‘Green Energy’ vs Wild Nature
Do you want to keep the lights on and the gadgets running, or liberate Nature from a deadly enslavement by Technology?
Released on April 20th, 2020 — Earth Day — for free viewing on YouTube, the documentary “Planet of the Humans” has generated a lot of buzz, the vast majority of which attacks it with minor gripes. Culminating with its May 25th removal from YouTube over the specious claim of a four-second copyright infringement (though the film was vetted by two attorneys before its release), the flavor of these dismissals is broadly the same: the footage is old, the data outdated, and it provides no solutions but only critiques. “Renewable energy isn’t perfect,” they all say, “but it’s an improvement over the fossil-fuels now being used.” But all of these thoroughly civilized writers share the desire to continue techno-industrial society, thus missing the core problem of Technology. Each of them writes with the assumption of a need for continued electrical power, forgetting that it is very recent in human existence and thus totally unnecessary for human life. Beyond being unneeded, I shall here point out that it is inevitably severely detrimental to the proliferation of wild Nature, of which humans are but one species.
So honed-in to defending renewable energy’s “efficiency” and affordability are all of the film’s detractors, they do not ‘see the forest for all its wall of trees’. And this may be intentional, if they require the psychological crutch of techno-salvation lest they give in to absolute despair. A more tightly misplaced focus than many, Cathy Cowan Becker’s rebuke of the film is one of the better examples of the criticism, but through all its numerous citations of the documentary’s supposed statistical errors it amounts only to dumping an encyclopedia series for having found within its volumes some typos. The main point consistently being missed, writes the film’s director Jeff Gibbs (responding to claims of “old data”), is that “solar, wind, and electric technologies are not something separate from a giant fossil-fuel based industrial civilization; they are one and the same.”
So I must announce, because all the critics miss this point, that it is not merely that technologies are burning polluting fuels and thereby fouling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, nor that other technologies amplify a simple virus jumping across species into a global pandemic; the essential problem is that technology always comes to exist in exchange for a sacrifice of wild Nature, and it always has unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences which inevitably impinge upon naturally-occurring freedoms for humans and non-humans.
Even a superficial look over the history of technological advancement reveals precisely this, and this holds just as true for the ‘green energy tech’ so desired by those loathe to abandon industrial civilization. As noted by Becker, the closing scenes of the documentary show orangutan-habitat destruction which owes not to the creation of renewable-power sources but to the supply of Civilization-manufactured foods for feeding all the people in mass-society. Thus it is one atrocity which will not be remedied by the transition to ‘green energy’ but solely through a dramatic decline in the demand and capacity for civilized-manufactured foods, a result which will come only by the collapse of industrial civilization. The degree to which we face and accept and embrace that goal, regardless of the hardships it may entail, demonstrates the degree of our love for (and defense of) wild Nature.
But pacification is all that we get from measures to ‘polish-away the blemishes’ with “clean energy”. In hopes of impeding rampant consumption of our Earth, Becker puts forth five common economist-suggested assessments of growth and success, but each of these trite suggestions are undeniably vague: “good jobs, well-being, environment, fairness, and health” can all be judged subjectively as met or unmet, so they’re useless. For example, “good jobs” might mean intrinsically-valued labors, or enjoyable work — but it certainly doesn’t mean unpaid work done simply for intrinsic reward and self-satisfaction. Good jobs are not the natural acts for self-sufficient living on the small-group level of a few cooperating families, but the sacrifice of one’s time laboring obediently in exchange for payment. What will be done with the earnings from “good jobs” if not buying more stuff, paying taxes and profits to the purveyors of goods and services? How much of this can be done without negative ecological impact? Even “environment” does not get an objective assessment, as far too many already see the immense harms of agriculture as no problem so long as what is cultivated are crops meant to feed humans directly, something blindly claimed as “more efficient.¹ But of course in 2020 we can see that half of the inhabitable Earth being under Civilized control — its natural water flows diverted, topsoil eroded, depleted of nutrients and creating algal blooms with fertilizer runoff — will produce ecological disaster over the long-term (if not in the short-term), regardless of which desired foods the process yields. (Yes, even vegan rice.)
Even if it’s less than ideal, the one solution which stops industrial society causing climate change is immensely preferable to the plethora of bogus “solutions”.
