At the same time as doing this, we need to be learning and teaching how to live sustainably, without depending on our resources being brought to us. People need to know how to survive by depending only on nature. As long as we are dependent on technology and a system that brings us our resources, then we are at the mercy of the system killing the planet. And when it crashes, which it inevitably will and has already begun, we will be in serious trouble if we don’t have sustainable knowledge.

I don’t know if this is the best proposal, but it’s a lot better than trying to work within the system, which is what most environmentalists have submitted to doing.

Now, I believe that this system is going to crash whether we help bring it about or not, because I believe it is inherently unsustainable. So the sooner it crashes the better it will be for life during and after the crash because less life will have been destroyed by this system. Now some might object that causing the system to crash in this way is going to cause a lot of people to die. Well I think this is a selfish and anthropocentric position to take. A lot of people and a lot of other living beings are dying right now as we stare at these computer screens and debate what we should do. People are being killed in Iraq right now so that we can steal the oil. Don’t you think actions like the one I suggested above will give the Iraqi people some much deserved relief as the U.S. government is forced to bring military forces back home to deal with what’s going on. And I think if we are careful about how we do such actions that we can avoid a lot of us being killed, but I know this for certain: if we don’t stop this system it will kill or enslave all of us. Most of us are already it’s slaves, even those of us who are striving for freedom.

Ryan, Jesse, and Richard have written excellent essays defending justice and level-headedness, without relying on the status quo of nonviolence, which is perhaps what Eric, Evan, et al are worried about. We all agree that the threat is more powerful than nearly anything humanity has faced in the past, and the challenge more difficult. (I say “nearly” because I reckon that the climate destabilization caused by nuclear winter would be just as devastating to natural and social systems as that caused by carbon summer.)

I think Eric makes a crucial point; that we need to be clear, right now, about what we mean by violence and nonviolence. Otherwise we risk talking past each other. For example, I see a lot of folks conflating nonviolence and inaction. No one is arguing for continued inaction. We need to be clear about what we mean, specific about what violence and nonviolence consist of with regards to tactical action. What are we doing nonviolently right now? Much of the content of this blog deals with that answer. What could we do violently (or destructively)? I’m interested in what productive methods of violence Eric, Evan, et al are urging.

We need to rely on the methods that will effectively bring about the change we need in the necessary time frame. We all agree on that. Will nonviolent action do that? I think it can. Will violent action? I don’t think it can, but I want to hear what its advocates propose.

You seem to be acting as if all the injustice of the world is being directed at you. Can you legitimately take it all on, yourself? If people from Kiribati, Togo, or Indonesia that I met with last week all rejected violence and instead are working to raise global consciousness, why are YOU a broken record on it?

But you seem to like to resort to authors, so I shall turn to one I find much more inspiring than Jensen. Kurt Vonnegut said “We are all addicted to fossil fuels and like a junkie we are committing violent crimes to get the wisps that are left.” He gave up on hope, maybe, but never on the spirit of a few good people to stand up over and over.

You don’t stop a junkie by stabbing them in the toes - and that is all you would be doing with property destruction or violence. There are $17 trillion dollars of investment going into fossil fuels/dependent activity over the next 20 years, there are 6.5 billion people currently on this planet and many of them in a far more vulnerable shape both to climate and the economy, and lastly nearly half of all the people on this planet are under the age of 25.

Terrorists, both the state and non-state kind, are linked in a symbiotic dance. They commit murderous acts of violence and terrify the public, which allows itself to be stripped of rights for its protection and responds through violence that often misses the nimble, non-state actors and hurts women, children, and the innocent. State repression is hard to maintain without an outside threat and the same is true for non-state terror. It is a cycle of violence and think how much it has done to divert resources from tackling global warming, how it has divided the world when we need to be united, and the endless suffering of those hurt.

We are talking of a global problem, shifting the economy of the world. Martin Luther King Jr said “The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.” We might not have the time to wait, but why should that stop us? Your call to violence to stop the machine will either be inadequate and a drag upon other movements, successful in imposing a new violent system of repression - as that is the obvious lesson of history, or is a hollow call that no one shall listen for they are not trapped in the halls of despair but have found others to support them in a difficult struggle that nonetheless fills them passion and love for our fellow human and more-than-human brothers and sisters.

