In northern Michigan, across rolling sand dunes and a picturesque village situated on Lake Michigan, it is raining toxic PFAS chemicals.
No, really. It is.
A team of U.S. and Canadian scientists analyzed rainfall at six sites across the Great Lakes region and found high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, at all the sites, including, surprisingly, rural Michigan. The rainwater samples contained PFAS levels between 100 to 400 parts per trillion (ppt). For comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “safe” limit for drinking water — not rainwater — is 70 ppt.
The findings highlight the ubiquitous nature of PFAS chemicals, man-made substances used in common household products because of their water-, oil-, and grease-resistant qualities. Firefighting foam is also a main source of PFAS. Commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” their legacy can be found everywhere — in soil, groundwater, lakes, oceans, and now, even the rain.
“All of these products that we use in our everyday life are treated with PFAS,” Marta Venier, an environmental chemist at Indiana University and the principal investigator for the research, told Grist. “So every time we use them, there is either dust or air where these chemicals are released.”
PFAS chemicals are transported through the air and then deposited via precipitation into the environment, where it accumulates, can be ingested by wildlife, and can wind up in the human body. Studies indicate that exposure to PFAS chemicals can cause reproductive, liver, kidney, and immunological damage in laboratory animals. It’s also a possible carcinogen — two PFAS chemicals have been shown to cause tumors in animal studies.
Beginning last August, scientists collected ambient air and rainwater samples for 38 different PFAS compounds from six sites across the Great Lakes region: Cleveland, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, Sturgeon Point, New York, Point Petre in Ontario, Canada, and Sleeping Bear Dunes and Eagle Harbor, both in Michigan. Both the rural and urban sites’ rainwater showed high levels of PFAS contamination.
The research also showed the magnitude of the problem — at all six test sites, there was more PFAS than other pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Scientists say the early analysis, first presented at the Emerging Contaminants in the Environment Conference in April, shows that PFAS chemicals are a major contaminant regionally in snow and rain.
While immediate exposure to the contaminated rainwater isn’t a concern, scientists warn that because PFAS chemicals linger in the environment, there could be serious long-term effects of airborne PFAS contamination on wildlife and human health. “There’s a lot of information that needs to be pieced together,” said Venier.
The findings add to the growing body of research on airborne movement and deposition of PFAS. This past April, another group of researchers, from the College of Wooster, shared their findings from testing rainwater in Ohio and Indiana at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. The scientists found 17 different PFAS chemicals in the rainwater.
Researchers plan to keep analyzing PFAS in rainwater to be able to trace the chemicals back to specific polluters, and to evaluate seasonal trends in concentration. In 2018, for example, investigators in North Carolina traced PFAS chemicals from rainwater to Chemours, a chemical manufacturing facility in Bladen County, prompting the state agency to order emissions reductions.
With other chemicals, like PAHs, researchers have found that the levels are higher in the winter when we use heat more, so Venier plans to look for the same trends with PFAS to increase understanding so regulatory action can be taken based on the findings.
“We need to put an end to the domination of capital over life in order to create a world that is just, egalitarian, and vibrant, so that we all can live well and in peace,” says La Via Campesina’s Anti-Imperialist Manifesto in Defense of the Environment.
A new study suggests that we are entering a period of mass extinction comparable to the one 66 million years ago
The natural world is in a state of crisis, and we are to blame. We are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, the biggest loss of species in the history of humankind. So many species are facing total annihilation.
We can end extinction with funding and willpower. We must stop making excuses and make the policy actions necessary to save life on Earth.
The rapid decline in species has occurred in recent years: 60% of the planet’s wildlife populations have been lost in just the last 50 years. Scientists warn that in the coming decades, if we don’t take action, more than 1 million species may vanish from the Earth forever.
Our fellow Earthlings are being overhunted, overfished and overharvested for our food, clothing and medicines. And the ones that we don’t kill are losing their homes as we destroy their natural habitats to make space for our farms and cities, and to extract fuels, minerals, timber and other resources for human society.
As the International Union for Conservation of Nature warns, the worldwide extinction crisis is “expected to worsen as the human population grows.” According to the Population Reference Bureau, the world’s human population is expected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050.
That’s more than 25% more people on the planet than the 7.9 billion people currently living on the Earth. Other species will certainly be squeezed out.
Biodiversity isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential to the health and maintenance of Earth’s ecosystems, which, in turn, are critical to human health. In addition to providing sustenance, medicines and livelihoods to billions of people, biodiversity helps maintain the Earth’s basic life-supporting elements like:
Clean water
Clean air
Crop pollination
Critical ecosystem services like soil fertility
Waste decomposition
Recovery from natural disasters.
“Whether in a village in the Amazon or a metropolis such as Beijing, humans depend on the services ecosystems provide,” writes Julie Shaw, the director of communications for the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, a biodiversity conservation joint initiative of the French Development Agency, Conservation International, the European Union, the Global Environment Facility, the government of Japan and the World Bank.
“Ecosystems on Earth are weakened by the loss of biodiversity are less likely to deliver those services, especially given the needs of an ever-growing human population.”
