{"id":108994,"date":"2014-03-04T17:15:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T17:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=108994"},"modified":"2014-03-04T17:15:50","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T17:15:50","slug":"dancing-around-collapsing-edges-industrial-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/dancing-around-collapsing-edges-industrial-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing Around the Collapsing Edges of Industrial Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Donnelly\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt has never been our job to create solutions to these environmental problems, and we were never very good at it anyway. Why, in 1986 I spent four months in jail for demanding scrubbers for coal fired power plants, the very scrubbers responsible for these mountains of coal ash all over the place. There are plenty of people who want to propose alternatives, but most of them simply want to preserve the level of comfort they now enjoy. The environmental movement has lost its voice in this crowd. Boldness has vanished, truth is hidden and we seem to be moving about like ducks in a pen when a hawk flies over. The only possible solutions, and we all know this, involve sacrifice. That is a hard sell, but then again we are not merchants\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Mike Roselle,\u00a0Climate Ground Zero<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kim and I rode our bikes in the rain over to the Student Union building; locked them along with the hundreds of other bikes clogging the racks. We went to the stairway to the Ballroom where the Keynote Speaker presentation was about to happen. We were intercepted and told we had to check our packs to gain entry. I wanted to get some photos, so we balked. Kim knew the back stairs and elevator entrances to the second floor ballroom, so we checked them out as a way to gain entry with my camera. At every door, stair and elevator, there were \u201cNo Entry\u201d signs and a guard. Outside on the rooftop, there were guards; as if someone was going to rappel down to the balcony and crash through the windows a la Bruce Willis.<\/p>\n

Who was I hoping to photograph speaking? Henry Kissinger? Angelina Jolie? No, it was Lierre Keith of the group Deep Green Resistance (DGR) who was about to speak. Her appearance was being hotly protested by a loose-knit group of green transsexuals and their supporters who set up a wet vigil outside. The cult-like DGR has been relentless in denouncing male-to-female trans women. DGR claims to be \u201cRadical Feminists\u201d and that Genitalia is Destiny \u2014 that being born with a penis somehow locks one in the Man Box and men just can\u2019t help themselves from being dicks \u2014 a bit of misandry insulting to all men. But that\u2019s their reasoning behind their exclusionary view that male-to-female women just aren\u2019t welcome in activist circles. While I don\u2019t want to give this bizarre distraction much more energy, both sides\u2019 arguments can be seen\u00a0here<\/a>: and,\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The setting is the 32nd Public Interest Environmental Law\u00a0Conference, commonly known as E-LAW. This year\u2019s conference \u2014 themed \u201cRunning into Running Out\u201d \u2014 got off to this surreal start and just kept getting weirder given our existential crisis and the fact that this, the first such conference, started as a place where grassroots activists rubbed up with policy wonks, attorneys, laws students, scientists, bureaucrats\u2026to examine the state of the planet and what was being done about it and who as doing it. Of course, a major part of it was\/is always employment opportunities for graduating baby lawyers.<\/p>\n

As portrayed in John Sayles short story\u00a0The Anarchists\u2019 Convention<\/a>, it\u2019s a truism that if you assemble a lot of activists; activism \u2014 often silly \u2014 will occur. That still happens at E-LAW, but on a far more minor scale. Some of what passed for this year\u2019s actions were decidedly lame \u2014 like the ossified non-profit Oregon Wild (Mild) organizing a forty-person march to the Eugene branch offices of Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley \u2014 all (D-Big Timber) \u2014 to protest their recent Bills that greatly expand logging on Public lands in Oregon under the rubric of using chainsaws to remove Biomass and that somehow will bring the forests to better \u201chealth.\u201d These are the very same offices where Oregon Mild first met with the same phony \u201cprogressive\u201d career politicians to sell the concept of \u201cRestoration Forestry\u201d –\u00a0THE \u201cForest Health\u201d justification for the timber plans the same \u201cactivists,\u201d err, paid staffers now oppose. The politicians were thousands of miles away, a la Obama during\u00a0350.org<\/a>\u2019s mortifying invite-only White House Feb. 2013 \u201cour Lunch Counter Moment\u201d vanity protest. (The main protest activism was Anti-Nuclear this year. I\u2019ll get into that later.)
\n
\nThe Consumption Elephant, err, Mammoth in the Room<\/b><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get back to\u00a0t<\/b>his year\u2019s theme: \u201cRunning into Running Out.\u201d Perhaps the first clue that this wasn\u2019t going to lead to what I thought it would was that the hourglass used as logo with the theme was upside-down \u2014 95% of the sand was still in the top chamber.<\/p>\n

