Why I do not participate in Earth Hour: Earth Hour is the - TopicsExpress

Why I do not participate in Earth Hour: Earth Hour is the perfect example of the sick and twisted mentality which has gripped the mainstream environmentalist movement. Most mainstream environmentalists will peddle individual lifestyle changes as the remedies for the ills of the planet, and to counteract the destructiveness inherent to industrial civilization. This dangerous philosophy leads people to believe that such small changes, which do not negatively affect their comfortable well being, can be effective. It is a lie. A big fat and very dangerous lie... The vast majority of the proposed solutions are indeed non solutions at all. At least not for the problems that we face. They are, however, very effective in appeasing a guilty conscience into believing that one is part of the solution, while continuing to be part of the problem. We have believed such ridiculous solutions because our perception has been blunted by some portion of denial and despair - the latter being a completely reasonable feeling when realizing the scope of the problem which, I can be quite confident in saying, only a minor fraction of a percentage of you probably have. They are both legitimate reactions, but do we want to develop a strategy to manage our emotional state, or to save the planet? When my grandmother was born in 1906, there were 300 million species of Mammals on this planet. By the year she died (2012) at the ripe age of 106 years, there were just under 150 million. The average extinction rate prior to the establishment of industrial civilization was of four species per year. The current rate is of about 200 PER DAY! Yes, you read that right. Today, in these meager 24 hours, two-hundred species of living beings have gone completely extinct, gone, forever, into nothingness. Millions of years of evolution truncated by a system of industrial civilization based on greed, poison, destruction, and violence. And the rate of natural destruction is accellerating. Between the years of 1980 and 2045, we are expected to lose more species of plants and animals than have been lost in the past 65 million years. And other animals are not the only ones. Humans are going extinct as well. Thousands of indigenous peoples have either been exterminated or assimilated into the conflomerate of industrial civilization. The Asan, the Naravute, the Bororo, the Mandans, the Bo, the Ona and the list goes on and on... An estimated 300 million people every year die due to causes related to environmental destruction and degradation. This is not to include the ones which die due to the systemic and necessary violence and oppression that is required to fuel industrial civilization. Google global warming solutions. The first paid sponsor, Campaign Earth, urges No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? Were here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success. By realistic they dont mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem, which is enormous. They mean the usual consumer choices which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive. There will be those, I am sure, that will comment on this post saying that if everyone took small and basic steps to readjust their lifestyles, they will accumulate into a big change. That is also a lie. Even if every American took every single action suggested by Al Gore it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 21 percent. In Europe and elsewhere, where the energy footprint is admittedly smaller, the impact would also be greatly reduced. Even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average Western annual one ton of garbage production, your per capita share of the industrial waste produced is still almost twenty-six tons. Thats thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste. And of course, we know that you will not achieve that... When I engage in this sort of critique people inevitably say something along the lines of Yeah, but at least its better than nothing. I do not ascribe to that line of thinking, and I am convinced that indeed it is worse than nothing. It perpetuates a delusion that reinforces the problem rather than critically tackling it. Weve been conned into believing that these lifestyle solutions are acceptable and pertinent through an enormous propaganda apparatus, and because everyone around us insists theyre workable through a collective repeating mantra of renewables, recycling that has dulled us into belief. Like Eichmann, no one has told us that its wrong. Until now. So this is the moment when you will have to decide. Do you want to be part of a serious effort to save this planet? Not a serious effort at collective delusion, not a serious effort to feel better, not a serious effort to save you and yours, but an actual strategy to stop the destruction of everything worth loving. Industrialism itself is what has to stop. There is no kinder, greener version that will do the trick of leaving us a living planet. If you are serious and keen on knowing more about what effective solutions are (militant decisive ecological warfare) check out the Deep Green Resistance page, or Derrick Jensens books.