Cars Vs. Life
Speeding to Extinction in Low Emission Vehicles
By Julia Barnes
In my upcoming film Bright Green Lies, I expose the dark reality behind the “green” energy industry and argue that it deserves our opposition as strongly as fossil fuels. So-called renewables only harm the planet. They do not help it. Worse, they allow people to think they are accomplishing something while the destruction of the world accelerates.
The mass production of greenwashed technology demands the plunder of what remains of our already decimated planet — increased mining, deforestation and the creation of toxic waste.
There are plans to mine the deep sea to extract the components for “green” technology. It’s being touted as the largest mining operation in history that’s about to begin. Each mining vessel is expected to process 2–6 million cubic feet of sediment per day, discharging the remaining slurry back into the ocean where it will toxify the entire food web. This has the potential to disrupt the plankton who produce two thirds of earth’s oxygen.
To the greenwashed tech industry, the world consists of sacrifice zones. Mountains, forests, deserts, oceans. Underlying all bright green solutions is the human supremacist notion that our luxuries and conveniences are more important than the lives of other species or the continuation of life on the planet.
Not all environmentalists support greenwashed technology.
Right now, activists are blockading the site of a proposed lithium mine in Nevada. The area slated for destruction is home to old-growth sagebrush, pronghorn antelope, coyotes, golden eagles, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, jackrabbits, and a critically endangered snail. The mine would burn 11,300 gallons of diesel every day, according to their own estimates. It would also create thousands of tons of sulfuric acid every day. The industry claims this is a green mine because the lithium will be used in electric vehicle batteries.
With car culture, as with civilization, the problem is far deeper than the fuel source — it is inherent to the machine being powered. “There are about 228 trillion insects killed per year by cars. There are about 2 billion vertebrate animals killed every year by cars,” says Derrick Jensen in my film Bright Green Lies.
Roads fragment habitats, tires erode into microplastic pollution, and the majority of emissions come from the manufacture of the vehicle rather than the tailpipe. To change from gasoline to batteries might make people feel like they are doing something good, but it ignores all of the other problems associated with car culture, as well as the costs of lithium mining.
We can’t save the world by destroying it.
While the greenwashed tech industry endeavours to turn desert, forest, mountaintop, and ocean into sacrifice zones, real environmentalists know that sacrifices must come from the growth economy and the unsustainable way of living known as industrial civilization.
“The average person living today has the equivalent amount of energy at their disposal as if they had 100 slaves working for them all the time.” Explains Max Wilbert, co-author of the book Bright Green Lies.
They call this concept “energy slaves.”
“The creature comforts provided by electricity are comfortable,” says Max, “but I think we have to recognize the cost of those things. And if they can’t be maintained without destroying the planet, and if we need the planet to survive, which we do, and if we have a morality that tells us that destroying the planet is also wrong, then that should be enough to give us the answer.”
Bright Green Lies the book is available now.
Bright Green Lies the film premieres April 22nd — Earth Day — as a live-streaming event and Q&A with director Julia Barnes, and authors Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert. Tickets are available at https://www.brightgreenlies.com/
