Effective Action in Time of Crisis
We can’t afford to be distracted. To save Nature, we must stay on target — against Technology.
Humans need only wild Nature, yet we’re sold a lie: that we must have new ways to extend technological progress, without creating CO₂. Whose interest are so many young people being deceived to serve?
“It is conceivable that our environmental problems (for example) may some day be settled through a rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these problems. But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent.”
— “Industrial Society and Its Future” (1995) paragraph 139
R ecent actions by (mostly young) “climate activists” of the British group Just Stop Oil seem to have allowed them to eclipse their predecessors, the U.K.-born and internationally-extended Extinction Rebellion (XR) — which is no real surprise given how scattered the latter is in their stated goals. In contrast to historically-demonstrable principles of successful and effective social movements, the three main demands of XR are all vague and thus impossible to judge as achieved: Exactly how could it be determined that governments 1) “tell the truth”, 2) “act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, and 3) follow “decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly”? If it can be perceived by anyone that those goals have been accomplished, then the movement can be undercut by a false sense of success. Thus having as goals such abstract concepts as these defeats any willingness to sacrifice for results which are neither easily assessed nor irreversible.
Though the XR site claims (as of 11/01/22) to have “over 1186 groups in 85 countries”, from the main website many of their associated chapters seem inactive; even if all these groups are in fact still active, and supposing they are comprised of people deeply inspired to achieve those three demands of debatable value, how would the membership know they had crossed the finish line? Would it be when one nation conceded all three? When several nations (or even all nations) had conceded, in concert, just one demand? How likely is it that all nations can be made to honor all three demands? And what if the Citizens’ Assembly decides to continue fossil fuel extraction? The fatal flaw here is that XR does not have one single, clear and concrete goal with which to motivate its followers and also to judge its work as indisputably accomplished.
Just Stop Oil generated much publicity by performing attention-grabbing, illegal stunts each day of October. While this can be fairly presumed to put some media attention toward the issue of industrially-induced climate change, the actual benefit of such a strategy should be assessed in relation to the goal(s) it drives toward, as more generalized “awareness” has a dubious value: informing people of matters which they feel are beyond their ability to impact can cause despair due to a perception of impotence, leading to a willful disregard. (This is fair and sensible because the human animal is not evolved to be buried under mountains of knowledge about negative situations far away, beyond access, and which he has no ability to remedy.) Busy putting a steady supply of people into handcuffs and behind bars (briefly), Just Stop Oil’s goal is to have the British government make “a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK.”
Now, imagine that after your tireless efforts, being jailed and dealing with consequences, your group wins the desired concession from the government — and then the next government in power simply reverses course. This has happened enough times and in enough places that any sensible adult should be wary of settling for such empty promises. (Some recent examples: 2005, 2009, 2017, 2021, 2022). Would you simply have a homicidal psychopath pledge not to use his chainsaw to kill, or would you do well to restrain the maniac and destroy the powerful chainsaw? It can’t be overemphasized: to make our sacrifices worthwhile, the change(s) forced to be conceded must be both obvious and irreversible. But by its nature, representative government is simply incapable of such actions. We want government to be changeable. As much as radicals might want government to adopt their own extreme positions, if it were capable of doing so, it would be just as susceptible to adopt the extreme position(s) on the opposite pole of the political spectrum, and such drastic veering between extremes cannot maintain, thus government always operates within a narrow range of possibilities, unable to swing too far from center. Were a government to make a drastic departure from the median, whether to either the left or right, it is almost guaranteed that the pendulum of public opinion would swing back the other direction at the next opportunity.