There is also a massive economic benefit to biodiversity on Earth.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)—a three-decade-old international treaty adopted by 193 countries (not including, most notably, the United States)—points out that “at least 40% of the world’s economy and 80% of the needs of the poor are derived from biological resources.” Damian Carrington, the environment editor of the Guardian, writes that ecosystem services are “estimated to be worth trillions of dollars—double the world’s GDP. Biodiversity loss in Europe alone costs the continent about 3% of its GDP [$546 million] … a year.”
So what can be done to prevent the rapid extinction of species and protect Earth’s biodiversity?
In April 2019, a group of 19 prominent scientists answered that question when they published the “Global Deal for Nature” (GDN), a “time-bound, science-driven plan to save the diversity and abundance of life on Earth,” which, when paired with the Paris Climate Agreement, is meant to “avoid catastrophic climate change, conserve species, and secure essential ecosystem services.”
To achieve its goal of “ensuring a more livable biosphere,” the GDN’s main objective is crystallized in its “30×30” proposal: Conserve 30 percent of the Earth in its natural state by 2030. The idea has taken off, with 50 nations led by Costa Rica, France and the United Kingdom joining the movement to realize the 30×30 vision of defending big swathes of intact ecosystems from exploitation.
“Protecting 30% of the planet will undoubtedly improve the quality of life of our citizens, and help us achieve a fair, decarbonized and resilient society,” said Andrea Meza, Costa Rica’s environmental minister. “Healing and restoring nature is a key step towards human wellbeing, creating millions of quality green and blue jobs and fulfilling the 2030 agenda, particularly as part of our sustainable recovery efforts.”
Nongovernmental organizations have answered the rallying cry as well. The Wyss Foundation, a private charitable foundation based in Washington, D.C., “dedicated to… empower[ing] communities… and strengthen[ing] connections to the land,” has joined forces with National Geographic to launch the Wyss Campaign for Nature—“a $1 billion investment to help [nations,] communities, [and] Indigenous peoples” mobilize to achieve the 30×30 goal.
The campaign has launched a public petition urging immediate action to protect those ecosystems that have not yet been completely despoiled by the unrelenting expansion of humanity. “Protecting 30% of our entire planet by 2030 (30×30) is an ambitious but achievable goal,” asserts the campaign.
“To achieve it, all countries must embrace the goal and contribute to it; Indigenous rights must be respected; and conservation efforts must be fully funded.”
And while the U.S. is not a signatory of the CBD treaty, President Biden can take unilateral action by declaring the wildlife extinction crisis a national emergency. “The declaration, under the National Emergencies Act, isn’t just symbolic,” says the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit based in Tucson, Arizona, which has launched a public petition urging the president to take this important and powerful step. “It will unlock key presidential powers to stem the loss of animals and plants in the United States and beyond,” the group says.
Biden’s declaration would marshal the federal resources necessary to start safeguarding the hundreds of species—including the monarch butterfly, eastern gopher tortoise and northern spotted owl—that have been languishing on the waiting list to receive protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Those actions could include directing federal agencies to rein in wildlife exploitation, defend critical wildlife habitat on federal land and use the nation’s economic influence to help protect wildlife habitat around the world from deforestation and environmental damage caused by the private sector.
Thankfully, there is international traction to make the 30×30 vision a reality. When the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD convenes in October in Kunming, China, chances are good that delegates will secure a firm multilateral commitment: The current “zero draft” of the global framework meant to steer conservation efforts through 2030 includes the 30×30 vision as an explicit aim.
“We lose a species to extinction every hour, but extinction is not inevitable,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, in December. “We can end extinction with funding and political will. We need to stop making excuses and take the bold policy actions necessary to save life on Earth.”
Reynard Loki Independent Media Institute
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
To discern ugliness requires a sense of beauty. To name darkness involves knowing light. And to correctly identify lies demands a grasp of truth.
It makes sense, therefore, that behind the title of the newly-published Bright Green Lies, by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert, (1) we find three important and sombre truths.
The first of these is that industrial society is killing the living planet.
Jensen’s magnificent 2006 work Endgame helped me enormously in finding the confidence to see and state this truth as an objective fact.
Previously, I had tended to regard it rather as a subjective opinion of mine, born of my personal aesthetic and moral distaste for the infrastructure and ideology of this ugly and empty modern world.
The same Endgame clarity shines through the almost-500 excellent pages of Bright Green Lies.
“The industrial economy is based on systematic theft from land bases, and the conversion of these living communities into dead products. That’s what an industrial economy is. The economy does not create value for the real world: It destroys the real world”, (2) insist the authors.
Development is “a euphemism for destruction”, (3) they point out. “There can be no such thing as a ‘green superpower’, a ‘green industrial system’, or a ‘nonextractive industrial system’. These are all oxymorons”. (4)
They set out to challenge “the unstated acceptance that industrial levels of consumption cannot be questioned, never mind curtailed”. (5)
“We need to stop being guided by the general story that we can have it all, that we can have our industrial culture and also have wild nature, that we can have an oil economy and still have polar bears”, (6) writes Jensen.
Wishful thinking lies at the heart of the general blindness regarding the severity of the problem. People simply don’t want to believe that things are really that bad, that they might really have to leave behind the plastic security of the industrial womb and face raw and natural reality.
As consumers we have been conditioned not to think too much about where anything comes from and how it is made. Guilt is not good for sales.
