You Can't Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too

Let's expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy
running.

With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it's terrifying
to watch the very culture responsible for this - the culture of
industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels,
primarily a dwindling supply of oil - thrust forward wantonly to fuel
its insatiable appetite for "growth."

Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of
technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves,
industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake.

A very partial list would include the Bhopal chemical disaster, numerous
oil spills, the illegal depleted uranium-spewing occupations of Iraq,
Afghanistan, mountaintop removal, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the
permanent removal of 95 percent of the large fish from the oceans (not
to mention full-on systemic collapse of those oceans), indigenous
communities replacement by oil wells, the mining of coltan for cell
phones and Playstations along the Democratic Republic of the
Congo/Rwanda border - resulting in tribal warfare and the
near-extinction of the Eastern Lowland gorilla.

As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate
change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to
be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is
unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing
planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st
century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this
planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable
ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed
denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence
marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.

Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production
and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter,
"Jersey Shore" and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it,
identifying with a reality that's artificial and constructed, that
panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the
violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that
we're all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you're a
taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass
destruction) , but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in
his books, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy" and the "Triumph of
Spectacle," any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion
will kill itself.

Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will
kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself.

As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their
children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down
into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages
innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a
system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And
those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such
wholesale abuse and call it what it is - a genocidal mega-state
(especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important
to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) - are met with hostility
and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake,
why aren't more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a
future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue
to put "the economy" first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it
as a given and not fight back, defend what's left of the natural world?

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"One of the reasons there aren't more people working to take down the
system that's killing the planet is because their lives depend on the
system," author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me from
his home in California when I interviewed him on the phone recently. "If
your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your
water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the
system that brings those to you because your life depends on them,"
Jensen explained. "If your experience, however, is that your food comes
from a land base and that your water comes from a stream, well, then you
will defend to the death that land base and that stream. So part of the
problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is
killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to
imagine living outside of it and it's very difficult physically for us
to live outside of it.

"The other problem is that fear is the belief we have something left to
lose. What I mean by this is that I really like my life right now, as do
a lot of people. We have a lot to lose if this culture is to go down. A
primary reason so many of us do not want to win this war - or even
acknowledge that it's going on - is that we materially benefit from this
war's plunder. I'm really unsure how many of us would be willing to give
up our automobiles and cell phones, hot showers and electric lights, our
grocery and clothing stores. But the truth is, the system that leads to
these things, that leads to technological advancement and our identity
as civilized beings, are killing us and, more importantly, killing the
planet."

Even in the absence of global warming, this culture would still be
murdering the planet, bumping off pods of whales and flocks of birds;
detonating mountaintops to access strata of coal and bauxite,
eliminating entire ecosystems. All this violence inflicted upon an
entire planet to run an economy based on the foolish and immoral notion
that we can sustain industrial societies, all while trashing the
planet's land bases, ecosystems and life. And the fantastic rhetoric
those who insist on adapting to these changes promulgate - that
technology will find a fix, that we can adapt, that the planet can and
will conform to fixes in the market - is dangerous.

"Another part of the problem," Jensen told me, "is the narratives behind
this culture's way of living. The premises of these narratives grant us
the exclusive rights and privileges of dominion over this planet.
Whether you subscribe to the religion of Science or of Christianity,
these narratives tell us that our intelligence and abilities permit us
exclusive rights and privileges to work our will on the world that is
here for us to use. The problem with these stories, whether you believe
in them or not, is that they have real effects on the physical world.
The stories we're told about the world shape the way we perceive the
world and the way we perceive the world shapes the way we behave in the
world. The stories of industrial capitalism - that we can sustain
infinite-growth economies - shapes the way this culture behaves in the
world. And this behavior is killing the planet. Whether the stories we
are told are fantasies or not doesn't matter, what matters is that these
narratives are physical: the stories of Christianity may be fantasy -
let's pretend for a moment that God doesn't exist - well, the Crusades
still happened; the notion of race or gender may be up for debate, but
obviously, race and gender does matter and this postmodern attitude
drives me crazy because, yeah, race and gender is not an actual thing,
but it all has real-world effects - African Americans comprise 58
percent of the prison population and one-third of all black men between
the ages of twenty and twenty-nine are under some sort of criminal
justice supervision; as for gender, well real males rape females.