Another problem for Just Stop Oil is that they don’t quite know what they are out to accomplish with their efforts, disregarding the aforementioned essential need to keep to one clear goal by speaking of lowering “energy bills” and feeding all civilized people.¹ Despite the statement of the pie-smashing activist, that “The demand is simple: just stop new oil and gas,” the group has already added further causes to their main priority of getting a commitment from the UK government to forego “new licenses and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels”. This is an intrinsic problem of coalitions and large groups, that they have divergent (and often enough, competing) interests and goals. One activist vandal stated that the UK’s present supply of oil would last eight years — doubtful, given the constantly-increasing demand of techno-industrial society for electricity — and that while the already-acquired oil is burned over the next eight years, “a just and fair transition to a renewable future” must be undertaken (whatever those concepts might subjectively be understood to be), “to include training for people who work in the fossil fuel industry currently,” and also “the insulation of British homes and… subsidized public transport.” So, Just Stop Oil will accept the UK burning oil for another eight years — an assault on Nature which ought need no explanation — as long as more people are fed and rapidly moved around long distances.² Apparently, the group (more aptly named Just Stop Oil in Eight Years) doesn’t want to fully defend Nature, which requires disrupting “economic growth” and “prosperity.”
At this point, a thoughtful person might wonder: What would it look like if the renewable energy industry abandoned its own direct lobbying of governments for subsidies and instead persuaded concerned young people to be unpaid “activists” demanding that their governments adopt renewable electrical generation? And the answer is, it would look precisely like what we see happening with these lame groups, spinning their wheels but going nowhere.
Why is a group named Just Stop Oil touting secondary goals of ending hunger, and delivering reduced ‘energy’ costs, and deploying renewable energy-generating technologies, and improved or cheapened public transportation? Clearly they don’t want to depose government but instead to strengthen and entrench it, so that government may provide more, for more people. Getting the power centers of technological civilization to serve and appease more people will reduce revolutionary potential by decreasing social tensions and pacifying the population at least as well as any of the plethora of pharmaceuticals available. This is why the foremost Nature-defending revolutionary remarked that “the left today serves as a kind of fire extinguisher that douses and quenches any nascent revolutionary movement.” (p. 6) In the fashion typical of Leftists, JSO activists have taken to every underdog loser cause and issue, and one wonders where (or even if) they will draw any line.³ Surely they want also to stop racism and sexism and protect indigenous rights and so forth, just like the oblivious passengers aboard the ship… If you think a lengthy list of goals and aims is useful for practically accomplishing the salvation of wilderness from technological ravage, look to the so-called radicals of Deep Green Resistance and their litany of issues worthy of their apparently limitless attention: patriarchy, White supremacy, indigenous autonomy, colonialism, mental health, worker exploitation, worker solidarity, people of color issues, etc. Since DGR can’t explain how we will judge the success of stopping patriarchy and the rest, shall we just vaguely “resist” such abstractions forever, then? Can they find no priority to target?
These same problems of distraction and abstraction plague Just Stop Oil’s German/Austrian counterpart, Last Generation, which has declared that if they were not informed by 07 Oct. 2022 that the government would implement “a speed limit of 100 km/h on German autobahns and the introduction of affordable local public transport with a €9 ticket” fare, then LG would act to “ensure maximum disruption to public order [beginning] October 10th, 2022.” Very considerately, they offered that they “will behave in a disciplined, non-violent manner. We give you our word that we will do everything we can to ensure that no one is harmed.”
On one hand, we can be absolutely certain that the government will not concede those demands, being hit by such light and non-violent pressure as is being delivered: the German state which LG is only mildy irritating is presently confronting people who are willing to employ violence and avoid capture, primarily neo-Nazi (or “White nationalist”) and Islamic terrorist movements. The idea that the state would capitulate to those employing only self-sacrifice is simply absurd. Furthermore, government acquiescence would show weakness, setting a terrible precedent and encouraging other groups to demand changes outside of the established electoral-ritual parameters of all democracies. At the same time, it is entirely conceivable that the government could enact these demanded adjustments (only if they were much more harshly pressed to do so), precisely because the system would not be rattled one bit by them.⁴ This is the real measure of just how useless such measures are. Last Generation’s demands — like those of Just Stop Oil — are completely worthless, because (as already mentioned) they are vague and abstract and reversible, and also because these are entirely non-disruptive “demands” which the worldwide technological system thus can allow.