I perused the agenda for panels and Keynote addresses on just what strategies and sacrifices we were going to have to commit to in order to effectively address that \u201cRunning Out.\u201d Out of 138 panels, just one was on Population and Consumption \u2014 the underlying cause of it all: \u201cAdvocacy in the Anthropocene: How to Talk about Population to Save the Environment.\u201d The excellent presentation was organized by the Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s (CBD) Population and Sustainability wing. And, there is no denying just how needed their population program is, especially when the other big greens studiously avoid this elephant. CBD has given away over 500,000 condoms tying it directly to species conservation, using info on the packaging to sell the link. Alan Weisman, author of the fine thought experiment book \u201cThe World without Us\u201d was on the panel. His new book \u201cCountdown<\/a>\u201d examines population reduction efforts around the world. (The shocker? Iran has achieved a birth rate lower than replacement\u2026due to religious edicts, however.) Stephanie Feldstein, CBD\u2019s Population and Sustainability Director, took on Consumption, noting that if all 7.2 billion Clever Apes lived the same life-style as the typical North American, we\u2019d need 4.5 Earth\u2019s worth of resources.<\/p>\n

{Though the organization has many very good people doing very worthy work like this, I have never been a\u00a0fan of CBD, ever since they were one of the collaborating groups behind the flawed Restoration\/Forest Health model and how they demeaned others (yes, myself included) who opposed the concept from the beginning. I also take issue with CBD\u2019s non-democratic\/no voting membership closely-held corporate organizational model. While PIELC prefers that nomenclature over E-LAW, CBD staffers hubristically self-reference as \u201cThe Center.\u201d}<\/p>\n

One panel was on \u201cFederal Forest Litigation in the Context of Collaboration\u201d and another one was \u201cNew Science on Fire, Water and Forests\u201d which looked into how the actual results of Collaborative Restoration Forestry\u2019s chainsaw surgery does far more harm than good\u00a0for forest ecosystems. As with Oregon Wild, no groundswell of grassroots membership ever directed any of these groups to \u201ccollaborate\u201d with industrial forestry on yet another excuse for stump-creation. That directive came directly from their funders and Democrat Party allies. That hoodwinked CBD, like duped Oregon Wild, is also now opposing\u00a0huge Southwest timber<\/a>\u00a0sales that the Forest Service claims are based on Restoration precepts bodes well. (Though it does remind me of when the 1940s Vichy French \u201ccollaborators\u201d whined when the Nazis arrested 11 of their top leaders AFTER said leaders had \u201ccollaborated\u201d and sent 65,000 Jews to Germany.)<\/p>\n

Anything at all, but Sacrifice<\/b><\/p>\n

I heard a lot over the weekend on what\u2019s wrong. Yet, every \u201csolution\u201d I heard proposed all weekend\u00a0was as bad, or worse, as the one I heard before it. Trees converted to jet fuel!!; Nukes, small-scale Nukes, Carbon fees and dividends, Sabotage, Forest Health\/Restoration logging \u201ccollaborations,\u201d Cascadian Secession, Socially Responsible Investing, all sorts of minor policy tweaks, \u201cWe the People against Corporate Personhood,\u201d multiple panels on \u201cCrushing Patriarchy\u201d \u201cMisogyny & Ecocide,\u201d Revolution,\u2026it was surreal. Cascadian Secession was the sole pipedream \u201csolution\u201d I could get behind, though there may be hope for yet another Teamsters and Turtles coalition with labor.<\/p>\n

Yet, there was nothing at all about sacrifice\u2026about drastic reductions in consumption. NOTHING!<\/p>\n