"Another example [of how things that truly aren't real still have
real-world effects]," Jensen continued, "is there was this serial killer
a while back who was killing women in Santa Cruz. Voices in his head
were telling him that if he didn't kill these women, then California
would slide off into the ocean. It's apparent this guy was delusional, a
total nut job and sick in the head, but his delusions still resulted in
real-world effects. Hitler too had the delusion that Jews were poisoning
the race. That delusion had real-world effects. And we can sit around
and discuss whether Weyerhaeuser truly exists, but forests still get
deforested. Or better yet, it's pretty clear that it's silly to really
believe that the world won't run out of oil ... and then it's suddenly
clear that it's not so silly - there is a physical reality. In the real
world, you can't have a nature/culture split, but in this culture you do
and it has real effects on the physical world. You can't live on a
planet and kill it at the same time."

You find the problem with an industrial production economy when you
unpack the word "production. " As Jensen makes clear in his book "The
Culture of Make Believe," production is essentially the conversion of
the living to the dead: animals into cold cuts, mountains and rivers
into aluminum beer cans, trees into toilet paper, oil into plastics and
computers (one computer uses ten times its own mass in fossil fuels). To
go paperless is not to go green, or maybe it is, depending on what shade
of Green we're talking about here. Basically, every commodity one comes
in contact with is soaked in oil, made from resources, marked by, as
Jensen puts it, the turning of the living to the dead: Industrial
production.

And with conflicts and wars that are waged or instigated by this culture
to access (steal) the resources needed to fuel this economy's colossal
machines, this culture winds up butchering entire non-industrialized
communities of people ... the elderly, children who cling to their
mothers as drones hawk over staggered onlookers ... the innocent and
vulnerable written off as "collateral damage." Himmler used a similar
epithet for Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Serbs, Belarusians, and other Slavic
peoples in a pamphlet he edited and had distributed by the SS Race and
Settlement Head Office: "Untermenschen. "

This is an acceptable price we must pay it, so we are told.

In the US, more lives are lost weekly from preventable cancers and other
illnesses than are lost in ten years from terrorist attacks. And the
corporations this culture fights for overseas are the very organizations
culpable for these domestic deaths every week.

The list of victims whose lives are subject to violent assault and
extinction to feed this culture's "production" is as long and as diverse
as you want to make it.

"An infinite-growth economy is not only insane and impossible," remarked
Jensen, "it's also abusive, by which I mean that it's based on the same
conceit as more personal forms of abuse. It is, in fact, the
macroeconomic enshrinement of abusive behavior. The guiding principle of
abusive behavior is that the abuser refuses to respect or abide by
limits or boundaries put up by the victim. Growth economies are
essentially unchecked and will push past any boundaries set up by anyone
other than the perpetrators. And a successful abuser will always ensure
that there are some 'benefits' for the victim, in this case, e.g., we
can watch TV, we can have computer access and play games online - we get
'benefits' that essentially keep us in line.

"Furthermore, according to the stories of industrial capitalism, this
economic system must constantly increase production to grow and what,
after all, is production? It is indeed the conversion of the living to
the dead, the conversion of living forests into two-by-fours, living
rivers into stagnant pools for generating hydroelectricity, living fish
into fish sticks and ultimately all of these into money. And really,
what is gross national product? It's a measure of this conversion of the
living to the dead. The more quickly the living world is converted into
dead products, the higher the GNP. And these simple equations are
complicated by the fact that when GNP goes down, people often lose jobs.
No wonder the world is getting killed.

"And if we take global warming into consideration here - oh and I
believe the latest study on global warming mentioned something along the
lines of the planet now being on track to heat up by 29 degrees in the
next eighty years ... if that isn't curtailed immediately, no one will
survive that ... And so all the so-called solutions to global warming
take industrial capitalism as a given. And here we see the same old
abusive behavior: the narratives are not only created around the
perceptions of the perpetrators, i.e. those in power, but are forced
upon us by them as well, so we come to believe the narratives and accept
them as a given. And, essentially, to take industrial capitalism as a
given when it comes to solutions to global warming is absolutely absurd
and insane. It's out of touch with physical reality. Yet it has
disastrous effects on the real physical world. If you force a planet to
conform to ideology you get what you get.

