harvested via industrial means. Each PV solar panel, each wind turbine, and every other proposal for generating electricity depends on mining, inherently destructive to the earth. In addition, each requires fossil fuels for mining, transportation, assembly, and installation. There's nothing "sustainable" about any of it.

energy skeptic backs up some of our concerns with quick calculations on the reality of how many tons of what materials would be required to have wind turbines generate half of US electricity usage. Notably, it would take 52 years worth of worldwide steel production to build enough turbines. It's interesting to look through the rest of the numbers too.

Bottom line: not only can't we meet our current electricity usage with "renewables" like wind energy, but it'd be horribly destructive to try. It's counterproductive, even dangerous, to hold onto fantasies of green energy saving us.

We can't have it all...

Mike Stasse at Damn the Matrix has posted a short analysis of the latest incarnation of the oft-repeated claim that we can generate all the electricity we "need" from a relatively small area of desert. Proponents of such claims rarely acknowledge that those deserts are habitat ― that is, home ― for many creatures. And as Stasse points out, the mining required to produce a solar farm causes tremendous harm.

The power of spin is such that the uninformed will continue believing we can have it all, only solar powered. We just have to fill those squares in North Africa, and everything will be cool.....

Read the full post at Damn the Matrix: The power of spin, and for a thorough critique of these techno-fixes, see the Deep Green Resistance Green Technology & Renewable Energy FAQs.

Chris Matera on biofuels and other excuses for clearcuts

Chris Matera founded and works in his spare time for Massachusetts Forest Watch, fighting against destruction of New England forests. Derrick Jensen interviewed him for the November 30 episode of Resistance Radio, discussing the many forces pushing for logging.

As expected, the timber industry puts out carefully crafted propaganda designed to confuse well meaning but ignorant people. Companies claim clearcutting will counteract stressors, correct forest imbalances, and otherwise improve forest health. They claim clearcutting will improve habitat for cute animals (already overabundant because of past logging), not mentioning the threatened species who will suffer further harm. They claim they need to clearcut trees now to prevent future hurricanes from knocking them down.

Less immediately transparent is the propaganda around biofuels, billed as clean and green, but really just another excuse to clearcut forests. Matera says that burning green trees is 50% more carbon polluting than burning coal, and has a similar impact on air quality. He warns people to critically examine claims of energy sustainability, usually heavily based on this habitat destruction and pollution even worse than coal.

Perhaps most surprisingly for many listeners, Jensen and Matera reveal big green NGOs such as The Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, and The Nature Conservancy as more of a problem than a help. Time and time again, grassroots activists have clashed with such NGOs backing environmentally destructive practices like biofuels via deforesting. Jensen and Matera discuss the dynamics and details of this serious obstacle to environmentalism.

Listen to this free ranging discussion below, play the interview at the Deep Green Resistance Youtube Channel, or visit Massachusetts Forest Watch. And please share this interview with friends and family to promote a better understanding of what the hype around biofuels really means for the earth.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen's Resistance Radio episodes.

Green Tech FAQs page added to DGR website

We've added a new page to the Deep Green Resistance website debunking the myths of green technology and renewable energy. Please read it, share it, and refer those still hoping for techno-fixes of fundamental problems with civilization.

Myths of Biofuels presentation by David Fridley

In 2007, David Fridley of Lawrence Berkeley Labs and San Francisco Oil Awareness presented a well researched and thorough debunking of the idea that biofuels are sustainable, environmentally friendly, good for farmers, or a path to energy independence. Fridley and his audience approach the issue from an industrial-human-centric standpoint concerned about peak oil, rather than from a holistic earth-centric and anti-civilization perspective, but his presentation is excellent for what it is. This is a great way to get up to speed on the dramatic, across the board problems and limitations of biofuels.

Video: The False Solutions of Green Energy

Max Wilbert of Deep Green Resistance Great Basin and Cameron Foley (no chapter affiliation) presented at the 2014 PIELC (Public Interest Environmental Law Conference) on "The False Solutions of Green Energy." Together they debunk some of the myths of "green" energy. Wilbert details the earth destruction required to manufacture, install, and dispose of wind turbines and solar panels, showing their inherent unsustainability as they still rely on large-scale mining, global trade, and global exploitation. Foley discusses the problem of mainstream environmentalism fixating on the illusion of green energy as a techno-fix for the very real problems we face, dangerously diverting us from pursuing real solutions. Environmentalists are really faced with the question of whether we want to find slightly less harmful alternatives to business as usual, or if we want to stop causing harm altogether and even start healing the earth.

Wilbert concludes by describing the strengths and weaknesses of other approaches to addressing the environmental crises, from ecosocialism to permaculture to radical aboveground action such as nonviolent civil disobedience. He makes a strong case for the necessity of adding strategic underground attacks on critical infrastructure to our range of tactics, summarizing the Deep Green Resistance strategy of Decisive Ecological Warfare.

This presentation is an important antidote to the misinformation and misdirection spread by corporations, governments, and mainstream environmental groups. Watch below or read the text transcript, share with your environmentally minded friends, and visit the Deep Green Resistance Youtube Channel or Deep Green Resistance member appearances page to view and hear more DGR and general resistance video and audio:

Transcript

[Cameron:] This is Max, and we've been doing environmental activism for at least five years now. Green energy is a topic that's been really important to us, because in trying to find effective solutions, a really genuine response to the environmental crisis, green energy has come up as an obstacle. We've talked about it always on the side; we've never really come at it head-on so we thought for this year for PIELC it's something we should do.

We're probably going to talk for about 40 minutes, and then we'll do a little Q & A and then we'll call it a day. I'm going to pass it over to Max.