Bright Green Lies reminds us: “Things don’t magically appear because it’s convenient for you to think they do. Things come from somewhere. These things require materials. There are costs associated with extracting these materials. These costs are paid by someone. Even if you want a groovy, solar-powered mass transit system, the materials still have to come from somewhere someone else lived until their home was destroyed so you can have what you want”. (7)
They know that their message is not one that most people want to hear.
“We get it. We, too, like hot showers and freezing cold ice cream, and we like them 24/7. We like music at the touch of a button or, now, a verbal command. We like the conveniences this way of life brings us. And it’s more than conveniences. We know that. We three co-authors would be dead without modern medicine. But we all recognise that there is a terrible trade-off for all this: life on the planet. And no individual’s conveniences – or, indeed, life – is worth that price”. (8)
The picture could not be painted any clearer than in the statement made towards the end of the book: “Industrial civilization is incompatible with life on the planet”. (9)
The second truth exposed, one particularly hard for many contemporary environmentalists to face up to, is that “renewables” are a scam.
“We are being sold a story, and we are buying it because we like it,” say the authors. “We want it to be true. We want to believe that our lives can go on with all the ease and comfort we accept as our due. How painless to believe that a simple switch of wind for oil and solar for coal and we can go on with our air conditioning and cell phones and suburbs. Every time we hit a trip wire of unsettling facts or basic math, we soothe ourselves with our faith in technology”. (10)
They marshal a massively impressive, detailed and fully-referenced body of evidence to demonstrate, beyond the slightest doubt, that these bright green “solutions” are not only toxic and destructive to nature, but are not even capable of performing the role they are billed as performing.
“The brutal truth is that oil is fundamentally irreplaceable for an industrial economy”, (11) the authors note. “It is remarkably dishonest to pretend that ‘renewables’ meeting 74 or 78 percent of electricity on a sunny, windy, weekend afternoon even remotely implies that ‘renewable sources can power a large industrial nation’”. (12)
This means, they explain, that the idea of “green energy”, which social consensus tells us is a sound one, is not in fact sound at all – “neither in the broad strokes (continuing to fuel the destruction of the planet is in fact a bad idea) nor in the particulars (that nondestructive sources of industrial scale energy exist)”. (13) They add: “Again and again, the policies and technologies promoted by bright greens do the opposite of their purported goal”. (14)
Given all the long-available evidence supporting this analysis, it is strange that there is not more outrage about the deceit involved.
“Why aren’t more people screaming at the absurdity of these bright green fantasies?” (15) ask Jensen, Keith and Wilbert. “You have an entire culture killing the planet and calling this destruction ‘saving the earth’”. (16)
Their aim is to wake people up to the scam and to provide them with the analytic framework and “tools” to debunk such claims on their own. (17)
One of the main elephants in the renewables room is the fact that the materials for its infrastructure need to be extracted from the earth: “When bright greens tell you that it’s possible to have something resembling this way of life without mining, they’re not telling the truth”. (18)
Another is that the products of the new “green” economy are transported all around the world in ships and “the 16 largest ships create more pollution than all the cars in the world”. (19)
Further flies in the eco-ointment include:
SOLAR. “Industrial solar energy doesn’t help the world. It’s just another way to power industrial capitalism. At root, it’s an industrial product designed and built in the global capitalist marketplace to make a profit. Like other products, it leaves behind the wreckage of destroyed land, poisoned water, and devastated communities”. (20)
WIND TURBINES. “In December 2013, the federal [US] government exempted the wind industry from federal protections of bald and golden eagles. For the next 30 years, wind turbines can legally kill federally protected bald and golden eagles with no penalty. Remember, this is a technology promoted by the modern environmental movement”. (21)
BIOFUELS. “Just a fancy word that means burning living materials like wood – and what you and I might call ‘planting monocrops to use as fuel’ or ‘cutting down forests to burn’”. (22)
GREEN CARS. “Cars themselves harm the earth, whether they’re made of steel, carbon fiber, or ‘eco-plastics’; and whether they’re powered by gasoline, diesel, solar energy, or refined methane captured from unicorn farts”. (23)
WATER-POWERED FUEL CELLS. “One estimate looked at private passenger vehicles in the US and found that producing enough hydrogen for their operation would take 160 million gallons of purified water per day. Running all the private passenger vehicles in the US on water-powered fuel cells would be, in terms of water consumption, like adding four new cities the size of Los Angeles”. (24)
GREEN CITIES. “Green cities remain not just elusive but physically impossible. In fact, cities around the world function essentially the same as they have for thousands of years, as centers of consumption, control and power. Modern cities are not just linked to the destruction of the planet; they’re central to it”. (25) “Conserving nearby land doesn’t mean much when your economy is killing the planet elsewhere”. (26)
GREEN POWER GRID. “The new grid looks a lot like the old grid. It delivers electricity to factories and subdivisions (and now, cars). The power it delivers was generated in processes that are destroying the planet. The grid itself is destroying the planet, in its production, installation, operation, and maintenance. Instead of campaigning for more grids, we should be fighting them, indeed removing them”. (27)
GEOENGINEERING. “Spraying aerosols from planes is only one of the lunatic ideas put forward under the name of geoengineering. Also floated are ideas like putting mirrors in space to deflect sunlight, or somehow changing the earth’s orbit. Or dumping iron into the ocean to promote blooms of phytoplankton. What could go wrong?” (28)
REYCYLING. “The process of recycling materials itself requires an infrastructure that is harmful to both the environment and humanity. Not only does the recycling process very often cause more waste and pollution, but it frequently relies upon nearby populations living in unsafe conditions and workers being subjected to both toxins and slave labor”. (29)
E-WASTE. “Electric cars (along with nearly all the other green technologies, especially solar panels), also contain electronics, circuit boards, and other computer components. When this material is thrown away, it’s known as e-waste”. Recycling e-waste is “one of the most hazardous known industries”, the authors note, quoting an impact assessment report that describes e-waste as “a serious environmental and human health threat”. (30)
The authors describe their reference to bright green sell-out Naomi Klein’s infamous statement in the film This Changes Everything that polar bears “don’t do it for me” (31) as “the single most important passage in this book” (32) illustrating as it does so perfectly the degraded state of contemporary environmentalism, shorn of the deep and instinctive love of nature which once fed its soul.