Also conspicuously missing were presentations on the on-going poisoning of Appalachia for coal, though Appalachian-based Mountain Justice did have an info table amongst the hallways lined with group presentations. Being the West Coast, coal issues addressed were about mining coal in Wyoming and sending it overseas to China and other nations via rail and barge hauling to export docks; and the shipping and building of such dock facilities were focused on.<\/p>\n

Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero was supposed to come and get recognition for CGZ. But, Mike was scheduled to be arraigned in West \u201cby coal\u201d Virginia on the 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0for his Thanksgiving Day taking of a sealed jar of toxic coal-blasting dust to the Governor and demanding it be tested. He was arrested and jailed for it and awaits trial; which is being pushed back, understandably, by the authorities given the unending toxic news from WV of late.<\/p>\n

Deadly Energy<\/b><\/p>\n

Of course, the main indicators that we are \u201cRunning Out\u201d of time is Carbon Pollution and resultant Climate Chaos and Extinctions. So, also of course, one would expect that that and strategies on how to combat it would be THE major focus of the conference and indeed a large presence was climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, who appeared on various panels and gave a Keynote address.<\/p>\n

I arrived early for his first panel \u201cMerging Climate Science with the Law and Communication\u201d figuring it\u2019d be packed. It was. Anti-nuke activists were handing out info at the doors on Hansen\u2019s pro-Nukes position.<\/p>\n

A very good reporter for the good local Eugene Weekly asked what she should ask Hansen a few days ago before he arrived. I asked her in the hall before the panel if she had asked my question \u201cwhat is your personal carbon footprint and where does it come from?\u201d<\/p>\n

In a great irony, after flying into Beijing, Hansen was hospitalized in China two days before flying to PIELC due to foul air quality and couldn\u2019t respond to any of her list of questions!<\/p>\n

Hansen delved into the science and then trotted out a cockamamie \u201csolution\u201d he and fellow scientists (and funders, no doubt) concocted. It would have a Carbon Fee collected on carbon at its source. Some sort of new bureaucracy would be set up to collect the fees and instead of the fees going into the Federal Treasury; they would then be redistributed as Dividends to consumers. This preposterously unworkable idea then purports to be the driver behind lowering carbon use and pollution; so much so that the increase in planetary temperature would be then kept below 1.5 degrees Centigrade before 2080, instead of a more disastrous 2 degrees or more.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before the crowd got dazed and confused by that line of thought and someone brought up Nukes. Hansen responded with \u201cNo one has ever died from a nuclear accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not true\u201d rang out from the crowd and it was on. The rest of the time was a debate on the merits of Nukes. Hansen noted that \u201cone million people die from coal in China every year.\u201d Others countered with deaths from radiation.<\/p>\n

As soon as the panel ended, a group of his questioners approached Hansen and started in on the topic. I went up to get a photo. As I snapped the shot, Hansen told the stunned group,\u00a0\u201dMore people have died installing solar panels on roofs than have died in nuclear accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

One wag said, \u201cI\u2019ve said it all along; this is the epicenter of Greenwashing in North America this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. James Hansen tells a group of mind-blown anti-Nukes activists, \u201cMore people have died installing solar panels on roofs than have died in nuclear accidents.\u201d That\u2019s Oregon hero Lloyd Marbet in the plaid shirt. And, Chuck Johnson is next to him. They doggedly\/successfully fought for the end of the Trojan Nuke Plant.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

False Solutions squared<\/b><\/p>\n

Mind blown myself, I rode off to another part of campus to attend a panel with a title right up my alley: \u201cFalse Solutions: The Flaws of Green Energy.\u201d Two guys from something called the Fertile Ground Environmental Institute had the facts down as to how \u201cRenewable\u201d Energy is really reconstituted fossil fuel and , thus, more inefficient than just burning the fossil fuel for electrons in the first place. They examined the vast amounts of coal that go into making solar panels, wind towers, steel, cement, etc. They had photos of massive mines, including the huge Rare Earth metals mine in China that provides batteries\/magnets for 80% of our iPhones, iPads, wind power generators, Pius batteries, etc. \u2014 the basis for this form of industrial energy. They claimed that 1.2 million Tibetans have died in the forced labor (slavery) of the mines \u2014 20% of all Tibetans alive! (Yes. I\u2019m checking into that.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been waiting for a solid analysis of \u201cRenewable Energy\u201d and this was the first time I\u2019ve seen such a panel discussion on it at a green event. Even with massive subsidies to wind and solar, these provide fewer than 2% of overall power in the US grid and even that is unusable without base-load steam-generated power \u2014 coal, nukes, Biomass or natural gas. What really passes for \u201crenewable\u201d under the odious \u201c25 x 25 renewable portfolio\u201d plans adopted by most states is Biomass \u2014 the burning of trees for electrons. Getting those trees to the steam plants is the real underlying purpose of the many new logging plans that Oregon Wild and others now oppose.<\/p>\n