Like the wise who pull out the roots rather than hack the branches (paraphrasing H.D. Thoreau), we must aim efforts on one grand goal which delivers the ultimate success — that is, saving Nature beyond human control — even if it isn’t as easily achieved as less-effective alternatives we might be allowed to enact (e.g., minimal pollution regulations, the Green New Deal, subsidized contraceptives, et cetera). That goal should be the forced collapse of the worldwide industrial-technological system (industrial civilization) which creates, or at the very least exacerbates, all of the problems plaguing us in the created ‘Anthropocene’ epoch. That is the only single goal which will adequately resolve our dilemma.
Addressing the film’s brief touch on human overpopulation, Becker tells readers “The key is to make education of girls, empowerment of women, and reproductive health a priority.” This kind of generalized prescription is said by far too many, and hearkens to Naomi Klein’s penchant for nice things easy to say but which amount to nothing, functionally. (One might as well say “We just need to make justice, and ensure cooperation.” Oh, is that all?) Overpopulation and routes to solving it ought to be discussed, but for merely touching upon it this film has been heavily maligned, with erroneous, slanderous accusations of subtly pushing eugenics or “ecofascism” (both of which depend upon the continued availability of technologies), or its supposed “White supremacy,” or whatever other mud its detractors could sling. For example, even though Jordan G. Teicher acknowledges that a worldwide turn to ‘green energy’ would be a “Faustian bargain” he also asserts that “to blithely advocate for population control… devoid of any sort of nuance, becomes red meat for ecofascists.” But neither the filmmaker Jeff Gibbs nor anyone interviewed suggest controlling population or regulating birthing. Between them all they simply note that total human numbers are unsustainably excessive. If they wish to remain relevant to any beyond their own choir, liberals need to reckon with the stark truth that if this is addressed only by people on the extreme Right-wing, then it will be they alone who will determine the response to the problem.
Ketan Joshi is one such who shamelessly insinuates racism on the part of the film’s makers, stating that population control is “a cruel, evil and racist ideology” and suggesting — because most of the film’s interviewees are White people — that reproductive limitations are sought only for or will be imposed only on non-Whites. However, it is admitted by his fellow critic Jesse Harris, making the same charge against the film more mildly, that “we all know that black and brown populations are the ones doing the growing, meaning they are the ones that would need to be controlled”; to be more honest and less sensational, both complainants might instead simply refer to poor populations needing to lower their birth rates; that they do not make such a reference reveals the acceptable double standard among people who advocate more equitable redistribution of wealth, often noted to be disproportionately held by Whites. Of course, it is only logical that you’d target the population hoarding wealth in order to spread it more equally, but to apply logic and target those whose population is soaring would be unconscionable racism, they feel. The frank admission by Harris is itself a rare, tacit acknowledgement that those ‘Third World’ cultures do indeed have a problem of oversaturating their bioregions with human beings, though it leads only to the oft-proposed false solution that the poor people ought to be made wealthier as a route to lessening their birth rates. But this ignores the other aspect of the overpopulation debate (cited most commonly by proponents of socialism and deniers of human overpopulation), that the wealthier populations of the ‘Global North’ consume in far greater ratio to their lower populations. In seeking to display their patronizing un-racist egalitarianism, these liberals simultaneously (and schizophrenically) tell us that the wealthy West is consuming far too much (true, agreed) but that to drop the birth rates of Africa and Asia and South America — the ‘black and brown populations’ — all that need be done is to increase their finances relative to the overconsuming and low-populating West. The logical disconnect (or, at best, cognitive dissonance) here is utterly astounding.² The simple biological fact is that the population of any species directly correlates to its food supply, which is adequately provided by Nature and varies by bioregion. Reproducing is natural human behavior, and should not be interfered with, including agriculture and global food distribution which interferes positively to induce population growth.
That vague, prevailing suggestion to solve overpopulation through ‘family planning’ and ‘educating girls’ is commonly repeated but rarely deeply considered; how we can achieve this in a way that has not already been attempted is never — by anyone, anywhere — elucidated. If it hasn’t yet succeeded after decades of trying, what inspires any confidence that it can now be done differently to make it work? What if the natural biological imperative to pair-up and reproduce is not sufficiently altered by “educating girls” — indoctrinating them — and offering them (chemical) contraceptives; shall we then resort to other measures still presently undesirable and ethically repugnant? If we pretend that such actions could even be perceived as being fairly administered across the population, without biases, and even if overt means like punishments or breeding licenses were not implemented, the more subtle “low-intrusion” methods such as putting sterilizing agents in municipal waters or DNA-editing in-utero (or at birth) would be appalling outcomes for humanity — outrages to human freedom, autonomy, dignity, and happiness. If the only way forward from this disastrous mess is to enable a managerial class with the technological power to undertake such measures, perhaps we ought not go forward but turn around from this mad pursuit (over a cliff) to achieve Progress.
