Preface The American way of life is not up for negotiation. Period.[1] --George Herbert Walker Bush Once upon a time, environmentalism was about saving wild beings and wild places from destruction. Over the years, environmentalism has undergone the same cooptation that turns so many social movements for justice and sanity into yet more tools for supporting ever more injustice and insanity, until by now too much environmentalism has become not about helping the real world to "sustain" in the face of this culture's incessant omnicide, but rather about finding ways to "sustain" this destructive culture a little bit longer, no matter the costs to the real world. This is how we end up with mainstream environmentalists who overwhelmingly prioritize saving this way of life over saving life on the planet. For example, Lester Brown, labeled as "one of the world's most influential thinkers" and "the guru of the environmental movement,"[2] writes books like Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (which at least one university has made required reading for all incoming freshman) and ran an organization called Earth Policy Institute: Providing a Plan to Save Civilization . He routinely makes comments like, "We talk about saving the planet. Those of us working on environmental issues have been talking about the need to save the planet for some time. But the planet's going to be around for a while. The question is, can we save civilization? That's what's at stake now, and I don't think we've yet realized it." This was written in an article entitled (in case we hadn't already gotten the point), "The Race to Save Civilization."[3] When two hundred species went extinct today; when the oceans are being killed; when wildlife around the world has declined by 50 percent in the last forty years' when insect, frog, fish, mussel, songbird, shorebird populations are collapsing; when the world is being killed because of civilization; what he says is at stake, and what he's racing to save, is precisely the social structure causing the harm: civilization. Not saving salmon. Not monarch butterflies. Not oceans. Not the planet. Saving civilization. He's certainly not alone. Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, more or less constantly pushes the line that "Instead of pursuing the protection of biodiversity for biodiversity's sake, a new conservation should seek to enhance those natural systems that benefit the widest number of [human] people. . . . Conservation will measure its achievement in large part by its relevance to [human] people." [4] Bill McKibben, who works tirelessly and selflessly to raise awareness about global warming, and who has been called by The Boston Globe "probably America's most important environmentalist," constantly stresses his work is about saving civilization, with articles like "Civilization's Last Chance,"[5] or with quotes like, "Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989 . . . I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly--losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in."[6] I'll bet polar bears, walruses, and glaciers would have preferred that sentence ended a different way. Or there's the statement signed by "160 leading environmentalists from 44 countries" who were "calling on the world's foundations and philanthropies to take a stand against global warming." Why take this stand? Because global warming "threatens to cause the very fabric of civilization to crash." The declaration concludes, "We, 160 winners of the world's environmental prizes, call on foundations and philanthropists everywhere to deploy their endowments urgently in the effort to save civilization."[7] Coral reefs, emperor penguins, and Joshua trees probably wish that sentence would have ended differently. This entire declaration signed by these "160 winners of the world's environmental prizes," never once mentioned harm to the natural world. In fact it never mentioned the natural world at all. Or there's this instruction from the 350.org style guide for designing their public arguments: "Focus on people. Whenever possible, use visuals to emphasise [sic] that climate is a real, tangible human problem--not an abstract [sic] ecological issue."[8] Are leatherback turtles, American pikas, and flying foxes "abstract ecological issues," or are they our kin, each imbued with their own "wild and precious life"?[9] Or there's this, from yet another climate activist who states, "I'm not an environmentalist. Most of the people in the climate movement that I know are not environmentalists. They are young people who didn't necessarily come up through the environmental movement, so they don't think of themselves as environmentalists. They think of themselves as climate activists and as human rights activists. The terms 'environment' and 'environmentalism' carry baggage historically and culturally. It has been more about protecting the natural world, protecting other species, and conservation of wild places than it has been about the welfare of human beings. I come at from the opposite direction. It's first and foremost about human beings."[10] Note that he called "protecting the natural world, protecting other species, and conservation of wild places" baggage . There's Naomi Klein, who states explicitly in the film This Changes Everything : "I've been to more climate rallies than I can count, but the polar bears? They still don't do it for me. I wish them well, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that stopping climate change isn't really about them, it's about us." And then there's this from Kumi Naidoo, former head of Greenpeace International: "The struggle has never been about saving the planet. The planet does not need saving."[11]. The day he said this, it was fifty degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal at the North Pole, above freezing in the middle of the winter. I cannot bear how invisible life on this planet is to these people. This is the priority--and the willful blindness--of so much modern environmentalism. The real world just "doesn't do it for us." The real world doesn't need our help. It's about us. It's always "about us." But something infinitely more important than civilization is at stake. # Decades ago, I[12] was one of a group of grassroots environmental activists planning a campaign. Before the meeting started, we went around the table saying why we were doing this work. The answers were consistent, and exemplified by one woman who said, simply, "For the critters," and by another who got up from the table, walked to her desk, and brought back a picture. At first, the picture looked like a high-up part of the trunk of an old growth Doug fir, but when I looked more closely I saw a small spotted owl sticking her camouflaged head out of a hole in the center of the trunk. The activist said, "I'm doing it for her." # Calling yourself an environmentalist as you prioritize saving this omnicidal culture over saving the real world is only part of the process of coopting environmentalism toward nature-destroying ends. The next step is simple: collapse the distinction and pretend sustaining this omnicidal culture is saving the planet. Excerpted from Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
