Are We Losing Or Winning?
On our response to the climate and ecological emergency
Major indicators of global ecological health are heading in the wrong direction. From atmospheric carbon to species extinctions, chemical pollution load, biodiversity, acres of old-growth forest lost, the size of oceanic dead zones, and the extent of coral reefs, the news is bad.
The blame doesn’t fall entirely, or even largely, on us. Our culture, educational system, and mass media don’t teach ecology and sustainability, they teach capitalism and consumerism.
We no longer learn edible and medicinal plants, or the contours of our watershed. We learn how to navigate social media platforms and troubleshoot apps. But we have to focus on what we can control (our actions), rather than what we can’t (society as a whole).
I believe there are ways that we can change things for the better. In the spirit of collective improvement, this article will explain why I think climate activists and mainstream environmentalists are making a huge mistake, and explore what we can do about it.
Most environmentalism today isn’t about water, biodiversity, habitat destruction, or crossover issues such as environmental racism. It’s not even about stopping global warming directly by shutting down drilling rigs, pipelines, and refineries.
Rather, it’s about promoting electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and other forms of “green” technology.
Most pollution, most species extinctions, and most habitat destruction are not directly driven by global warming, but rather by industrial agriculture, urban sprawl, mining, industrial production, overfishing, and overpopulation.
In other words: global warming is not the root problem driving ecological collapse, although it is certainly a contributing factor, and one that will become stronger in coming years and centuries.
Rather, it is just one symptom of the Earth-destroying way of life that characterises global culture today.
Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles are, unfortunately, implicated in this. Like fossil fuels, these technologies are produced by industrial supply chains linked to factories processing raw materials, which are extracted from the Earth. From beginning to end, this process causes harm to the planet.
Judged by their actions rather than their words, many environmental organisations put more emphasis on sustaining a modern Western lifestyle than on sustaining the planet. They’ve become more focused on what is politically feasible than what is ecologically necessary. This is a very serious problem.
What the hell do we do about it? We build an organised, political resistance movement that prioritises the health of the planet, rejects anthropocentrism, and works to dismantle industrial civilisation (call it what you like: capitalism, imperialism, globalisation, the culture of empire) in favour of localised, ecologically sustainable land-based communities using whatever means are necessary.