Instead, this brave new pseudo-environmentalism appears to be all about money, in a general and more specific sense.
The book refers to researcher Cory Morningstar and her Wrong Kind of Green blog (33) and echoes her analysis that ultimately the bright green “climate” movement is not about saving the planet but about saving capitalism, that it is “a desperate attempt to stave off facing the consequences of our way of life, even though it will lead to an even more horrifying collapse at the end”. (34)
“Most environmentalists assume we must maintain the high-energy modern lifestyle; we must at all costs avoid disturbing the ‘prosperity’ so important to bright greens”, (35) they add.
For fake greens, “the ongoing destruction of the planet, and the continued dominance of coal, oil, and gas; seems to be less important than diverting people’s rage – which, if left unchecked, might actually explode into something that would stop capitalism and industrialism from murdering the planet – into corporate-friendly ends”. (36)
As well as wanting to prevent the collapse of the money system off which they feed, climate capitalists are out to make a considerable personal profit from the bright green technology bubble, at the expense of public funds mobilised to address the climate emergency.
The authors comment: “If you ask many of the people who march for the environment why they’re mobilizing, they’ll tell you they’re trying to save the planet; but if you ask for their demands, they often respond that they want additional subsidies for solar manufacturers… one could easily be forgiven for concluding that much environmentalism has become a de facto lobbying arm of the solar industry”. (37)
“And that, really, is what the bright green movement is about. Capturing subsidies for specific sectors of the industrial economy. To the dedicated young people marching to save the planet, we offer our solidarity. But the demands of this movement boil down to public money for sectors of the industrial economy”. (38)
“It’s pretty clear that the real goal of the bright greens isn’t defending the planet… The real goal is to get money into so-called green technology”. (39)
As Jensen notes in his Afterword, this is particularly true of the various “deals” for nature currently being touted by fake-green capitalists: “The Green New Deal, which is being pushed so hard by mainstream environmentalists, has far less to do with saving wild places and wild beings than it does with generating subsidies for favored sections of the industrial economy, with estimates of the giveaways running from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars”. (40)
Genuine solutions to the environmental crisis, such as deconstructing the industrial economy, will never be considered, the book observes, because genuine environmentalism “doesn’t serve the industrial agenda (or the desires of the financial elites)”. (41)
Economic growth, the enemy of real natural growth, remains the holy cow of an ideology belonging entirely to the industrial capitalist system.
“Nearly all bright greens speak of economic growth as positive, or at the very least don’t speak against it”, remark Jensen et al. “Given that the global economy is killing the planet, ‘growing the economy’ will not help the planet”. (42)
The third sombre truth revealed by this book is that the “renewables” and “climate justice” bandwagon, for all its holier-than-thou posturing, is in fact carrying us faster towards the death of the planetary organism.
With their distraction of unworkable and unhelpful phoney “solutions”, they are preventing us from reacting as we should to this existential crisis.
The fossil fuels industry may have set our house on fire, as Greta Thunberg likes to suggest, but she and the climate capitalists who back her are trying to herd us towards a false escape route, through a door leading deeper into the deadly industrial inferno rather than away from it.
“Bright green environmentalism does great harm by wasting time we don’t have on ‘solutions’ that cannot work”, (43) say the authors.
It has also (temporarily) scuppered authentic resistance by taking over eco-activism, neutering its threat to the industrial and financial ruling clique and turning it into a tool for advancing their interests.
“Something has gone terribly wrong with the environmental movement”, writes Lierre Keith in her Prologue (44) and she and her colleagues repeat the message throughout the book.
“Mainstream environmentalists now overwhelmingly prioritize saving industrial civilization over saving life on the planet”. (45) “This has become a movement that does not help the earth, but rather helps its destroyers”. (46) “We are writing this book because we want our environmental movement back”. (47)
These three sombre truths – that industrial society is destroying all life, that renewables are a scam and that fake greens are in fact advancing the death of the planet – are difficult enough to come to terms with.
But no broader assessment of where we are today would be complete without reference to the techno-fascist New Normal being rolled out on the back of the “Covid crisis”.
So there is a fourth sombre truth on the table here, as set out in this brief article. The illusion of democracy has been abandoned and the ruling 0.1% are lining up a future of slavery for our children and grandchildren.
A fifth sombre truth is that the people and networks behind this tyranny are very much the same as those promoting the climate capitalist scam!
For the last few years there has been a page of links on the Winter Oak website called Climate Capitalists. In 2020, another page of links was created under the heading The Great Reset. It has subsequently become increasingly evident that these might as well be one and the same page.