To be explicitly clear, we need not impose a limit to any group’s birthing but only stop aiding it with mass-agriculture. And of course, it wasn’t racist when India’s government employed sterilization to lessen their own burgeoning population, nor when China’s rulers imposed it upon the people under their control, both nations each having over one billion people; their undertakings show that it is simply a measure toward self-preservation of a technological mass-society supplied by agricultural surplus, because managing the underclass is a difficult task for any government (thus the inclination for all nations with booming populations to make war and dispose of some of the riffraff, while also engendering patriotic obedience to the State). But charging racism is a great red herring for getting most Americans to auto-negate something, and Leftist impulses to attack the movie for daring to broach the issue of civilized humans — one segment of one species — overpopulating Earth consistently overrules any rational approach. The veteran climate change reporter Emily Atkin is guilty of this very thing when she addressed this ‘gotcha moment’ to the director in her second piece over this documentary (written after actually viewing it): “The people who do emit a lot [of CO₂] — people in white-skin, industrialized nations — are not growing in population very fast. Why didn’t you talk about that?” Probably it’s because very few people would sit to view a 220-minute documentary, and the issue of overpopulation, rife as it is for misunderstanding and loaded with emotional landmines to be carefully navigated (obviously), deserves its own film-length exploration. That seems a far more plausible, if less sensationalist, answer to Atkin’s query than that the movie is the creation of racists conspiring to indict or oppress poor non-Whites. Remember that, regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality, uncivilized nomadic forager-hunter people lacking agriculture do occasionally face starvation but far less than they simply do not so frequently reproduce (and for several natural reasons) and thus their reproduction rates do not constantly bloom their total population to the decimating levels of the famine seen in ‘underdeveloped’ (read: less technologically advanced or dependent) Civilized nations, which suffer this effect after long receiving imported food supplies which they become dependent upon (having long exceeded local carrying capacity) and which, at some point, eventually fail to arrive. Marxists especially would do well to note that the buoying of these foreign populations (who later suffer a tremendous crash) is not done of benevolence but more for political advantages and calculations to benefit capital.
The other common canard pitched as a solution is simply ending capitalism.
While it may soothe the psychological itch of Leftists to suggest so, it is demonstrably untrue that “Capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism” exclusively are destroying Nature; the reality is that supposed improvements for people living (under the control of a governing class) in Cuba, China, and Bolivarian Venezuela are provided at the sacrifice of wild Nature and by humans’ dissociation from Her/it. Obviously none of these three are ‘White-supremacist’, colonialist, or capitalist cultures, but beyond that (and overlooking pedantic debates about the true degrees of their practiced socialism), Cuba extracts oil for the same reason that Venezuela pumps and burns and exports its own crude reserves, which is to provide the State funds for — at best — delivering a better quality of civilized (read: unnatural, subordinated) life; Mao’s ‘Four Pests’ extermination campaign was explicitly designed to improve living for China’s assimilated humans at the expense of the non-human “pests”, and the government’s horrendous South-North water re-routing project might ‘benefit’ 100M people by diverting 44.8 billion cubic meters of water, but only at the expense of non-humans who’ll henceforth be deprived of the pre-existing natural waterflow that had always been available, not to mention the over two million people displaced by the several dams required. Of course, the Three Gorges Dam alone should provide 18K megawatts of renewable, CO₂ non-emitting (and unnecessary) electrical power, and if that does not satisfy the impacted villages and their flooded-out denizens, it is adequate justification for the rulers to impose this suffering. Further validating this point is that it is easier to cite environmental disasters in/by China over Cuba (or North Korea, or others) precisely because of China’s tremendous economic success due to their destruction/conversion of Nature; if Cuba could trade more of Nature for greater technological advance, they would inarguably have caused (and suffered) as much environmental calamity as the Asian nation now recognized as a global power. You can’t make a techno-industrial-power and economic-growth omelette without breaking Nature and a few hundred-million people-eggs.