[Max:] Thanks everyone for coming. It's an honor to be here again. Today we’re going to introduce you to some ideas that you're probably familiar with already as environmentalists. But we might also be talking about some things that are surprising or even shocking to some of you.

Annette Smith on Resistance Radio

Annette Smith is executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, an organization she co-founded 15 years ago with Vermont citizens when a large energy project was proposed for her region. After successfully defeating that project, Annette has worked with Vermonters throughout the state to defeat large quarries, landfills, farms, and other large energy proposals while also improving Vermont’s groundwater protection laws. Derrick Jensen interviewed her for the May 18th airing of Resistance Radio.

Annette was favorable towards wind energy 10 years ago, but after investigating proposed development projects and comparing the rhetoric to the reality, Annette now organizes against these corporate projects and their overriding of community and environmental concerns. She details the negative impact of money-driven Vermont wind development on humans and nonhumans, from pollution of water supplies (second only to mountaintop coal mining in negative impacts), forest fragmentation, displacement of animals, and turning neighbors against each other.

Annette tries to address why so many well-meaning, good-hearted people have swallowed the propaganda that wind energy helps to address our climate change and other environmental problems, when in fact these projects don't displace any extraction or burning of fossil fuels.

Play the embedded audio below, or listen to the interview on the DGR Youtube channel.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen's Resistance Radio interviews.

Max Wilbert on Resistance Radio

Max Wilbert has been an activist for more than a decade, fighting against racism, economic injustice, and ecocide. He is currently a member of Deep Green Resistance Great Basin, and until recently served as a DGR staff member. Derrick Jensen interviewed him for the April 6th airing of Resistance Radio.

Max argues against the myth that solar panels and wind turbines are a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. He describes the harmful effects of producing units and operating them at an industrial scale, and advocates bringing down all industrial systems while learning to live within the limits of our landbases, utilizing traditional technologies to live beautiful lives.

Play the embedded audio below, or listen on the DGR Youtube channel.

Browse all of Derrick Jensen's Resistance Radio interviews.

Thoughts on "Pandora's Seed"

The following is from Bud Nye, A Deep Green Resistance supporter in Washington State:

_____________

After reading Pandora's Seed, Why the Hunter-Gatherer Holds the Key to Our Survival (2007), by Spencer Wells, here are some of my thoughts:

Early in the book I sensed a technotopian slant. Sure enough, as I read more it became clear that, like so many technological utopian people today, Wells seems seriously to believe that we can steal energy from Earth's ecosystems at the scale of our fossil fuel use without massively damaging those living systems with their billions of living beings.

Is "Alternative Energy" Sustainable?

Alternative technologies cannot replace easily transportable, liquid fossil fuels, nor are they sustainable; they require mining, smelting, refining. Most of the rare earth minerals required for wind, solar, and battery technologies are mined in Mongolia and western China by near-slaves. Lakes of toxic waste mark the production sites.

These technologies do nothing to address global power imbalances. The US military is spending a great deal of time and money researching alternative energy technologies for the armed forces; tactically, it’s a smart move. But as always, the technology ends up benefiting the powerful while further abusing the natural world and the poor.

Before we can move forward as a movement for natural justice, we must recognize that global power structures are not going to change willingly. These systems are not driven by truth or ethics, but by profit. The exploitation is not an accident; it’s a deliberate system to maintain and expand power.

No amount of education will stop sociopathological behavior; only some sort of force will do so. This is a fact that many social movements have come to understand. The words of the famous Frederick Douglass immortalize the lesson: “Power concedes nothing without a demand — It never has, and it never will.”

Electricity is not sustainable. Alternative energy is not sustainable. It is another dead end, another false solution, another greenwashing project to divert legitimate grievances into political quagmire.




The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China,
dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background

 

What would a real transition to a sustainable society look like?

This article now located on the Deep Green Resistance News Service: What would a real transition to a sustainable society look like?

CrimethInc's Field Guide to False Solutions

"They aren't going to stop destroying the planet until we make it too costly for them to continue. THE SOONER WE DO, THE BETTER."

If we really believed what scientists are telling us about global warming, the fire engines of every fire department would sound their sirens and race to the nearest factory to extinguish its furnaces. Every high school student would run to the thermostat of every classroom, turn it off, and tear it out of the wall, then hit the parking lot to slash tires. Every responsible suburban parent would don safety gloves and walk around the block pulling the electrical meters out of the utility boxes behind houses and condominiums. Every gas station attendant would press the emergency button to shut off the pumps, cut the hoses, and glue the locks on the doors; every coal and petroleum corporation would immediately set about burying their unused product where it came from- using only the muscles of their own arms, of course...


Download the full PDF

Stop Industrialism

If every American took every single action suggested by Al Gore it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent. This is a stark truth: even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average American's annual one ton of garbage production, your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That's thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full one hundred percent of your personal waste. Industrialism itself is what has to stop. There is no kinder, greener version that will do the trick of leaving us a living planet. In blunt terms, industrialization is a process of taking entire communities of living beings and turning them into commodities and dead zones.

Could it be done more efficiently? Sure, we could use a little less fossil fuel, but it still ends in the same wastelands of land, water, and sky. We could stretch this endgame out another twenty years, but the planet still dies.

Trace every industrial artifact back to its source-which isn't hard, as they all leave trails of blood-and you find the same devastation: mining, clearcuts, dams, agriculture. And now tar sands, mountain top removal, windfarms (which might better be called dead bird and bat farms).

No amount of renewables is going to make up for the fossil fuel or change the nature of the extraction, both of which are prerequisites for this way of life. Neither fossil fuel nor extracted substances will ever be sustainable; by definition, they will run out.

Bringing a cloth shopping bag to the store, even if you walk there in your global warming flip flops, will not stop the tar sands. But since these actions also won't disrupt anyone's life, they're declared both realistic and successful.