They write: “The bright green future is a corporate future, a centralized future, a robotic, mechanized future emerging from factories like new LED bulbs in plastic blister cases. What appears to be a simple lightbulb – flick the switch and it turns on – is the result of a long chain of industrial technologies and processes involving mining, factories, complex chemistry, robotics, research laboratories at corporate and government facilities around the world, and billions of dollars of investment. It’s all tied together. LEDs would be impossible to create without globalization, imperialism, resource theft, and war”. (48)
And they clearly identify “Technocrats/Transhumanists” as being, of course, at the other end of the political spectrum to their own deep green position, explaining that, for these worshippers of artifice and technology, “humans should transcend biology by investing heavily in technology. We can also avoid the possibility of human extinction by leaving planet Earth behind, and we should ultimately move toward cybernetic enhancement and uploading human consciousness into machines in order to defeat death”. (49)
Transhumanists are vitaphobic. They hate life and want to replace everything alive with the dead matter that occupies the place where their own hearts should be.
So-called environmentalists who align themselves with transhumanist goals are doing the exact opposite of what they once did.
As Keith puts it: “Once we fought for the living. Now we are told to fight for their deaths, as the wind turbines come for the mountains and solar panels conquer the deserts”. (50)
The same could be said of anarchists and other leftists who once fought for the people and their freedom and now fight for their enslavement in a digital prison built from impact intersectionality and its dogma of conformity, separation and artifice.
Social movements, like the green movement, have been taken over by the technocrat system and pointed in directions which serve, rather than oppose, their insidious agendas.
These corporate-controlled pseudo-activists use the language of the system, endlessly regurgitating its duplicitous talk of “equity”, “social change”, “inclusivity” and, of course, “sustainability”.
They are also trapped within its syntax (as Guy Debord put it), being unwilling or unable to think beyond the assumptions on which the system is founded.
Anyone who dares to do so is immediately accused, and automatically found guilty, of heresy, of Orwellian thoughtcrime, today packaged as some variety of “denialism” or “hate speech”.
Their term “conspiracy theorist” is used to try to stop us identifying the existence of a very real system out there, with a life-hating and freedom-hating programme consisting of many different aspects and using all sorts of excuses (“terrorists!” “climate crisis!” “pandemic!”) to lure us ever deeper into its total control.
There is no point at all in seeing through the lies of the renewables scam if you are still going to be corralled into supporting a transhumanist totalitarian future by means of your gullibility with regard to the Covid manoeuvre.
There is no point at all in seeing through the lies of the Covid manoeuvre if you are still going to be corralled into supporting a transhumanist totalitarian future by means of your gullibility with regard to the renewables scam, or indeed by your refusal to face up to the fact that industrial society needs to be brought down if life is to go on living.
Jensen, Keith and Wilbert do not beat about the bush concerning the reality of what we are facing. They follow up their statement that “industrial civilization is incompatible with life on the planet”, which I quoted earlier, by remarking: “That makes the solution to our systematic planetary murder obvious, but let’s say it anyway: Stop industrial civilization”. (51)
“The most important, and simplest, solution to the destruction of the planet is to stop the destruction of the planet”, (52) they add. That sounds stupidly obvious, but so many people simply fail to get it.
Whenever real greens talk about ending industrial society, people always want to know what we imagine could replace it.
The answer is not difficult. We need to go back to living the way we did for hundreds of thousands of years before we started on the slippery slope to where we are now.
This is not turning the clock back, but moving forward in a direction inspired by what we know was previously possible. We need to reclaim the revolutionary wisdom of the past.
It is not so much about politics as values, as the Bright Green Lies authors rightly note. (53) Humankind needs to go back to knowing itself part of nature and living accordingly.
Long before “sustainability” was an empty WEF marketing slogan, it was a physical reality.
Write Jensen et al: “How’s this for a measure of sustainability: If your way of life can last at least 3,800 years without trashing a place, that’s sustainable. On the other hand, if your culture – largely driven by your dense cities – has managed to destroy 98 percent of a continent’s old-growth forests within a few centuries, then your way of living is not sustainable”. (54)
“Economic growth must stop” (55) they say, and instead we need to build communities “based on self-sufficiency, biological integrity, and human rights”. (56)
If we are going to move towards this new reality, we are first going to have to pull apart the lies of the current one, as the authors of this book, which does just that, are evidently very aware: “The first step is to stop believing in bright green fairy tales that technology will save the planet. Instead, put your belief in soils, grasses, forests, seaweeds, and the billions of living beings who every moment are working to regenerate the conditions that support life and beauty on this planet”. (57)
But, of course, the system won’t dismantle itself, nor sit idly by while we embark upon doing so, and we necessarily face a huge struggle ahead, a struggle for life itself.