Of course, I agree that capitalism is clearly incompatible with the continuation of wild Nature, for from where (or from whom) but Nature are copper, gold, or lithium taken, and can land be seized and converted to allow palm oil or chocolate or beef to be grown? This does not, however, mean that alternative economic systems which perpetuate a reliance upon (or subservience to) industrial technology will abandon the game of amassing technological power and instead let Nature thrive, uncontrolled and wild: Whatever else can be said of the self-proclaimed socialist nations, they are indisputably seeking economic growth just as much as the capitalist countries, the very concept being predicated upon the transformation of free Nature into uses designated exclusively for Civilized humans, and everyone knows that a better material “standard of living” as judged by Civilized measures is not provided when people live freely to engage with Nature, beyond civilization’s economics, foraging and hunting so long as they and their tribes are capable of it — and dying without immediate high-tech medical interventions, too. Rather, technology demands that Nature must be conformed and adjusted and as reward for this civilized people will be given more damaging comforts and detrimental conveniences: indoor plumbing, heating and cooling, refrigeration, rapid long-distance transportation, “healthcare” (to repair the body of the most apparent damages caused by civilization), etc.³ Thus the “anti-imperialist” Left only continues the Imperial Age notion of bringing benefits to the ‘savages who live like animals,’ liberating the uncivilized from their ‘backward’ ways. But as Benjamin Franklin noted in 1753, the natives don’t seem to prefer it, and even his fellow Whites who’d been among the Indians were more inclined to return to them after being ‘rescued’ back to Civilization, an odd reality to reconcile with the notion of its improving living conditions.⁴
The occasional lack of food for humans in any region is just one of the realities of life on Earth. It isn’t unfair or unjust when there is a drought, or when the large game animals move, and a tribe no longer has food in that area and has to migrate. That doesn’t harm our entire species, though agricultural food has indeed hurt human health, just as its land takeovers eradicate entire species. Nor is it a tragedy or insufferable cruelty when conditions don’t allow for menstruation or offspring-conception or infant-nursing. It is simply the law of the land, something which all other creatures experience when being provided-for by Nature — and also being limited by it. To live this way, accepting the good and also the bad, would be humanity living among and with Nature, not exceptional, nor beyond its/Her ways of operating.
Ending the techno-industrial system will take the modern agricultural system with it — thereby mostly re-wilding the biosphere and freeing most of an imprisoned Nature. This will reduce a negative situation (the unsustainably high civilized population) while also improving a dire situation (the decline of biodiversity).⁵ To sustain oneself on fresh forage and local wild game is the healthiest diet we can have, and the mental dexterity and physical exertion required easily surpasses the routine, apportioned exercising performed at a workout warehouse (and without any monthly membership fee). One can look to numerous beneficial facets of the nomadic forager-hunter lifestyle in contrast to the detriment of sedentary city-dwelling, even in the earliest days of agrarian culture. While clans living in Nature are indeed subject to the caprices of “the gods” or the chance (mis)fortunes of natural weather (and simple bad luck) they are not subjected to market fluctuations depriving them of a meal, nor do they suffer from faraway chain-of-supply disruptions, as we in Civilization are burdened with. With ‘only’ 10,000–12,000 years of full-time agriculture delivering constant food surplus, we’ve managed to transform the Earth. Hasn’t it been long enough now, don’t we have 20/20 hindsight to see that it isn’t working? For all our years of constantly feeding people we keep generating more people, despite all the best intentions and efforts of family planning programs and ‘educating women’, so apparently these programs do not work, or at least not sufficiently to turn the tide quickly enough in the face of our biological programming to breed (and the cultural programming that leadership or technology can save Civilization from the consequences of its ravaging of Nature). Do we want to undertake yet another intervention and set about altering that ancient, deeply-embedded natural inclination to have children rather than simply end the relatively far more recent means by which we produce food surpluses to yield global population growth (and deforestation)?
Becker mentions the (current) legal requirement of environmental-impact review for any proposed new power plant; of course, even if nothing bad ever resulted at any places given approval, it is inconceivable that any agency would rule the majority of power plants detrimental to their local environs and order them shuttered — the nation’s electricity-generating simply won’t be ended without a revolutionary movement to force it, because the technological system demands that electrical power be delivered, regardless of the consequences to Nature (and people). Moreover, the laws today can (and do) change tomorrow. It seems like every year of this President has generated an outcry about his nullifying EPA regulations which were enacted under the last President. Do we continue to gamble the future of humanity and all the rest of Nature on reversible legal policies? Any policy which restricts a specific technological means will eventually break under the push of technology overall; for permanent prevention of damaging technological impacts, the technical ability must be totally removed from existence. This is one reason why coal has not disappeared, though market forces in some areas have diminished its appeal (profitability). All the frequent mentions by ‘green tech’ cheerleaders that coal plants are closing in the USA or Europe give the false impression that coal will no longer be torn from Earth and burned; in reality, it’s being sold by everyone to anyone who’ll buy it, providing “economic growth” and “increased standard of living” in exchange for its usage, definitely polluting the air and adding mercury to the oceans and undoubtedly increasing their rate of material consumption (as mentioned earlier), but only potentially (and not evidently) diminishing their population growth.
