Author of Bright Green Lies, End Game, and more, Derrick Jensen, joins Reinette Senum to explore modern environmentalism, the green economy, and the difficult conversation about the realistic options we have at hand.
Have you noticed how environmentalism has evolved from "protecting the earth" to "saving the climate?"
Or noticed how our elected officials, influencers, and enviro leaders are touting technological solutions (Green New Deal & smart cities) that feed corporate greed while ignoring simple and local solutions (like rebuilding topsoil) that could provide planetary wellness?
There has been rising hypocrisy within environmental groups over the decades. They seem determined to continue pushing a false narrative. One that supports unproven technology, carbon taxes, and oil-dependent "alternative energy" as our ultimate salvation. However, we cannot ignore the ecocide before our eyes while thinking we can continue the same standard of living in a post-petroleum world.
So, where to start?
Firstly, it begins with addressing the hidden costs of the "green economy" and admitting that Big Industry has coopted much of the environmental movement. If we don't recognize this, we negate any possibility of survival as a species.
From my hero, Dr. Vandana Shiva,
“Bright Green Lies is a much needed wakeup call if we are to avoid sleepwalking to extinction—joining 200 of our fellow creatures and relatives that are being driven to extinction per day by an extractivist, colonizing money machine that is lubricated by limitless greed, and guided by the mechanical mind of industrialism. This destructive machine is labelled ‘civilization,’ and its violent and brutal imposition on indigenous cultures and communities is legitimized as the ‘civilizing mission’ for which exterminations of the rich cultural and biological diversity of the earth is necessary for the linear, blind rush to progress. Religions change, extermination continues. But there are other ways: the ways of indigenous cultures to whom we must turn to learn how to walk lightly on the earth.”
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Derrick Jensen, Author of "Bright Green Lies" Joins Reinette Senum