“We need to return to the real world,” write the authors. “We need to return to being people who love the world – all its places and all its creatures – and who will fight to defend it”. (58)
“We need massive movements to relentlessly impede the functioning of industrial civilization, using every tactic: political pressure, legal challenges, economic boycotts, civil disobedience, and whatever else becomes necessary”. (59)
They warn: “We have written this book because life has been broken and is now fast draining away through the cracks. The cultures that have done that breaking need to be abandoned and their ruling sociopaths dethroned. Make no mistake, this will require a serious and dedicated resistance movement”. (60)
1. Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert, Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It (New York: Monkfish, 2021). All subsequent page references are to this book. 2. p. 33. 3. p. 344. 4. p. 38. 5. p. 81. 6. p. xiv. 7. p. 313. 8. p. 27. 9. p. 433. 10. p. 177. 11. p. 158. 12. p. 71. 13. p. 151. 14. p. 205. 15. p. 192. 16. p. 187. 17. p. 402. 18. p. 275. 19. p. 316. See John Vidal, ‘Health risks of shipping pollution have been ‘underestimated‘, The Guardian, April 9, 2009. 20. p. 91. 21. pp. 137-38. 22. p. 45. 23. p. 342. 24. pp. 185-86. 25. p. 302. 26. p. 339. 27. p. 378. 28. p. 419. 29. p. xv. 30. p. 278. 31. p. 24. 32. p. 465. 33. p. 428. 34. p. 321. 35. p. 311. 36. p. 425. 37. p. 30. 38. p. 163. 39. pp. 428-29. 40. p. 469. 41. p. 72, footnote. 42. p. 236. 43. p. 256. 44. p. xvii. 45. p. 22. 46. p. 430. 47. p. 22. 48. p. 229. 49. p. xxii. 50. p. xix. 51. p. 433. 52. p. 440. 53. p. 465. 54. p. 310. 55. p. 446. 56. p. 459. 57. p.442. 58. p. 431. 59. p. 458. 60. p. 18.
Seaspiracy is a powerful new documentary about the hazardous, unruly world of industrial fishing and stomach-churning abuse, overuse, disregard for life, as shown on Netflix, released by Disrupt Studios March 24th 2021. The opening scene of the film sets the tone with a long-shot of an isolated fishing trawler at sea as the voice-over of a former fishing vessel crew[Read More…]
Toxic chemicals known as PFAS found in all 50 samples tested at levels nearly 2,000 times what is considered safe in drinking water
A new study that checked American women’s breast milk for PFAS contamination detected the toxic chemical in all 50 samples tested, and at levels nearly 2,000 times higher than the level some public health advocates advise is safe for drinking water.
The findings “are cause for concern” and highlight a potential threat to newborns’ health, the study’s authors say.
One Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems has outshone all others in creativity and productivity: the theory of the metabolic rift.
May 12, 2021 | Commentary
On August 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a petition by researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) seeking federal approval to release their genetically engineered (GE) Darling 58 (D58) American chestnut tree into U.S. forests. Researchers claim the transgenic D58 tree will resist the fungal blight that, coupled with rampant overlogging, decimated the American chestnut population in the early 20th century. In fact, the GE American chestnut is a Trojan horse meant to open the doors to commercial GE trees designed for industrial plantations.
The D58 would be the first GE forest tree approved in the U.S. and the first GMO intended to spread in the wild. (GE canola plants were discovered in the wild in 2010 but that was unplanned.) “This is a project to rapidly domesticate a wild species through genetic engineering and accelerated breeding, and then to put it back into ecosystems to form self-perpetuating populations—an intentional evolutionary intervention that has never been attempted before with any species,” explain scientists at the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), which are nonprofits based in Washington, D.C.
“The Southern U.S. is global ground zero for the forest products industry and we see genetically engineered chestnut trees as this industry’s sneaky way of opening the floodgates for ‘frankentrees’ that will harm forests, biodiversity and local communities across the region,” explains Scot Quaranda of Dogwood Alliance, a nonprofit based in North Carolina that works to protect Southern U.S. forests. “Our natural forests that support wildlife and the economic sovereignty of rural communities will rapidly be replaced with tree plantations for wood pellets, paper and more, leaving environmental and climate injustice in their wake.”
The GE American chestnut faces an uphill battle due to decades of opposition to GE trees by Indigenous peoples, scientists, students, activists, foresters and others, including a GE tree ban by the Forest Stewardship Council and a United Nations decision that warns countries of the dangers of GE trees and urges use of the precautionary principle while addressing the issue.
By October 19, 2020, the close of the public comment period on the petition, 109 organizations, representing millions of members, plus an additional 123,426 individuals had registered their opposition to the D58. The next step is the creation of a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the USDA recommending action on the petition. The American Chestnut Foundation(TACF) estimates this could take up to a year to complete. Following this, another public comment period will be undertaken to review the draft EIS, after which the agency will develop a final EIS with a decision on the petition.
D58 Safety Studies ‘Invalid,’ Warn Scientists
While American chestnut trees are known to live hundreds of years, D58 trees have only been growing since 2017, calling into question the ESF petition assertion that “Darling 58 has been studied in detail and no plant pest or environmental risks have been observed.”
In a report on the GE American chestnut she co-wrote, Dr. Rachel Smolker from Biofuelwatch explains, “Given the long lifespan of trees and varying environmental conditions they face, we cannot extrapolate from tests done on very young trees under controlled lab and field conditions. How GE trees might behave in the diverse and changing context of natural forests over long periods of time is unknown and likely to remain unknown even after they are released.”
Scientists at CFS and ICTA warn of problems with the D58 safety studies, writing, “Given the young age of Darling 58 trees and corresponding dearth of tissue samples, conclusions from most of the animal experiments described in the Petition are too preliminary to depend upon.”
