Deep Green

GC NOTES : Below the Deep Green book excerpt,  there is a story from an actual, producing, environmentalist , Dr. Vandana Shiva - be sure to scroll down far enough to read it.  She is also an actual feminist producing for women.  Read about her history below the excerpt from her book.   

I also put the authors of the DG book  biographies below the extremely well written excerpt from their book  (they write beautifully, it is their redeeming quality).  So you can google them.  Do it and  see what they have actually done for the environment.   Then consider what accolades their PR firms have gathered to describe them.   Notice that one dose not support the other unless selling books for personal profit is considered environmentalist activism. (Don't follow leaders; watch the parking meters).

Then ask yourself who makes up such good fake backgrounds?  Remember the so called feminist did not have the conviction to remain a vegan.  She rolled back .   And remember, when you are caught; MOST PEOPLE STOP, DROP AND ROLL.
  

There may be some redeeming info in this beautifully written book.  But the authors are the types who join ELF and get off on being more radical than you and having the truth all wrapped up - they belittle what other organizations accomplish as worthless.   It is unclear to me what good, if any, they have accomplished except for their own marketing. They bleed here in the writing excerpt below for wild animals and their habitat destruction but romanticise eating meat because the discipline of veganism was too much for them. They justify the bloody torture and exploitation of domestic animals and attendant degradation of the environment and the resulting health issues by disparaging the impact of veganism.   They say they need protein and claim tofu is as harmful to the environment as feed lots, as if they never heard of the word "organic".  They wash their bloody hands in their own arrogance.

 The DG authors are inconsistent, undisciplined and shallow while trying to model themselves as cutting edge and DEEP.   They write about criminal acts as if this is the historical time period for self immolation.  I consider all this romanticised actual attacks on property more like deep doo doo.  These are not the people who take lab animals out to freedom which actually benefits those animals and humanity.  That was ALF - the animal liberation front.  These people are like ELF - the environmental liberation front - who burned houses and SUVs.


 Still if the beautiful writing below exemplifies the rest of the book it may be worth reading to understand and absorb the severity of the problem. But their solutions should be taken with a pound of salt especially for those who do not have the wealth needed to sacrifice their life to the legal system. I often think people like this are provocateurs working for the government to discourage activism, The tactics they advocate brought the FBI down on the ALF and destroyed their ability to function through the passage of the Eco Terrorism Act.

DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE
Strategy to Save the Planet

By Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, May 5, 2011

A black tern weighs barely two ounces.  On bodily reserves less than a bag of M&Ms and wings that stretch to cover twelve inches, she’ll fly thousands of miles, searching for the wetlands that will harbor her young.  And every year the journey gets longer as the wetlands are desiccated for human demands.  Every year the tern, desperate and hungry, loses, while civilization, endless and sanguine, wins. A polar bear should weigh 650 pounds. Her biological reserves may have to see her through nine long months of dark, denied gestation, and then lactation, giving up her dwindling stores to the needy mouths of her species’ future. In some areas, the female’s weight has dropped from 650 to 507 pounds.1   Meanwhile, the ice has evaporated like the wetlands. When she wakes, the waters will stretch impassably opened, and there is no Abrahamic god of bears to part them for her. The Aldabra snail should weigh something, but all that’s left to weigh are their skeletons, bits of orange and indigo shells. The snail has been declared not just extinct, but the first casualty of global warming. In dry periods, the snail hibernated. The young of any species are always more vulnerable. In this case, the adults’ “reproductive success” was a “complete failure.”2 In plain terms, the babies died and kept dying, and a species millions of years old is now a pile of shell fragments. We are living in a period of mass extinction. What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair?  The numbers stand at 120 species a day.3   That’s 50,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news. We already have a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene Extinction Event. There’s no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman’s excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We’ve all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears.  Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong? There are voices raised in concern, even anguish, at the plight of the earth, the rending of its species. “Only zero emissions can prevent a warmer planet,” one pair of climatologists declared.4    Or James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, who states bluntly that global warming has passed the tipping point, carbon offsetting is a joke, and that “individual lifestyle adjustments” are “a deluded fantasy.”5 It’s all true. And self–evident. “Simple living” should start with simple observation: if burning fossil fuels will kill the planet, then stop burning them. But that conclusion, in all its stark clarity, is not the one anyone’s drawing, from the policy makers to the environmental groups. When they start offering solutions is the exact moment when they stop telling the truth,  inconvenient or otherwise. Search Google  for “global warming solutions.” The first paid sponsor, www.CampaignEarth.org, urges “No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? We’re here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success.” By “realistic”  they don’t mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem. They mean the usual consumer choices—cloth shopping bags, travel mugs, and misguided dietary advice— which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive. But since these actions also won’t disrupt anyone’s life, they’re declared both realistic and a success. The next site offers the ever–crucial Global Warming Bracelets and, more importantly, Flip Flops.  Polar bears everywhere are weeping with relief.   The site’s Take Action page includes the usual buying light bulbs, inflating tires, filling dishwashers,  shortening showers, and rearranging the deck chairs. The first non–commercial site is the Union of Concerned Scientists. As one might expect, there’s no explanation points but instead a statement that “[t]he burning of fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) alone counts for about 75 percent of annual CO2 emissions.” This is followed by a list of Five Sensible Steps................... Read more here.................. The book, Deep Green Resistance: Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can't fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it.  To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Deep Green Resistance evaluates strategic options for resistance, from nonviolence to guerrilla warfare, and the conditions required for those options to be successful. It provides an exploration of organizational structures, recruitment, security, and target selection for both above ground and underground action. About the Authors of Deep Green Resistance Activist, philosopher, teacher, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, DERRICK JENSEN holds degrees in creative writing and mineral engineering physics. In 2008, he was named one of the Utne Reader’s "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World," and in 2006 he was named Press Action’s Person of the Year for his work on the book Endgame. He lives in California. Writer, activist, and small-scale organic farmer ARIC MCBAY works to share information about community sufficiency and off-the-grid skills. He is the author of Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash and creator of "In the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-progress for Outliving Civilization". LIERRE KEITH is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of two novels, as well The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called "the most important ecological book of this generation." She's also been arrested six times. She lives in Humboldt County, CA. I am unaware of any feminist campaigns in which Keith played a significant role. Now I am unusual because I do not count speaking and writing as activism unless it is part of a campaign that leads to ACTUAL changes in laws, or institutional practices and said change impacts the life of species and or the planet. I am looking for programs and practices that actually implement social change not just prepare consciousness for change as important as that is...activism is something more. Feminist activism is much more.  Not only that, but it seems the speaking and writing for which she is paid leaves a lot to be desired in the factual basis department. See a review of her previous book Vege Myth here............. I suppose she did cause someone to say that it was the "most important book of "bla bla bla -- Now here below, in contrast, is serious deep green work for the planet and a book by an actual feminist rather than a self described activist. Soil not Oil Industrial globalized agriculture (IGA)is heavily implicated in climate change.  IGA contributes to the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) from the use of fossil fuels, nitrogen oxide (N2O) from the use of chemical fertilizers, and methane (CH4) from factory farming. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre–industrial concentration of about 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of CH4 has increased from pre–industrial concentration of 715 parts per billion to 1774 parts per billion in 2005. The global atmospheric concentration of N2O, largely due to use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture, increased from about 270 parts per billion to 319 parts per billion in 2005. Industrial agriculture is also more vulnerable to climate change which is intensifying droughts and floods. Monocultures lead to more frequent crop failure when rainfall does not come in time, or is too much or too little. Chemically fertilized soils have no capacity to withstand a drought. And cyclones and hurricanes make a food system dependent on long distance transport highly vulnerable to disruption. Genetic engineering is embedded in an industrial model of agriculture based on fossil fuels. It is falsely being offered as a magic bullet for dealing with climate change. Monsanto claims that Genetically Modified Organisms are a cure for both food insecurity and climate change and has been putting the following advertisement across the world in recent months. 9 billion people to feed. A changing climate Now what? Producing more Conserving more Improving farmers lives That’s sustainable agriculture And that’s what Monsanto is all about. All the claims this advertisement makes are false. GM crops do not produce more. While Monsanto claims its GMO Bt cotton gives 1500 Kg/acre, the average is 300–400 Kg/acre. The claim to increased yield is false because yield, like climate resilience is a multi–genetic trait. Introducing toxins into a plant through herbicide resistance or Bt. Toxin increases the “yield” of toxins, not of food or nutrition. Even the nutrition argument is manipulated. Golden rice genetically engineered to increase Vitamin A produces 70 times less Vitamin A than available alternatives such as coriander leaves and curry leaves. (GC NOTES:  However, no one wants to eat a bowl of curry leaves) The false claim of higher food production has been dislodged by a recent study titled, Failure to Yield by Dr. Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was former biotech specialist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and former adviser on GM to the U.S Food and Drug Administration. Sherman states, “Let us be clear. There are no commercialized GM crops that inherently increase yield. Similarly there are no GM crops on the market that were engineered to resist drought, or reduce fertilizer pollution or save soil. Not one.” There are currently two predominant applications of genetic engineering: one is herbicide resistance, the other is crops with Bt. toxin. Herbicides kill plants. Therefore, they reduce return of organic matter to the soil. Herbicide resistant crops (HRP), like Round Up Ready Soya and Corn reduce soil carbon, they do not conserve it.   (GC Notes: Because HRP allow the use of more chemical herbicides). This is why Monsanto’s attempt to use the climate negotiations to introduce Round Up and Round Up resistant crops as a climate solution is scientifically and ecologically wrong. Monsanto’s GMOs, which are either Round Up Ready crops or Bt toxin crops do not conserve resources. They demand more water, they destroy biodiversity and they increase toxics in farming. Pesticide use has increased 13 times as a result of the use Bt cotton seeds in the region of Vidharbha, India. Monsanto’s GMOs do not improve farmers’ lives. They have pushed farmers to suicide. 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last decade. 84% of the suicides in Vidharbha, the region with highest suicides are linked to debt created by Bt–cotton.    GMOs are non–renewable, while the open pollinated varieties that farmers have bred are renewable and can be saved year to year. The price of cotton seed was Rs 7/kg. Bt cotton seed price jumped to Rs 1,700/kg. This is neither ecological nor economic or social sustainability. It is eco–cide and genocide. Read more here...... Dr. Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist and eco feminist. She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food, and assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, which led to the creation of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. She is author of numerous books including, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The hijacking of the Global food supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. Shiva has also served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as NGOs, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and the Third World Network. She has received numerous awards, including 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.