Effectively, renewables simply add a non-emitting source for electrical power rather than replace any existing fuels.
While there is a baseless hope, or a theory or prediction, that wind- and solar-generated energy will supplant the dirty fuels presently used most, there is absolutely no guarantee of this; were it to happen, it would be contrary to all history of industrial fuels: the access to crude oil (and later refined diesel) did not end the usage of coal, nor did the utilization of oil and gasoline prevent the development of uses for and extraction of natural gas. (Similarly, natural materials which had little utility decades ago have since been put to industrial uses and so are now valued, resulting in the increased destruction or alteration of vast swaths of wild Nature in order to obtain those resource deposits.) So not only has techno-industrial society sought out and laid claim to all available coal, oil, and natural gas accessible beneath our planet’s surface, but now it wants to take the sunlight which lands on the surface and the wind which flows over it, too. Was it forgotten that evolved organisms currently utilize the sunlight which falls on them, or do these non-humans not matter if consideration of them limits Civilization staying electrified? Electricity and expendable fuel consumption has gotten more efficient, but has electricity demand ever diminished in all the time of transition between different fuels? Of course not, and the Jevons Paradox informs us that efficiency increases always bring consumption increases.
“It seems amazing that those who advocate energy conservation haven’t noticed what happens: As soon as some energy is freed up by conservation, the technological world-system gobbles it up and demands more. …the system always expands rapidly until it is using all available energy, and then it demands still more. …until it reaches a limit imposed by an insufficiency of resources, and then it tries to push beyond that limit regardless of consequences.”
— Ted Kaczynski, Anti-Tech Revolution (2016)
That ‘renewables’ are becoming cheaper and renewable-powered machines more efficient may sound good, but the only real limit on consumption is imposed by price. If solar energy is generated for at least one-third of every day, and wind the same, and it’s incredibly cheap because it’s unlimited, its use will inevitably be maximized, not only by individuals leaving the lights or A/C running but also with flying and driving all around the planet. The problems of this inhuman technological movement and the land-contouring it brings (and largely requires) go far beyond its levels of CO₂ released now, but the prevailing thought would be “Well it’s not polluting” or “But it’s not costing us”, or “At least it’s not fossil-fuel powered”. And this disregards all the horrible things that industry and government would do with limitless, non-polluting electrical energy.
Residential and individuals’ uses of electricity are incidental to power plants’ generation of it; industrial demand exceeds residential by magnitudes, and is in fact the reason power plants are operated. If renewables can actually provide for all present residential use, the demand will not cease at this present level. And what will fuel industry’s demand? Hydrocarbons while they are available, but further development and deployment of the renewable-energy technologies would go on, because the addicted are never sated. Even if that entails ‘only’ more solar panels and windmills and no further use of coal, gas, or oil, the ‘green tech’ would be interrupting the natural flow and fall of wind and sunlight upon our Earth, a characteristic of life here conservatively estimated at billions of years old. Is that audacious, hubristic entitlement of Civilization not shameful, and potentially (if not probably or obviously) perilous?
Some critics of the documentary falsely claim that the film advocates fossil fuels, while others bemoan that it gives the fossil-fuels industry ‘ammunition’.