As my buddy Jeff notes, \u201cAnd since 90% of \u201cclean energy\u201d is the biomassacre, every time I hear someone want to deal with \u201cclimate\u201d I hear the march of the bio-suicides:\u00a0Bio-char, bio-mass, bio-fuel. \u00a0Therefore, I despair every time I hear anyone talking about climate, because I see it as a symbol of the environmental movement, if there ever really was one, having lost its mind, and its way, and only being comfortable with nothing that will make any difference at all, as intended.<\/p>\n

Right now from Michigan to Vermont to Wisconsin to California THAT is the suicide of the planet being most ramped up, and despite the lies of those pushing renewable energy, is going to double, triple, ten times more as we promote \u201cgetting off fossil fuels\u201d to save the climate; thereby assassinating nature in the name of green.<\/p>\n

So for me, when I hear \u201cclimate\u201d concern, I hear the trees and orangutans and tigers and wolves and life I love being slaughtered even faster. \u00a0The planet and the climate are being destroyed even faster in the name of preventing climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabotage, then what?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, the False Solutions panel devolved quickly enough. Admitting their ties to DGR, the panelists then trotted out their \u201csolution.\u201d It was Sabotage! Take down the grid! They praised efforts that have damaged the grid and other energy supply routes. No talk at all of how, if that succeeded, then what? As the Population and Consumption panel noted; 60% of our food is grown with natural gas-derived fertilizers, it\u2019s delivered via fossil fuels\u2026cutting off fossil fuels cold turkey means genocide. The great irony of Industrial Civilization is that we cannot live much longer with it and billions cannot\/will not live without it.<\/p>\n

Best Things about PIELC<\/b><\/p>\n

There has always been a commitment to Indigenous Peoples at E-LAW. The UofO Student Longhouse is right behind the Law School and a full slate of activities happen there during the conference. In addition to the annual honoring of elders; this year, most of it was about the 1000 Yellowstone Buffalo that are being killed right now \u2014 over 300 already down.<\/p>\n

Native people from around the world always are given Keynote slots to present their plight. E-LAW sets out how to interact with Native people, especially revered elders, in the brochure. The event is quite multi-cultural. I see more people in traditional clothing than I see all year combined.<\/p>\n

Ecological Social Justice is always on the agenda.<\/p>\n

Upon registration, people are asked about how they traveled to the conference in an attempt to calculate the event\u2019s carbon footprint. Paper coffee cups are banned.<\/p>\n

Activists attend for free. Lawyers pay a fee.<\/p>\n

Gender balance on panels is a goal.<\/p>\n

Best Things this Year<\/b><\/p>\n

The top event for me was the honoring of my friend, the great activist attorney Lauren Regan and her superb, skilled group \u2014 the Civil Liberties Defense Center on CLDC\u2019s Tenth Anniversary. In those ten years, CLDC has represented 900 activists of all causes, though mainly Native and Eco-activists, for free. Lauren and her allies are indispensible to the movements. CLDC is my top activist group\u2026they are my \u201cThe Center!\u201d<\/p>\n

Regan is also part of a new effort \u2014 the\u00a0Global Climate Convergence<\/a>, which is another Teamsters and Turtles attempt to ally Greens and Labor in conservation and social justice efforts. She, 2012 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, sociologist Dr. Jamil Jonna and labor organizer Richard Monje made several presentations on GCC. After the Teamsters and Turtles experience, no one could blame Eco-activists for being shy about any new such efforts \u2014 it foundered when the \u201cTeamsters\u201d felt the need to cut the trees for jobs when the \u201cTurtles\u201d sought to protect them for habitat.<\/p>\n