In studying ESF’s assessment of the impacts of inserting the blight-resistant oxalate oxidase (OxO) transgene into the chestnut genome, both CFS and ICTA further point out that some D58 studies did not, in fact, use material from transgenic D58 trees, rendering them invalid. “Petitioners did experiments to study how bumblebees might be affected by Darling 58, but did not have enough Darling 58 pollen for the experiments so used non-transgenic pollen instead, to which they added purified OxO from barley seeds. … Other important initial studies on animals reported in the Petition are of limited use because they involved feeding leaves from the Darling 4 instead of Darling 58… even though Darling 4 has much lower levels of OxO in leaves… again invalidating the conclusions for risk assessments.” The Darling 4 was an earlier version of the American chestnut genetically engineered with the OxO transgene.
While researchers have argued that a strict regulatory process will ensure the safety of the D58 GE tree, a 2019 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled, “Forest Health and Biotechnology: Possibilities and Considerations,” raises flags: “Forest health is not accounted for in the regulations for the use of biotechnology or for other approaches to mitigating forest tree insect pests or pathogens. … There are no specific regulations or policies that those agencies apply to biotech trees.”
Profit Motive Trumping Morality?
Proponents argue that there can be no downside to releasing a tree engineered to resist an introduced blight. But like fire suppression, which has led to devastating wildfires due to an unnatural buildup of flammable materials in the forest, the future impacts of even a well-meaning action can become catastrophic, especially in combination with the unpredictable effects of climate change and extreme weather. Yet, researchers are engineering trees with the conviction that because they can, they should.
In her book Can Science Make Sense of Life?, Dr. Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, explains the implications of this arrogance. “For life scientists and their enthusiastic promoters, the arc of the technologically possible, often coincident with the promise of financial gain, increasingly… defines the boundaries of the morally permissible.”
Researcher William Powell, whose GE American chestnut research has received both financial and technical support from companies with a vested interest in the approval of the GE American chestnut—including Monsanto, ArborGen and Duke Energy—defends his approach. In an article in the Conversation, Powell says, “One of the key advantages of genetic engineering is that it’s far less disruptive to the original chestnut genome—and thus to its ecologically important characteristics. The trees remain more true to form with less chance of unforeseen and unwanted side effects. Once these genes are inserted, they become a normal part of the tree’s genome and are inherited just like any other gene.”
However, in a briefing paper published by the Federation of German Scientists, Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, a molecular geneticist, and Antje Lorch, a biologist, counter that the genetic engineering process is inherently risky. The paper states, “It is well documented that the processes of plant transformation give rise to many mutations throughout the plant genome as well as at the insertion site of the transgene. … Any robust risk assessment study needs to take several generations into account, for example to assess the stability and heritability of the transgene, unintended side effects and changes due to transformation impact.”
Why the American Chestnut?
The D58 American chestnut is the culmination of decades of effort to open the doors to GE trees in the U.S. by biotechnology and timber companies. In 1999, Monsanto joined with timber companies from the U.S. and New Zealand to form a “forestry biotechnology joint venture,” which later became ArborGen, one of the world’s leaders in GE tree research and development. GE tree research was originally focused on trees and traits valued by the forest products industry; trees like poplar, pine and eucalyptus, and traits like insect resistance, herbicide tolerance, faster growth or altered wood composition.
Other early associations—including the Tree Genetic Engineering Research Cooperative at Oregon State University, launched in 1994—brought together university researchers with timber and biotechnology giants as well as the U.S. Forest Service to develop genetically engineered trees for industrial timber plantations.
These efforts were met with widespread opposition and sabotage, leading the industry to conclude that they needed a charismatic “test tree” to try to win over the public opinion relating to GE trees.
A 2007 published paper explains, “There is opposition to commercial application of trees, engineered specifically for fast growth and increased yields, by those whose stance is that the value accrues only to ‘big companies.’ It will remain for traits that have broad societal benefits, such as conservation… for acceptance to be gained.”
The D58 is seen as a positive example for the beleaguered biotechnology industry of the benefits of ‘biotechnology for conservation.’ Duke Energy also sees the American chestnut for its value as a greenwashing tool. Duke Energy invested millions into the GE American chestnut through the Forest Health Initiative. Its hope was to use the American chestnut to help “green” its devastated mountaintop removal mining lands.
Naturalist and author Bernd Heinrich has one such grove growing on his land in Maine. In a New York Times op-ed in 2013, he wrote, “I have been enjoying American chestnuts for several years now, harvested from some trees that are now part of my forest of 600 acres in western Maine. I planted four seedlings in the spring of 1982. Beyond all my expectations, the trees thrived, and some are now 35 feet tall. … In my small corner of western Maine, the American chestnut is now promising to again become a significant component of the ecosystem.”
Once dominant in Eastern U.S. forests, the American chestnut was highly valued for its beautiful and rot-resistant wood, and abundant nuts. While few actually remember the tree, which largely disappeared from the landscape by the 1920s, a public relations effort was launched in the early 2010s with articles appearing in numerous major publications heralding the return of this “mighty giant” through the wonders of genetic engineering. Millions of American chestnut stumps, meanwhile, continue to send up shoots that occasionally grow into trees large enough to produce nuts, and in some locations, wild American chestnuts are spreading on their own, showing at least some evolving blight tolerance.