In any conflict, triumph owes to the greatest application of discomforting or unpleasant force; in this context, re-framing from their own statement of justification, let us consider what more effective measures could be applied, “Given the situation we find ourselves in with the climate catastrophe, there is no argument that would justify not implementing these measures immediately.” If they truly believe what they say, that the German government — and, collectively, the governments of the world, and the technological developments they push or permit — is driving the world toward doom, why do LG activists (and the others) handicap themselves by stating their own self-imposed ceiling of rebellion? The naïveté demonstrated by the Leftist environmentalists is almost astounding, except for the extensive history of it. (And a perceptible rise in concern for our ecological predicament has now become evident even among the most conservative, with Right-wing race-separatist radicals speaking up against the wholly inadequate, impotent maneuvers of the professional, bureaucratic, environmentalist Left. But why wouldn’t neo-Nazis too want to preserve wild Nature and freedom against the constant assaults of Technology?) Even if we suppose that such a nice and gentle route could be effective, it is certainly not the most expedient or effective route, considering that sacrificed time, funds, and personnel are surely required to be greater when a group is applying less force in these ways than what other methods could apply.
These goals (for which young people are tarnishing their “permanent records” created by the surveillance state) are akin to adamantly demanding that your kidnapper wear a balaclava of a different color; if you had the power to enforce this, what would it change about your predicament? A real change would be to demand that your abductor release you, and it would take serious and substantial discomforting force to win such a concession contrary to the will of your captor. What is contrary to the interest of the constantly-advancing technological system? The flourishing of wild Nature.⁵
Unmanaged, wild Nature (including unbridled human freedom) is necessarily sacrificed to continue technological progress; ensuring that Nature be free from Technology’s predation, or that freedom be unrestricted, is to restrict the advancement of the technological system. Technology and Nature are simply incompatible: for one to live and prosper, the other must be killed. So it is this demand for ending Technology which must be asserted, exclusively, for only this will break the system. Any lesser goal would be tantamount to “achieving” better service aboard the tilting Titanic.
Although Just Stop Oil seems to find value in having achieved nearly 2000 arrests between April 1st and Nov. 1st, their greatest success is only in their failure to as-yet press the UK government to become more parental and technologically enabled. If the group “succeeds” it won’t be due to their pressure against the technological system, but because of what has been labelled “the system’s neatest trick”: rebellious impulses are redirected to compel the techno-industrial system in the direction that it is poised to go for its own interest. These pseudo-rebels would do well to awaken to this fact already.
…the fact that solutions are found in cases where the interests of the system coincide with the interests of human beings gives us no reason to hope for solutions in cases where the interests of the system conflict with those of human beings. …Since it is in the system’s own interest to keep pollution and global warming under control, it is conceivable that solutions may be found that will prevent these problems from becoming utterly disastrous.
— Ted Kaczynski, Technological Slavery (2019)
The concept of Peak Oil should be no surprise to any ecologically-minded readers; what will the technological system do as oil becomes less-easily accessible or fully depleted? It won’t simply give up, it doesn’t halt operating when it exhausts resources fueling it. It finds some new area of Nature to prey upon, making use of something previously useless or of low value. And thus we see the development of supposedly “green” renewable (limitless) energy sources such as wind and sunlight. With zero push from “activists”, both the technician class (serving technological progress) and the industrial concerns (ever-seeking to increase wealth and power) will strive to achieve the means to continue techno-industrial society while avoiding the presently-recognized problem of CO₂ emissions (but oblivious to unforeseeable problems of the future);⁶ “green energy” technologies will not first be used to replace hydrocarbons, but only to supplement fossil fuels.⁷ And what expectations can we realistically hold for the supposedly great (and entirely unnecessary) things to be done with the electricity generated from incessant sources such as wind and sunlight — two natural phenomenon which our planet’s flora and fauna have evolved with, and will suffer to be deprived of? What enhancements of human freedoms are likely to result from removing any fueling limitations on electronic technologies held by those who wield and deploy technological powers? With the furtherance of technological society, expansions of true freedom are as implausible as the destruction of Nature is guaranteed.