But with only a bit of checking we can see the true priorities of the film’s attackers. For example, Ketan Joshi’s website reveals his bona fides for discussing ‘renewable energy’ — disqualifications to any claims of being out to save Nature: “I did a science degree at Sydney University, and since I was a teenager I’ve loved science, technology, philosophy and psychology. I worked in the renewable energy industry for about eight years…” While his page greets visitors with a picture of a robot, he does not at all mention a love for wild Nature, only his work for the (oxymoronic) ‘green tech’ industry, which has gone from professional to pro bono.⁶ In any case, it doesn’t indicate a loss of ethics or giving aid to the hydrocarbons industry to agree with Exxon that 2+2=4, it is merely an undeniable truth to be recognized by all parties; to cite some promotion of the film by fossil-fuel loyalists is simply casting the shadow of a bogeyman in order to darken a truth which ought to be recognized by opponents.⁷ If we only scratch the surface of why the hydrocarbons defenders might advance this film which critiques ‘green energy’, we can see how their view actually aligns with the criticism of the documentary by prominent professional ‘green’ leaders. At best, the environmentalists reveal that they agree with the point being made by the Oil, Coal, & Gas lobbyists who say, “If solar and wind won’t do any better, you might as well stick with what you’ve got — you certainly don’t want to give up electricity!” This is precisely what liberals like Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein and Josh Fox are all worried about,⁸ that people will so value the maddening and addictive technological garbage of the modern era that they will simply settle for baking the planet to death. But not only do humans not need any of the electrified stuff we daily engage with, it actually worsens our lives, dividing us from connecting with Nature and even other people, physically, face-to-face, in-person.⁹ For 200,000 years humans just like us lived in small groups, deeply connected to their people, relying upon and aiding their fellows, competing against outsiders (thus giving each one well-balanced traits for making allies and facing enemies, ensuring security and confronting threats, developing wholly with both offense and defense ).¹⁰ Yet, only 220 years after the first use of electric power, most people who think themselves environmentalists are now debating whether the use of windmills or solar panels can suffice for providing enough electricity (an unnecessary extravagance) to make it worthwhile to stop using fossil fuels and thereby avoid destroying our only lifeboat in the sea of the entire Milky Way. And when the insanity of that is challenged, when “Planet of the Humans” says we need to pull the needle out and clean up, get sober and face reality, the reaction is to shout down the messenger.
Think about what would be done with infinite electricity, based on what has been and is now being done already. We need to have electricity (without the CO₂) so that video games and “binge watching” can continue? So that aerial drones (for surveillance or assassinations) don’t need to land for refueling? So that cyber-bullying and fake news and child porn can proliferate despite all controls attempted? If this is raising the ‘standard of living’, why do we have so many unhappy people who kill themselves (and, increasingly, others before themselves)? The 40K annual suicides in America are surely only a fraction of all the people miserably unsatisfied by life in fast-paced techno-industrial civilization who don’t succeed in attempting to end their lives; how many more are medicated into accepting their discontentment? When will we reclaim our dignity as a species that survived for at least a couple hundred millennia but are clearly unable to cope with modern conditions, and also blind or hopeless to altering them? People existing in Nature rarely become so miserable and seek to end their lives. This is a unique attribute of the civilized. Facing challenges and working diligently to overcome adversities is rewarding and builds confidence, just as it provides its own intrinsic value to people. Civilization is what the renowned Desmond Morris referred to as “The Human Zoo” with the title of his 1969 book.
Simply imagine for a minute, eating only the foods our species is adapted to, which you (or a close friend who lives among you) have obtained, and being with your children; imagine children of all ages playing together, each of them acquiring every skill and material item they need to live well, simply from being in the suitable natural environs to which they are adapted, and being around their parents and emulating them; imagine getting intimately acquainted with your bioregion, not being crowded like industrial-agriculture’s chicken in a growing-warehouse. Imagine being free from the psychological toll of potential annihilation via nuclear conflict, being free of worries over the forecast of (induced) sea-level rise, or not suffering a tech-facilitated viral contagion greatly worsened by heavily-polluted air (not merely the ‘greenhouse gases’). Imagine shedding the burden of existential crisis because we actually stop the worsening potentials of Technology, which grows more autonomous by the day due to the vile works of lauded scientists and technicians. Even those involved in Technology’s advance are seriously worried about it, but feel powerless to stop it, because they will not look to revolution which is required.
And for being milquetoast and servile to the technological system, Bill McKibben, a most prominent advocate of renewable energy, gets to soak up the limelight and be heralded as an environmentalist leader.