We are in a much more desperate situation than African Americans and Indians were in the movements you talked about, because the future of all life on the planet is at stake, not just the future of one group of people.

We have to stop relying on hope. We have to stop hoping that the situation will improve. We have to start saying, “I will do whatever it takes to stop the dominant culture from killing the planet.” We have to make a stand.

Sincerely,
Eric

Jensen defines bringing down civilization as depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the world.

I don’t know if we can do this completely nonviolently or not, but I do know that we will have to use force. We will have to force those killing the planet to stop against their will. Perhaps we can do this with sheer numbers of people taking back the land. Perhaps we can do it by taking out the electrical infrastructure somehow. Whatever happens, we will not succeed with ease and we will have to use force.

We cannot continue to allow cities to continue to steal resources from the countryside. We cannot continue to allow rich nations and corporations to steal resources from the poor. We cannot continue to allow the destruction of forests, rivers, oceans, mountains and human communities if we want life to continue for us.

The problems and destruction are too widespread for us to think we can succeed without force. We are currently losing this battle. Environmental destruction is happening faster than ever before, but I believe the tide can turn soon and will do whatever it takes to make this happen.

We sit here wrestling with the very fate of the world and it’s inhabitants, both human, and as you put it, more-than-human. What a weight for today’s youth to shoulder! We shouldn’t have to do this. We should be carefree and happy, worried more about who will win the next match of beer pong than whether or not we’ll live in a world 10 years from now that we’ll even want to bring children into. We didn’t ask for this burden, but here we are, and how can we ignore it?

It’s crushing sometimes, and yes, I cry as well. How can you not when you open your heart to the tragedies already unfolding?

Yes, life today is not as bright as it seems to many average Americans.

But the future could be either darker or brighter, filled with fear and violence and scarcity, or filled with cooperation, justice and sustained and sustainable prosperity. We really do stand at a turning point, and the broadening sense of impending crisis may ultimately provide the motivating urgency to tackle not just climate change but the broader societal psychoses of which climate change is just one symptom.

So yes, I feel the desperate urgency you feel. But I do not share your sense of desperation about the tactics at our disposal.

Even we in the “youth climate movement” have only just begun to think of and talk of ourselves as “a movement” - something more unified and purposeful, something appropriate to the grand scale of the challenges, opportunities and threats we face. We have just begun to move off of our campuses - where we focused on small victories close to home - to tackle unified and more sophisticated campaigns for major victories. We have only begun to articulate a compelling vision of the future that could be to ignite a broader movement. We have only begun to reach out to allies, broaden the scope of what we’re fighting for, and find new friends.

It may be too late. I acknowledge that in my moments of stark honesty. And then I refuse to let the debilitating despair that accompanies the acknowledgment of that possibility.
For what does that accomplish? Yes, we may be too late. But we may not be, and I will cling with all of my might to that possibility until I am absolutely sure it is unfounded.

When the despair does creep in around the edges of my thought, I turn to my friends and compatriots both here in the Northwest and (more and more) scattered across the nation and the globe who are in this with me, who see the scale of our challenge and the magnitude of the risks and opportunities we face. This blog itself has done more to connect me with such people than just about anything else (at least before the founding of the Cascade Climate Network). So when I begin to despair as to the scale of what I am working to accomplish, I turn to my friends and compatriots for inspiration and support. I am not alone, for they are with me. And we are with you. And together we can “move mountains.”

Evan, I ask you these questions: are we really in a more desperate position than African Americans in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, or of Indians at the beginning of their quest for independence? Have we really exhausted other opportunities and must jump to desperate acts of violence? Are we sure nonviolent tactics will take too long, or if we are, that violence will solve anything fast enough (if at all)? Are you considering violence out of desperation, or out of tactical calculation? What would that violence look like and how can you see it succeeding where nonviolent efforts would fail?