Those truly concerned for the future of wild Nature, which includes human freedom — and especially those willing to make sacrifices of their freedom and bodies — need to get their heads on straight, and to step away from these useless groups successful only at using them. The petty goals and the fleeting achievements of these campaigning groups are worse than inadequate, because they misdirect the focus of the dissatisfied and rebellious from the core of our social and ecological crises: Technology itself.
The ways that social movements change societies has already been studied and the lessons given to us in detail by a certified genius, in the unrivaled 2016 book Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, the culmination of years of analyzing both triumphant and failed revolutionary and reformist movements, throughout history and around the world, by the captured anti-technology revolutionary Theodore J. Kaczynski. The wisdom and truths told by ATR are applicable to even those who have a goal different from its author, but anyone truly wanting to save Earth as a viable habitat for humanity as a free species cannot afford to forego a serious study of this work. For people drawn to groups such as Just Stop Oil, Last Generation, XR, or DGR,⁸ efficacy demands that Anti-Tech Revolution be employed, lest they remain unwitting pawns of the techno-industrial system.
…a successful revolutionary movement may start out as a tiny and despised group of “crackpots” who are taken seriously by no one but themselves. The movement may remain insignificant and powerless for many years before it finds its opportunity and achieves success. …A small but well-organized, unified, and deeply committed movement will have a far better chance of success than will a vastly larger movement that lacks these characteristics. In other words, quality is more important than quantity. …If the goal of revolutionaries is the complete elimination of the technological society, then they must discard the values and the morality of that society and replace them with new values and a new morality designed to serve the purposes of revolution. …A chief determinant, if not the chief determinant, of success for a revolutionary movement is its faith in itself.
— Anti-Tech Revolution: Why & How (2016)
Notes
- Feeding all people all the time is certainly not what Nature does, nor is it the purely benevolent act of good which it may seem on the surface. Food for humans does not fall to Earth from off-planet, but is grown from among the finite molecules already present; to create what civilized humans desire — a narrow range of all possible flora and fauna — requires the conversion of wild Nature, clearing forests and flattening hills, the efficiency of unnatural monocrop plantations, the application of pesticides to protect crops, and the long-distance transport of foods, not to forget the mining of limestone so phosphorous fertilizer can be applied to agricultural plots (with the resulting surface exposure of radioactive phosphogypsum, which can contaminate waterways such as this 2021 incident which will cost the public $200M, beyond the incalculable damage to Nature in the form of pollution, die-offs, and algal blooms). Intermittent fasting — such as when our hunter-gatherer forebears could not get food for a day or three — is now recognized to be not just acceptable but actually good for human health, and even to extend the lifespan. An essential fact often overlooked is that because Earthly matter is finite, an increase of human population comes necessarily at the expense of non-human populations. It is not coincidence nor a matter of consumption decisions which explains the ever-growing extinctions around us; it owes to the increase of humanity, and the conversion of biodiversity into solely human-designated foods and the lands upon which those are farmed, and the redirection of matter from being a wide array of lifeforms into being only more of our own species. This cannot sustain.