He often has grand platforms (Rolling Stone, frequently, and recently “60 Minutes”) to extol the talking points of the Green Energy industry (for which he volunteers), in addition to deflecting valid criticisms which might otherwise awaken sincere but misdirected people. Were he to take a more oppositional, or boldly confrontational position against the menace of further technological progress, McKibben would be marginalized and replaced by another figurehead for false hopes of a techno-salvation to come. McKibben — who on May 6th, 2020 declared that one of rural America’s biggest problems is a lack of consistent and reliable WiFi signals — measures quite poorly against even the timid academic-philosopher class who at least named the enemy as Technology itself: Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, Chellis Glendinning; while none of them were brave enough to unequivocally state that only a revolutionary movement will be able to depose techno-industrial civilization and free all the inhabitants of Earth from the controls imposed by Technology, at the very least they recognized the primary source of the problem. This documentary also does so, in the seventeenth minute, when its director’s narration rhetorically asks, “Is it possible for machines built by industrial civilization to save us from industrial civilization?” Only if they are used disruptively, against the continuation of techno-industrial mass-society and to allow the revival of wild Nature.
The so-called ‘green leadership’ offered within technological society will never point attention at industrial civilization itself. The cabal of professional ‘Greens’ primarily act as steam-valves to relieve any serious tension or resentment against technology, a sentiment which has constantly increased due to the knowledge — both reported and personally felt — of the ever-worsening destruction of Nature, in addition to the misery of modern humans enduring techno-industrial society.
“The idea that societies could collectively decide to embrace rapid foundational changes to transportation, housing, energy, agriculture, forestry, and more — precisely what is needed to avert climate breakdown — is not something for which most of us have any living reference.”
— Naomi Klein, April 2019
When she wrote those words, Klein had in mind merely that a popular movement be developed to press for enactment of legislation which is itself only vaguely imagined by the Green New Deal resolution of the US House of Representatives. She was not thinking of revolutionary action, which is never advanced by a mass of millions, nor the revolutionary sentiment which can’t be satisfied with legislative appeasement from the existing powers. Because Naomi Klein is not a revolutionary, not in spirit or thought. If we are to save the wonderful spirit of free and wild Nature, that caretaker of all beings on Earth, we need to understand that the green leaders put forth by the technological system are the most reactionary and conservative of environmentalists to be found. Their prominence serves as misdirection for those who are truly fed-up with the killing of Nature, those who live with and deeply love the land they are acquainted with, those unwilling to watch the natural world be sacrificed for the sake of civilized greed.
Rather than putting hopes and prayers into some new technology which might deliver the ‘Diet Coke’ fix for techno-industrial society — that is, all the same “great” benefits with none of the currently-known downsides — we need only hopeful optimism that our commitment and effort can make successful a revolution against the technological system. Indeed, while many a Leftist is inherently a pessimist, defeated before he even starts, truly the only reason that revolution seems not to be possible is that it is not thought to be possible. When people stop awaiting a savior (whether man or machine) and begin to see and believe that revolution can indeed be undertaken and achieved, then in reality it can be.
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NOTES:
1. This nonsense is so commonly accepted that citations abound. For just a few examples:
- “…plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.”
from “The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses” by A. Shepon, G. Eshel, E. Noor, R. Milo, 04/10/18
This study touts how “we” can feed 350M more people if livestock were not raised by agricultural society. But if molecules of diverse biomatter are reconstituted (as they are with each human) to form 350 million more humans than currently exist, is that better or worse for biodiversity? What will prevent those additional 350M humans who are newly being fed from reproducing and becoming 500M humans? Nature prevents this, but agriculture — the primary distinguishing feature of Civilization — pulls humanity from Nature’s caretaking.
- “If we humans ate the plant crops used to feed the animals, this would be far more energy efficient.”
from “Is it More Energy Efficient to Be Vegetarian?”, accessed 05/14/20
Because controlling the Earth to grow the foods we desire is not perceived as the problem in itself, rather the error is seen that it is done inefficiently. But of course snakes, foxes, gorillas, hippos, and uncivilized people do not have (or need) the wisdom to know how to eat “efficiently” to allow Earth a perpetual future, and yet their inefficient diets have somehow not ushered-in a spectre of ecological collapse. Is humanity now required to know and implement the most efficient ways to manage Nature which/who pre-existed all mammals and birthed humanity? How is it that we became saddled with this awful burden but through the enormous powers provided by modern technologies, and what can we do now to be relieved of it?
- “If you eat animal foods, most of the energy in the plants those animals ate has been lost as heat and only a fraction of it reaches you. Eating plants is more efficient, meaning that less of the energy the plants contain is wasted.”
from “How Does Being a Vegetarian Conserve Overall Energy in Trophic Levels?”, accessed 05/14/20
It is asserted by its providers (and widely accepted by dietitians) that the manufactured-garbage ‘food’ served to incarcerated people satisfies all caloric and nutritional requirements, while costing the government only pennies per meal. A model of efficiency for the future, no doubt, but not at all preferable to the real foods Nature provides to people.