In solidarity,

Jesse

I think it’s prudent to qualify Jesse’s statement about how dire the situation is. Dire for whom? Certainly it is dire for many indigenous people around the world, the people of islands like Tuvalu, and those living in the new floodplains under mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia. Exposure to toxics in the US is indisputably greater across class and racial demographics. Dire for most of us from middle/ upper-class backgrounds? (I assume most readers of this blog, myself included, fit here) Not yet. Some of what I do find compelling about Jensen’s writings is the way it makes visible that most of us in U.S. and western society are participants in activities which create death and suffering for many people (environmentally speaking, not to mention the war for oil our tax dollars are funding).

The biggest weaknesses I see so far in Jensen’s argument (although I have only read parts of endgame and conferred with a colleague who is familiar with his work on timber) are first analytical- his reification of “culture” and “civilization” (as Richard points out)and second predictive- his conclusions about what would/will happen when current social systems fail or breakdown.

We should not homogenize phenomena with are analytically distinct- this leads to bad analysis and bad tactics based on it. The problem of cities drawing resources unsustainably from beyond their boarders is very old and common indeed, but it is a mistake to assume the same societal structures that drove the process in the Mesopotamia and Rome drive it today in New York or Mexico City. Or for that matter between the global north and south. One scholar as far back as the 19th century studied the problem and necessary steps to resolve it extensively, labeling it a “metabolic rift”. He also argued that there had been a fundamental shift in the driving forces behind the process with the rise of capitalism, commenting that although new technologies were being produced they were only employed in ways which in the end degraded the land and laborer.

It bears mentioning that according to the WWF the only nation with a high standard of living and a sustainable ecological footprint was Cuba (over 3/4 of produce consumed in Havanna is grown in the city). I, and many others in environmental sociology, do not believe this is a coincidence but rather evidence of the importance of democratically planned economies insulated from the all consuming profit imperative (current conditions arose after Cuba decentralized its agricultural planning to community cooperatives). Although grantedly imperfect, ecological footprint takes into account resources extracted elsewhere but consumed domestically and so is superior to measures of pure rhetoric/ policy on paper used by ecological modernizationists who tend to tout the Scandinavian countries.

If the goal were simply to collapse the current system that could conceivably be achieved with guerilla tactics of sabotage ect. But those who have the least wealth and power now would definitely fare the worst. It is also perfectly conceivable that the power elite would maintain their place in the hierarchy in whatever new order of fascist-capitalism or feudal city-states rose up out of the rubble. I have trouble agreeing with broad statements that the sooner the current system ends the better it will be. How it ends/changes and better for whom are critical parts of that question.

I agree our ability to build solidarity is contingent on our ability to offer a brighter future to the majority of people who are exploited by the current system. I agree we should not be overly concerned with persuading the power elite and certain segments of the middle class who benefit from the current arrangement. Most people in the world do not benefit and inequality is only growing- if we can reach this exploited majority it won’t matter about convincing the rich and powerful, as Eric points out “private property” –the idea you can own the earth or the air or water and do with it as you please is a social construct which is not sufficiently questioned. Van Jones is doing great work in this area and we need to push it further. Green jobs for all with a pension and a union. Sociologist David Pellow has published work on how the absence of a big picture created dangerous and exploitive working conditions and environmental hazards to communities of color by new recycling facilities in Chicago when the “blue bag” program was implemented. All while the multinational corporation running the no bid contract operation with the city made huge profits. This was a huge setback for the coalition between middle class environmentalists and minority communities which had opposed a hazardous waste incinerator and supported a recycling program as an alternative.

Most people in this discussion seem to agree that it would be foolish to adopt pacifism- we seem to be narrowing in on: what is to be done here in the US, right now? I think most of us feel some of the urgency Eric talks about, the suffering happening right now, the uncertainty of when we will reach tipping/ points of no return. Building the kind of broad solidarity based movement Amy mentioned in an earlier post does take precious time which, although some have more than others, we are all running out. We need to make changes as rapidly as possible but as far as I can see the best way to do that here is still through non-violence. The elites in business and government are all too ready to engage in violent conflict- they are confident have the upper hand in that realm. House Resolution 1955 “For the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism”, introduced by a Democrat from California is designed to set up a McCarthy Commission style “thought police” along those lines.