Thus the provision of foods to humanity, beyond what Nature would normally provide, is the primary reason for the human population’s overshoot of carrying capacity. (The oft-lauded progress of medical knowledge and the modern techno-medical industry are also to blame, for their keeping alive many people who would otherwise naturally have died for one reason or another.) While the most pathetic of Leftists shy away from the reality of human overpopulation, those who acknowledge it (such as D.G.R.) will only suggest liberal reforms to disrupt the natural human biological drive to become parents, by incentives and interruptions such as “family planning” (providing chemical and medical inhibitions against human fertility) or “economic prosperity” (which will increase consumption levels) and “education” (i.e., indoctrination against parenthood and toward gaining a service position in the techo-industrial system, with the expected rewards of finances and material wealth). This is plainly an infringement upon human nature, and freedom, and dignity, considered reasonable only because ending the agricultural and medical systems is not considered. And note also that, coincidentally, the technological system no longer needs more humans, so reducing human population will lessen the stress upon the system to provide for all. Thus, the soft, ‘carrot’ enticement measures (versus ‘stick’ punishments such as forced sterilizations) to deter normal human desires for parenthood are actually beneficial to the global technological system. - The rapid and widespread transport of people and materials is another aspect of technology which is generally regarded as a benefit or good, but which has numerous negatives, from the individually-felt elevation sickness phenomenon to the 2020 pandemic of the COVID-19 virus which emerged from Wuhan China and had within days arrived in Milan, London, Buenos Aires, Seattle, Miami, and New York City.
- “…the single ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system. …recognize that any victory against an environmental atrocity or other technology-related evil can only be temporary, at best, as long as the technological system remains in existence.”
— Anti-Tech Revolution: Why & How (2016) - “…it is a serious mistake to set modest goals for a revolutionary movement on the ground that such goals are “realistic.” Only a truly world-transforming goal can inspire people to accept hardship, risk, and sacrifice, and to put forth the extreme effort that will be necessary… A revolutionary movement can’t be successful if it allows its pursuit of its objective to be limited by reservations or qualifications of any kind…”
— Anti-Tech Revolution - “…what is happening to our world is not accidental; it is not the result of some chance conjunction of historical circumstances or of some flaw of character peculiar to human beings. …the destructive process that we see today is made inevitable by a combination of two factors: the colossal power of modern technology and the availability of rapid transportation and communication between any two parts of the world. Recognition of this may help us to avoid wasting time on naïve efforts to solve our current problems. …Those of us who believe that the technological system is an evil are often tempted to attack some of the subordinate evils that are associated with it, such as capitalism, globalization, centralization, bureaucracy, big, intrusive governments, environmental recklessness, and gross economic inequality. This temptation should be resisted. …eliminating capitalism the gain would be very modest, because technological progress would continue… Capitalism has… replaced other systems because under present-day conditions capitalism is economically and technologically more efficient. …your ideological attack must be focused on modern technology itself. Any attempt to eliminate capitalism, globalization, centralization or any other subordinate evil can only distract attention from the need to eliminate the entire technological system. …Revolutionaries must take their goal to be the collapse of the system no matter what. …because nothing short of the collapse of the system will ever get us off the road that we are on now.”
— Anti-Tech Revolution - “The longer the system is allowed to continue its development, the worse will be the outcome for the biosphere and for the human race… we have to assume that new causes of environmental harm, which no one today can even imagine, will emerge in the future. Moreover, we have to remember that the growth of technology, and with it the exacerbation of the harm that technology does to our environment, will accelerate ever more rapidly over the coming decades. …in all probability, little or nothing on our planet will much longer remain free of gross disruption by the technological system.”
— Anti-Tech Revolution - “Anyone who thinks the technological world-system is ever going to stop burning fossil fuels (while any are left) is dreaming.”
— Anti-Tech Revolution - While DGR claims to be anti-civilization and revolutionary, and has (unlike other groups mentioned above) even rejected so-called “green energy” schemes, DGR continues to blindly embrace all of the standard morality and reformist Leftist causes which are required by the technological system and instilled into the denizens of mass-societies for the purpose of making more smooth and orderly the system’s continued operation. Their complaints about “patriarchy” gives an example of their distractedness, with DGR touting “education” (for more women, hailed by all of liberal Western civilization), and whining about the 2022 overturning of a US federal law allowing for access to technological abortion within clinical facilities. Of course, abortion was happening well before the 1973 law allowed it, and education is really only the homogenization and regimentation of thought, and people (women) living in Nature no more need education from technological society than people of Africa or Australia or The New World needed to know of the European Renaissance or Greek philosophy or Roman infrastructure in order to delay or deter them from parenthood.