"A while back I had a conversation with an anarchist who was complaining
that I was 'too ideological, ' and that my ideology was 'the health of
the earth.' Well, actually, the earth is not and cannot ever be an
ideology. The earth is physical. It is real. And it is primary. Without
soil, you don't have a healthy land base and without a healthy land base
you don't eat, you die. Without drinkable clean water you die."

And this is one of the problems with our culture: its lack of ability to
separate ideology - the kind that accommodates maximizing pleasure and
domination - from the needs of the natural world. And, so, if solutions
to global warming do not immediately address the basic needs of the
planet, well ... we're messed.

"One has to ask," pressed Jensen, "if hammerhead sharks could provide
solutions, if the indigenous could give solutions and if we would listen
to the solutions they are already giving, would these solutions take
industrial capitalism as a given? The bottom line is that capitalist
solutions to global warming are coming from the capitalist boosters,
from those in power who are responsible for exploiting and destroying us
and more importantly, the planet."

By the 1940s, in Germany, Arthur Nebe's gassing van was in wide use.
Those who drove Nebe's death vans never thought of themselves as
murderers, just as another somebody getting paid to drive a van, to do a
job. Today, those who work for Boeing, Raytheon, Weyerhaeuser, Exxon
Mobil, BP, the Pentagon ... will always see themselves as employees, not
murderers. They will always see themselves as working a job that needs
to be done.

Those members of this culture who blindly go along without interrogating
the culture's narratives, who identify with the pathology of this
culture, will always see themselves as just other members of society.
For these people, the murder of a planet feels like economics; it feels
normal after having been pushed out of consciousness by careers, styles
and fashions; it may not even feel like anything at all after being
psychically numbed by pop radio, sitcoms, smart phones, video games ...
But at the other end of all these glittery distractions is an
unremitting array of violence, poverty, extinction, environmental
degradation.

"I saw this right-wing bumper sticker the other day that read, 'You can
have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,' but it's not
just guns: we're going to have to pry rigid claws off steering wheels,
cans of hair spray, TV remote controls and two-liter bottles of Jolt
Cola," cautioned Jensen. "Each of these individually and all of these
collectively are more important to many people than are lampreys,
salmon, spotted owls, sturgeons, tigers, our own lives. And that is a
huge part of the problem. So of course we don't want to win. We'd lose
our cable TV. But I want to win. With the world being killed, I want to
win and will do whatever it takes to win."

When Adolph Eichmann stood before the Jerusalem District Court and was
asked why he agreed to the task of deporting Jews to the ghettos and
concentration camps, his response was, No one ever told me what I was
doing was wrong. Today, 200 species have become extinct; another
indigenous community will disappear from this planet forever; an entire
forest will be removed; and millions of human lives will be forced to
endure the agonies of famine, war, disease, thirst, the loss of their
land, their community, their way of life. Not enough people have stepped
forward to say that what this culture is doing to the planet is wrong.

Well, here it is folks: What this culture is doing to our very selves,
what it's doing to the planet, is wrong. So **** wrong. And the sooner
we replace this economy, the sooner we can dissolve these toxic
illusions and their formative narratives. Only then, can we begin to
live the free lives we were born to live and win the fight.
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honeysuckle James!You must have been really,really bored!

wow that's a lot of text, but it's a great message

it's messed up how much consumerism is in our culture, our culture is consumerism, And our **** entire economy is on a ******* iv consumerism life support iv if we don't buy honeysuckle every god **** moment of the day, our economy goes to ******* hell, the people at wall street lose money and their oversized houses and numerous over sized cars, and they don't want that. So they and the media, send a message to society and that is buy ******* honeysuckle, if you are not buying all of this new sweat shop mass produced honeysuckle, you are not cool, you are not hard core, you are a fashonless slob who is a bum and a drain on america, and you suck.

for eight ******* years the government and bush regime ( this has been actually going on for longer tan that, but he really got into it)
sacrificed the environment, ignoring ******* science and putting ignorant people who never studied it in head of governmental environmental regulations and messed it over. Sacrificed and ignoredtrying to help the environement in order to protect their ever ******* precious economy and now they've gone and somehow messed both the environment AND the economy a million times over.