This time I have some hope. Monje isn\u2019t some Pollyanna and Regan and Jonna certainly are not; and Stein impresses me more and more. Monje knows full well the tough sell on either end. He\u2019s a veteran of the bi-lingual education efforts and citizen safety campaigns in his native East LA neighborhood. He was shot by the police at an anti-Vietnam War protest. As someone who grew up in Flint, MI and joined the UAW and worked for GM starting at age 18 and who later worked in NW lumber mills before becoming a forest protection advocate, this effort strikes close to home with me.<\/p>\n

Regan gave a lunch Keynote and noted Population and Consumption as a root cause of every issue being addressed at the conference. And, then at the end of Saturday, after Hansen gave a stodgy Keynote address, Prof. Mary Wood of the Law School, followed and gave the long-awaited speech that finally seriously addressed Consumption.<\/p>\n

Another, more inclusive group organized a Trans and Womyn\u2019s Action Camp and made a presentation at the conference about it.<\/p>\n

Dancing on the Ruins of Industrial Civilization<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Speaking of Industrial Civilization, the annual Earth First! OutLAW Party was held in a run-down warehouse district, outdoors, in the rain amongst a vast array of the debris of industry. The bands were quite good this year. The rain never stopped. Mud and cracked cement was the dance floor. The traditional effigy burn went well and even the ten-person naked pyramid next to the fire held up\u2026the big guys on the bottom getting only a little muddy.<\/p>\n

But as I looked around the 250-person crowd, I saw but a couple dozen of the \u201cold guard.\u201d It was a passing of the torch, so to speak, event this year, as long-time EF! pyro master Mick Garvin is recovering from yet another eye operation and wasn\u2019t in attendance.<\/p>\n

Mick recently came up with a proposal to hold an Earth First! Rendezvous in an abandoned Detroit factory and actually dance on said ruins (and to lend support to the many young urban pioneers now resettling Detroit.)<\/p>\n

As David Brower used to say, the real action at these events takes place in the halls and bars and any effective actions that come out of it are concocted there \u2014 the camaraderie is one of the best, if not the best, part of it.<\/p>\n

Where DO We Go from Here?<\/b><\/p>\n

One activist declared that despite all the distractions and buffoonery, \u201cat least they are talking about the Climate Crisis.\u201d It\u2019s a start.<\/p>\n

As Mike Roselle points out, we aren\u2019t merchants and our job is not to sell windmills (or Nukes, rare earth-derived solar panels or \u201cForest Health\u201d logging schemes)\u2026it is to lower our planet-destroying habits \u2014 to Power Down this Industrial experiment and People Down before it\u2019s too late. Our job is to resist extinctions caused by 7.2 billion Clever Apes consuming the life support system. It\u2019s how to provide for Gaia to carry on with Her full complement of species.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s how to humanely get the population of us primates down to a number that begins with an \u201cM,\u201d not a \u201cB,\u201d so that those other species \u2014 and ultimately we \u2014 can thrive in harmony with this beautiful, magical planet we are blessed to occupy.<\/p>\n

THIS is what Running into Running Out really means. We may already be beyond the critical tipping points. 600 species went extinct over the course of the conference! Ignoring consumption and focusing on techno-policy tweaks around the edges and an array of false \u201csolutions\u201d may well provide full employment for Eco-attorneys and Eco-collaborators\u2026but not for long.<\/p>\n

MICHAEL DONNELLY<\/strong>\u00a0has attended 30 E-LAW Conferences. He has presented panels on activism and forest protection over the years. He was Plaintiff in the first successful Old Growth lawsuit. <\/em><\/p>\n

Via Counterpunch<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Donnelly\u00a0 RINF Alternative News \u201cIt has never been our job to create solutions to these environmental problems, and we were never very good at it anyway. Why, in 1986 I spent four months in jail for demanding scrubbers for coal fired power plants, the very scrubbers responsible for these mountains of coal ash all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-108994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}