The type of future we want to create and the means we use to create are not separable, not just in a philosophical sense, but in a real materialist one. Without building the type of movement and alternative culture we want to replace the current system, when the inevitable crises come (climate change, peak oil, etc.) I believe the most likely outcome will be less freedom, more ecological exploitation, more suffering by many forms of life. I won’t say there is never a time for violence, but violence only negates, and we need to be creating most of all.

Here’s to the long haul,
Ryan

I ask this question as honestly and openly as I can: What is the threshold where we near or cross the line into the “End Game”? When does this become a desperate situation? Will it take every mother’s breast milk poisoned with dioxin? Will it take carcinogenic pollution in every stream and river? Will it take 160,000 humans dying a year because of climate change? Will it take a major metropolitan city being flooded? Will it take 1 in 4 black males being imprisoned at some point in their life? Will it take 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetime? Will it take the extinction rates at 1000 times the background rate? Will it take the deaths of all indigenous peoples? Will it take the death of all of the great coral reefs? Will it take the destruction of the last refuges from the sounds of motors and airplanes? Will it take all the polar bears going extinct? The flooding of Florida? I guess I’m asking, where does the nightmare start? Is it not already here?

At PowerShift, I had an opportunity to attend a session with the Adaptation Network and one of the women there said that she felt it terribly important to not lie to our children. I think it’s equally important that we’re not lying to ourselves in trying to paint a rosy picture of the future. These next 50 years (and beyond) are going to be really, really, really tough on us and our more-than-human neighbors, even if all greenhouse gas emissions are halted tomorrow. Let’s acknowledge that. And yes, there is reason for despair. There is reason to mourn. I have played the game with myself where I kept believing, “yeah, we’ll solve this. we’ll avert this crisis.” But I have had to admit to myself that the crisis is already here. The destruction has already begun and is ongoing. It’s been going on for a long, long time, long before I was born.

At PowerShift I also attended a session about dealing with the difficult emotions surrounding this dire situation. I wasn’t ready to cry then, but I saw others really opening themselves up, and I, now, am slowly learning to cry. To feel the pain of what has already been lost, of the ongoing destruction, and of the difficult times ahead.

I know this may delve too much into my personal life, but I share this because I think that in order to move into good action, we have to be honest about what’s going on. “Politics of fear” and “Politics of hope” aside, I’d just like to just be honest. I feel this situation is desperate and dire, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what can be done. I don’t feel that anything being proposed is enough. This is a tough place to be for me, it wracks my body and pains my bones, but I think it’s the best place to be. I think this is the place where healing begins, both for myself, my family and friends, for my bioregion, for this Earth. It will be a long, long time until we are whole. I probably will not see it, but I commit myself to doing whatever it takes, whatever is in my power to do, to work for that. I know you all do too.

thank you for your willingness to engage in this dialogue. i appreciate it.

in good heart,
Evan

And we’re far from the end game, Evan. You’re talking about the tactics of desperation, and we’re simply not there yet. We may feel a justified sense of desperate (and motivating) urgency, but we are far from exhausting our options for activism, protest, political participation, etc. When these methods fail, which they will not, then we can start talking about violent attempts to “bring down civilization” for whatever the heck that means.

In the meantime, violence will kill our efforts to build a broad-based movement, while alientating the general populace and spurring them into a culture of fear - exactly the kind of culture of fear that our opponents would be happy to see people in. Fear breads selfishness, desperation, violence, inaction - the worst qualities of humanity. Hope breads optimism, empathy, commitment, and cooperation - those things we admire in humanity.

I’m with Richard: I am motivated by a desperate sense of urgency, and a fear of a nightmare future that could be a reality. But I inspire myself and others to act with a hopeful vision of a brighter future that could be ours, if we are committed to laying the groundwork today.

Jesse

We can talk all we want about some bright future full of windmills and solar panels and biofueled vehicles, but it won’t matter at all if we can’t breathe the air and drink the water and live on land full of life. There is no future on a dead planet. We have to force the polluters to stop and we have to do it as soon as possible.