I'm sorry but a lot of this world is bullshit and having to study it is one of the most depressing and frustrating and helpless feeling thing to do.

( well then again so is studying)

but I digress

I'm going to go eat some delicious unhealthy prepackaged frozen pizza and watch HBO television


............................................................................................................................



**** IT!

I just realized I'm a part of the system


*shame*

And then we can find a new planet. Going back to the stone age is not the solution, either and anyone who chooses to ignore the fact that the developed world has objectively improved the human condition does so at his own foolishness.

It's a copy and paste job.

These things are all horrible and all, but the fact is these are institutions which are in place which took hundreds of years to develop and are a core part of our civilisation. We can't just upend them and start over.

Natural resources are running out, but alternatives are being researched and developed. Biofuel, for instance, is incredible. Getting things like this up and running for civilisation at large presents its own problems though.

[video=youtube]

Whether or not we face impending disaster on all fronts remains to be seen, but human history is full of bloodshed and horror. We arguably have a better quality of living than we have ever had (I really think the media makes its money convincing people otherwise), thanks to the development of technology and industrialisation even if it has brought with it a unique set of problems. All we can do is let things pan out and see what happens.

fresia THIS PLANET.

We won't even be here in 200 years or less. We'll be on the moon and on Mars and possibly even other planets as well.

Here's the thing... it's HUMANITY that will die out, not the planet itself. The planet will survive whatever we do to it; measured in galactic terms, we've only been here for a blink of an eye. We haven't even always been dominant lifeform on this planet. Sure, we can be destructive... but honestly, unless we unleash a nuclear holocaust on the Earth, then our current use of this planet isn't going to KILL the planet.

Don't listen to the hype of Global Warming and planet-dying.

I think humanity will leave the planet eventually (by which time we will most likely have bio-safe energy/fuels).

So stop worrying so much.

The planet is doing just fine here in Cow Hampshire, its the people who could use some help. -SY

Climate is changing BUT it always has. Palm trees used to grow in Scotland once upon a time. Archaeologists prove the layers in rock faces on sea shores show the tide levels were once far higher.

So I believe most of global warming it is just part of a natural rotation of climates.

Nature always finds a way. Eradicate a virus, a new strain appears.

I think the human vs human balloon will explode far quicker than the planet.

I think part of the problem with this approach is the, 'buzz kill', effect. You know when you are having a good time and doing what ever it is you and those around you are doing, and then some one mentions some important thing like; wearing a seat belt, not talking on the phone and driving, not driving drunk, etc...

I think it's hard to convince people of the gravity of the situation. People don't want the truth. If anything, what people often need is a lie that points them towards the necessary action required by the truth.

I think a lot of people, myself included, are just indifferent. I'm a bit indifferent because there IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT ANY OF THIS. We don't even get recycle service to our house. With out this system, I would have nothing. About the only thing I could do is run out into the wilderness and live off the forest until I died.

I think the problem stems from the dissociate illusion of our selves being separate from our environment, ecosystem, etc.. Yet, it's this ego of ours that is often the key to our survival. If you look back into the past at the many great men and women who have died, it is often because they made completely selfless actions that caused them to be perceived as a threat by those around them. The end result being they were killed.

How can we know what's good for the planet? Are the bacteria that rot the grapes endanger of destroying grapes? No, some grapes are just meant for fermentation I think.

I think the best we can do is, do what what little we can. Most of the species on this earth have been around a lot longer than us and most likely most of them will out live us...

Earth has lived through SEVERAL extinction events MUCH more violent than the plight of the modern human. And so it will continue to live out it's life cycle. The earth one day will die, too. Then the sun will explode...

I mean really the only way for us to survive would be to evolve into cyborgs, robots, and be able to change matter at will.

Robots don't need to eat, breathe, or anything like that. Even they, however, will have to consume raw materials to reproduce.

I think if you are passionate about the earth and other species, do what little you can. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, but I don't consume a lot of animal flesh, it's just not necessary to do so. I don't recycle, I could, but I don't. I don't eat fast food, though, and I don't consume a lot of throw away products.

