Do We Need a Militant Movement to Save the Planet (and Ourselves)?

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on August 6, 2011, Printed on August 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151918/do_we_need_a_militant_movement_to_save_the_planet_%28and_ourselves%29

Environmental groups are trying to build a critical mass around issues like global warming to inspire public action and encourage legislators to get their heads out of the sand. The Sierra Club is working to block new coal burning power plants, a new coalition is organizing actions against a tar sands pipeline, and folks in West Virginia are sitting in trees in an attempt to halt destructive strip mining. It's great work, but what if it's not enough? What if it's too little, too late? What if we never get enough mass for it to ever reach that critical point?

A new book called Deep Green Resistance, by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen, says that we likely won't have enough people interested in saving the planet before we run out of time. So, they're calling for a change in strategy. You may know Jensen from his many books, including Endgame. McBay is the author of Peak Oil Survival: Preparing for Life After Gridcrash, and Keith is the author of The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. The three longtime activists have teamed up to offer a more radical approach to our environmental crisis.

They use words like "militant" and "resistance" a lot. And they critique the Left a lot. And they review the semantics of "violence." "I would urge the following distinctions," writes Keith, "the violence of hierarchy vs. the violence of self-defense, violence against actual people vs. violence against property, and the violence as self-actualization vs. the violence of political resistance."

And if you're firmly in the nonviolence-is-the-answer camp, don't get scared off (yet), because there is a ton of crucial information in this book. And just because they mention violence doesn't mean it's the best policy. You may not want to sign up to lead their underground army, but you should hear them out. Because the planet is being destroyed. Each day 200 species go extinct, Jensen writes in the preface. And if you can't wrap your head around that number, how about "90 percent of the large fish in the ocean are gone, there is ten times as much plastic as phytoplankton in the oceans, 97 percent of native forests are destroyed, 98 percent of native grasslands are destroyed ..." and Jensen continues with the bad news from there.

To access the remainder of this in-depth article, click here.

Generally I agree with a lot of what they say, but boy they sure are over the top. No agriculture at all? That's just being silly. And some of the statistics they quote appear exaggerated too.