Another decades-long program by the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation is successfully breeding pure wild American chestnuts that are naturally blight-resistant.
In spite of examples like this, GE chestnut proponents have declared the American chestnut functionally extinct, and insist that its survival hinges on the release of unproven and risky genetic engineered American chestnut trees into forests. But Lois Breault-Melican, a former board member of the American Chestnut Foundation who publicly resigned from the TACF over the organization’s support for the GE American chestnut, points out that this argument ignores the risks posed to organic and other chestnut growers: “These growers are concerned about the potential GMO contamination of their orchards caused by the unregulated and unmonitored planting of genetically engineered American chestnut trees. If the USDA approves these GE American chestnuts, the integrity of chestnut orchards would be forever compromised.”
Indigenous Sovereignty Concerns
Indigenous peoples in the regions of proposed D58 releases have expressed concern that unregulated distribution of a GE tree would violate their sovereign right to keep their territories free from GMOs. They insist that Indigenous peoples be consulted in the process of reviewing the D58 American chestnut.
“Today, there remain large areas of traditional and treaty lands on which much is forested and managed as sovereign territory of many different Native American Peoples,” explains BJ McManama of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “These forests are not only a source of economic self-determination but hold great cultural significance to include sacred sites where trees are an element of sustenance, knowledge and familial identity. Every living being within the forests [is] related in some form and nothing within these lands lives in isolation; therefore, changing or altering the original instructions of any one or any part of these elements threatens the natural order established over millennia.”
The Eastern Band of Cherokee, members of the Lumbee Tribe of central North Carolina and Seminole Peoples from unceded Florida territory joined the Campaign to STOP GE Trees for an October 2014 gathering in the mountains of North Carolina to protest GE trees as a form of colonization. Their concerns were focused on the GE American chestnut trees.
Lisa Montelongo, a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee,explained, “I’m very concerned that GE trees would impact our future generations and their traditional uses of trees. Our basket makers, people that use wood for the natural colors of our clay work—there would be no natural life, no cycle of life in GE tree plantations.”
Following the camp, the Band’s Tribal Council passed a unanimous resolution prohibiting GE trees from their lands: Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Tribal Council Resolution No. 31 (2015): “We commit to rejecting biomass, genetically engineering the natural world, carbon trading, carbon offsets and carbon sequestration schemes as they are false solutions to the climate change.” Concerns were focused on the inability of the tribe to keep the GE American chestnut tree off of their lands if it were released into surrounding forests, which they describe as a violation of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent mandate under the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Global Impact of the Genetically Engineered D58 American Chestnut Tree
In the end, the potential deregulation of the D58 is not about restoring a “mighty giant” to Eastern U.S. forests. Its approval is about paving the way for the deregulation of all GE trees, toward the creation of an oxymoronic future “bioeconomy” where biodiverse forests are replaced with specially engineered trees for the manufacture of fuels, chemicals, textiles, plastics and other goods in a “green” version of “business as usual.” Implicit in this scheme is a massive increase in the consumption of wood. This in turn will drive accelerated conversion of carbon-rich native forests, critical for climate regulation, and other ecosystems for conversion to fast-growing plantations that include GE trees with traits to expedite their use as feedstocks. Existing non-native plantations of eucalyptus, the most common plantation tree, are already notorious for their devastating social, ecological and climate change impacts. But new research out of Oregon State University is attempting to “green” these plantations with claims that eucalyptus trees can be genetically engineered to be infertile, through a process to “knock out LEAFY,” the gene believed to control flower formation. The research claims this would prevent eucalyptus trees from invading native ecosystems, though it does nothing to address the ability of eucalyptus to spread asexually through vegetative propagation.
This new technology also does nothing to address the serious problems caused by industrial plantations of eucalyptus. These impacts, outlined in detail by the World Rainforest Movement, include depletion of fresh water; forced displacement of Indigenous groups, rural communities and subsistence farmers; and catastrophic wildfires. In fact, the addition of GE trees to these plantations could exacerbate known impacts and/or lead to new, unknown and potentially irreversible problems.
Another attempt to “green” GE trees for the bioeconomy involves the development of trees specially engineered to store extra carbon as a supposed climate change mitigation tool. But a new article in Yale Environment 360 challenges schemes like this that focus on tree planting for climate mitigation. Echoing the findings of the World Rainforest Movement and others, the article reports “a growing number of scientists and environmentalists are challenging this narrative on tree-planting. They say that planting programs, especially those based on large numerical targets, can wreck natural ecosystems, dry up water supplies, damage agriculture, push people off their land—and even make global warming worse.” In addition, they say, “Tree planting can distract from the greater priorities of protecting existing forests and reducing fossil fuel use.”
The attempts to greenwash genetically engineered trees with their unpredictable and irreversible impacts are being opposed globally by a broad coalition of scientists, Indigenous peoples, agronomists, peasant farmers, foresters, teachers and others, as well as organizations focused on protecting forests, human rights and climate justice. GE trees have no place in an ecologically and socially just future.
Author’s note: Following the initial publication of this article, Reuters reported that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed on April 21 between the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and the American Chestnut Foundation. The MOU, described by EBCI members as highly controversial, would allow the planting of GE American chestnuts on Cherokee land.
“Below the surface of fields covered with monoculture crops of corn and soybeans, pesticides are destroying the very foundations of the web of life,” said study co-author and scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