- “By choosing to eat more plant-based foods you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and help ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock.”
from “Can We Solve World Hunger and Feed 9 Billion People Just By Eating Less Meat?” by Elizabeth Bluff (2017), accessed 05/14/20
Of course, far greater carbon dioxide reduction can be accomplished via the termination of the techno-industrial system.
2. We can be thankful that such fools have not (yet) taken power, because their presumption that long-standing cultural traditions of the ‘developing’ societies will be altered by a newfound ‘economic prosperity’ disregard the fact that the affluent Western populations which have lowered their own birth rates have been largely severed of their religious and ethnic traditions, becoming atheistic and scientific (as technological society requires); if the Hindus of India, and Asian & Middle-Eastern Muslims, and South American Catholics, and Africans of varied beliefs all gain finances but are not then very soon after conformed by technological-society’s demands to abandon their cultural customs, they will disastrously raise their material-consumption levels while not lessening their current birth rates.
3. Sitting for hours per day has for a few years now been recognized as contributing to ill health, in contrast to squatting which is common for primitive people (not to mention all their frequent physical activity). Even our modern shoes have problem consequences, from ruining ankles to directly causing numerous knee and shin injuries, primarily due to providing support for and inclining people to a way of running contrary to human physiology, something the simplistic and traditional footwear of low-tech indigenous people does not do.
4.
“The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labour appears strongly in the little success that has hitherto attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians, in their present way of living, almost all their Wants are supplied by the spontaneous Productions of Nature, with the addition of very little labour, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labour when Game is so plenty… they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never shewn any Inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts; When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” - Benjamin Franklin, 1753
5. Substance addictions also will be nearly impossible without agriculture, since they depend upon intensive agricultural work and the vast acreage of land allotted to only those crops’ growths.
6. At his webpage of the widely-circulated essay against “Planet”, visitors are greeted with an enormous image of an array of wind turbines covering a hillside: apparently this scientist does not see the blight therein, and presumably finds it a wonderful thing, which we can attribute to his disconnection from the natural world which has been riddled with such devices. Wind turbines presently kill “hundreds of thousands of birds and bats” annually, in addition to all of the already-cited problems inherent in reliance upon that technology. Joshi also completely misunderstands (or disingenuously misstates) the need for fossil-fuel power plants to be kept idling and available to reinforce renewable power sources as required. That one with experience working in the renewable-energy business doesn’t understand the system’s operation strains credulity.
7. Somewhat different is the website pvbuzz.com, which promotes photovoltaics, republishing Ben Wehrman’s critiques of “Planet”, for pvbuzz.com has a vested interest in others denouncing the movie and defending renewables, in a way that Exxon has no interest in the movie telling us that industrial civilization is unsustainable even with solar panels. It is therefore extremely petty to cite that the film mistakes Germany’s reliance on biomass and ‘refute’ it with 2019 stats, because the film wasn’t made in 2019 and the ratio of renewables used could easily change by 2021; certainly it will change whenever the nation wants to increase its electrical supply to greater levels than wind (or solar) are providing. This will predictably happen, if not via population growth raising consumer demand then surely once the wind/solar capacity is maximized and the nation seeks to continue economic growth. All of this should be obvious, so if Wehrman is not naïve and fooling himself then he is out to deceive shallow thinkers in his audience.
8. If they are truly worried at all about the murder of wild Nature, which is highly doubtful. By all analyses, these ‘green’ charlatans simply want to have more of technological society for longer, and so are looking to preserve a minimum-requirement of Nature, and even then only at her current critical-care life-support status, so as to vampire upon Her with all their own luxurious comforts delivered by flashy gadgets and robots.
9. There are numerous specifically-focused studies and many reports of the myriad problems created when we lose direct immersion in and engagement with wild Nature (even its more captive and restrained form of city parks and “green space”); we can sum it all up, understatedly, to simply say that people are made mentally and physically unhealthy without Nature and under the conditions which most humans now find themselves, to which we are not adapted.
10. In all likelihood this began even before we were homo sapiens (modern man), for the near two million years of predecessor hominin species. By contrast, modern people are inculcated to defer to and rely upon the State’s professional security/enforcement class who holds the exclusive right to exert violence.