I still drive a car, I still use electricity, I still use running water, my groceries are often wrapped in plastic as it's an effective way to maintain freshness and sanitation.

I read some where they found a way to produce gasoline chemically. I'm sure we can figure out a way to repair the ozone and the air if it comes to it. Plants can take in CO2 and exhaust oxygen, so I'm sure we can learn some way to do this as well.

I think think if humanity as it is right now is behaving in a manner similar to that of a parasite or virus, we will either destroy the host, or it will find it's own sort of vaccine.

I think the important thing to remember is not all of us humans have this desire to exploit people as if they are things and to use things as if they are not a part of themselves. These people have survived for just as long as we have, and I'm sure they will continue to find a way to survive, even when we as a human species are no more, and there is nothing but robots and cyborgs left.

Either way I see no reason to worry, but then again, doesn't hurt to spread a little truth. Everyone is just trying to survive for the most part. And most of us are dependent on the current system for survival.

I find it darkly amusing that people consider the state of fuel consumption/unsustainable living less of a threat than world-ending nuclear war when such issues are likely to be the number one cause of a world-ending nuclear war!

If anything's going to eventually encourage humanity to commit mass nuclear genocide you can bet your boots it's going to be related to the world's last energy or food reserves being in the hands of a select few.

Regardless of your views on global warming, the world's population is continually increasing. One of my lecturers is pioneering chemical solutions to sustainable energy problems. As he put it: what happens when the average Chinese citizen expects to live at the same standard as your average Western citizen?

Our energy needs will grow exponentially beyond what they are even at present.

It's going to happen, and seeing as the discovery of a new oilfield usually provides us with only around a year's worth of global energy, we're going to end up in a seriously screwed up situation if we don't crack sustainable energy soon.

We can perhaps buy time with horrendously dirty shale and so on, but simply saying "We can find another planet to live on, lol" or "Hey, a war would be far worse." seems to miss the crux of the problem rather gigantically.

I was just thinking today, while I was walking on the street, about the choice people make every day to ignore this issues. I've come to the conclusion that people prefer to live a comfortable life in denial of all this. It's easier, to accept the system as it is and not try to change it. People in general have become too used to delegate control to authority, too used to setteling for "a lesser evil"... It's a pathetic sight of what mankind used to be.

Will humanity survive it's addiction to civilization?

We'll just have to wait and see...

I don't believe in going to space, honestly. Where the heck would we go anyway? There is no other planet like this. If anyone goes to space, it will be the elite, I don't think anyone will be interested in taking ordinary people like us.

Best solution would be to stop everything slowly, like turning off a huge machine. Gradually go back to cummunities. Growing your own food, farming your animals. Being as self-suffficient as possible. Solar pannels in every house...

Of course no political candidate is ever gonna propose this. I has to come from the people. But people don't mind the future of their grandchildren as long as they get to have their I phones and junk food...

cumulus.james said:

As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough

Click to expand...

200? Really? Sorry but I find that very difficult to believe. This is from what Reliable studies? Not everything posted on the internet is true.

That being said, yes the human race is harming the planet in numerous ways, but let's be realistic about the facts.

My personal opinion: humanity will not, and should not, survive itself. The only question is will it be before or after we destroy everything else.

JasonM said:

cumulus.james said:

As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough

Click to expand...

200? Really? Sorry but I find that very difficult to believe. This is from what Reliable studies? Not everything posted on the internet is true.

That being said, yes the human race is harming the planet in numerous ways, but let's be realistic about the facts.

My personal opinion: humanity will not, and should not, survive itself. The only question is will it be before or after we destroy everything else.

Click to expand...

Not exactly that number every day, but somewhere between 100-200 species.

It is obvious that the goal set by world leaders at an Earth Summit in 2002, namely a "significant reduction" by 2010 in the rate of species losses, will not be achieved. "We are indeed experiencing the greatest wave of extinctions since the disappearance of the dinosaurs," said Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity. "Extinction rates are rising by a factor of up to 1,000 above natural rates. Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct. The cause: human activities.", he said.

Click to expand...

Source

fresia this planet.

There's no reason why progress shouldn't involve colonizing another planet someday. There's no reason why many people won't be left behind. In short...

There's no reason to believe anything will ever change.