This is where they are coming from: “Earth first means social war!”

Earth first is a revolutionary ecodefense group. The point is not to help jumpstart a new market. The point is to smash the market and smash capitalism…

Most EarthFirsters are primitivists these days which is something I can’t identify with. I’m just a regular eco-anarchist in the tradition of Social Ecology. So hell yes for social war, and capitalism smashing but I’d like to say we can keep language, symbolism, science, permaculture etc. (anarcho-primitivists often consider the aforementioned to be oppressions)

While I believe that I am as anti-capitalist as the next person, corporations will need to be involved if we are actually going to transition to a green economy. Yes, we can promote local, small-scale projects in this transition, but I don’t think that corporations should be categorically boycotted. Yes, we should be suspicious of corporations as a category, for reasons that should be by now all too self-evident. I too am “in full support of small scale, community run wind projects.” But that does not mean that I am in full opposition to large scale, corporate run wind projects. When does a corporate green energy project become legitimate rather than green washing? Does that line exist?

Yes, we cannot ignore the negative effects of the clean/green. Does that mean that we cannot recognize negative effects as sometimes legitimate. In other words, can we not…compromise? If the answer is no (and the exclamation point denotes a rather emphatic one), I think that we’re not going to get very far. Where do we draw the line between this and cape wind?

I believe that just as we cannot categorically dismiss corporate efforts towards sustainability, neither can we categorically support the clean/green, so I agree with you on that. But I think that I support that point more on ontological than political grounds. Will the general public see this action with the nuance that its planners intended?

A cleaner energy project doesn’t have to directly replace a dirty project to reduce emissions. Because of likely increasing demand for electricity in the U.S. over the coming decades, lots of new power plants will probably be built. If this additional energy from the wind turbines fills an energy gap that might have otherwise been filled by a more greenhouse gas polluting type (coal, even natural gas in this case, etc.), then the wind turbines are still reducing future emissions.

That’s not a comment for or against this particular project, since, like I said, I don’t know anything more about the project. I just know what some of its very dirty alternatives are.

The space needs to exist for all to organize and fight dirty/corporate energy projects in the way that makes sense to them and would work in their community. And although these activists (at least those who locked down) were not from Maine, which is a little bit of a tricky line to walk, I think the fact that the convergence was hosted and prepared by maine earth first! truly speaks to Mainers thoughts and feelings on the project. Great work!

no compromise!