June 20 2021
Book review:
Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost
Its Way and What We Can Do About It - (c) 2021 [0]
by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, & Max Wilbert
(also review of companion film by Julia Barnes.)
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Seems I haven't posted much recently. Summer lull mostly; warm weather
and things to do make sitting for hours with a laptop not so attractive.
I have managed to read a few books; just finished 'The Ministry for
the Future'[1] by Kim Stanley Robinson, sort of a science fiction novel
though it does reference several real events. Turned out to dovetail
nicely with Bright Green Lies which I'll elaborate on shortly.
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From the title one might think Bright Green Lies is a critique of the
environmental movement and how it has changed since the 1970s. And it
is, but it does it by way of methodically debunking much of what one
encounters in the media as solutions to the climate crisis and pathways
toward a greener future. In a lot of ways it's an expansion on some of
the doubts raised by Jeff Gibbs in his film 'Planet of the Humans'.
As mentioned in a prior post Bright Green Lies was a collaborative effort
by it's three authors, all which are part of a group called deep Green
Resistance[2], an environmental activist group. Max Wilbert is currently
occupying a camp[3] at Thacker Pass in NV, site of a proposed lithium mine.
The book starts by laying out The Problem -- it's civilization(!) -- and
some inconvenient truths about civilizations past, much of which applies
to our globe-spanning behemoth, from their beginnings with agriculture,
to the creation of hierarchies, the unsustainable rapaciousness of cities,
and of course slavery in all it's forms. Some fun facts:
- civilizations need agriculture, specifically grain production
- when soil is depleted civilization ends, usually 800-2,000 years
- by the 1800s 75% of humans where slaves of one form or another
- fossil fuels largely replaced human slaves. They also keep
industrial agriculture going via synthetic fertilizers.
- all fossil fuels are past their peak extraction rates
The authors then go over some aspects of Life on Earth:
- we are only possible because of other living things like bacteria
- Life is a property of an ecosystem rather than of a specific organism
- matter cycles between organic and inorganic forms over time
As the hippies were fond of saying, All is One. And this is why
accelerated extinction rates due to habitat destruction and resource
over-harvesting is so serious and ultimately why myopically focusing on
reducing atmospheric CO2 levels is, according the Jensen, "solving for
the wrong variable".
And that's really the crux of the argument made by Bright Green Lies.
All of these so-called green energy schemes have a tailpipe and often
a tailing pile. The authors go through how each of these technologies
work, how they're manufactured, their embedded and operating energy
requirements, what wastes and bi-products are produced, what happens
when they are taken out of service. They do the same for recycling
processes, many of which are quite polluting, use copious amounts of
energy, often have poor recovery percentages, and frequently would be
more accurately described as down-cycling due to the inferior quality of
the recovered materials. It's a slog at times but also eye-opening.
The thing is most of these processes have been around a while; the
engineers know all about the limitations and shortcomings. And yet one
rarely hears anything but gushing optimism about 100% green renewable
energy powering all the Things produced of course in a zero waste
closed cycle. It's the equivalent of promoting perpetual motion as a
form of free energy.
Which leads us to the Big Lie, that we can eat the planet and still
have a living planet. The authors of Bright Green Lies call out
several of the big names in the climate movement -- David Suzuki,
Bill McKibben, and especially Naomi Klein -- for their promotion of
destructive technologies as a way to keep industrial civilization
going, Business As Usual de-carbonized. Except, as the book explains
in detail, a civilization built upon fossil fuels can never be fully
de-carbonized. There have been several recent meta-studies of wind and
PV solar and Jevon's Paradox is still ruling the day: to-date it's all
additive, no net displacement of fossil fuels has happened. To paraphrase
Talking Heads, and the heat goes on.
So, real solutions. The authors have a chapter devoted to this but they
do qualify it in that they understand most people will not see their
suggestions as anything practical:
- industrial civilization is the problem; begin winding down
- massive program of ecosystem restoration and re-wilding
- particular focus on salt marshes, mangroves, peat bogs and sea grasses
which apparently can sequester high levels of carbon
- 20% cut in GHG emission's/year for 5 years
- end all subsidies of harmful activities such as mining, road construction,
logging, agricultural production, all energy production, etc.
- immediate phaseout of all mono-crop agriculture
- restoration of all waterways via dam removals and pollution sources
Obviously this would entail a truly radical shift in how society
is structured, something that sets the authors apart from most others
advocating for a transition away from Business as Usual. Almost everybody
else is pitching plans framed within modern civilization, usually with
the assumption that humanity could manage to power some scaled down
version of today with wind, solar, and those other "renewables" that
they don't really want to talk about like hydro and biomass. But as
the authors of Bright Green Lies illustrate, this means a commitment
to ever-expanding "sacrifice zones" -- more mining, logging, dredging,
and continued exploitation of the less-fortunate in far-flung places.
In fact this sort of magical thinking is fully on display in Robinson's
novel 'The Ministry for the Future'. Robinson seems to have incorporated
literally every climate mitigation scheme ever proposed, everything from
Half Earth re-wilding to Solar Radiation Management. While I quite enjoyed
reading the novel I couldn't help but think that Robinson really didn't
investigate the underlying physics of these techno-utopian fixes; if he
had perhaps it would have been a shorter novel.
Ironically what really seems to resonate with the readers of 'The Ministry
for the Future', at least among the collapse crowd, is the eco-terror
campaign of the Children of Kali, a group that makes use of all forms of
asymmetric warfare against oil companies, jet-setters and other enemies
of a livable future. If nothing else, it illustrates the frustration
many feel with the lack of meaningful mitigation to-date.
Getting back to Bright Green Lies, I do think at least some of their ideas
are catching on. Biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson has been promoting
his Half Earth[4] idea for quite a while and one can see hints of it in
the Biden administration's pledge to preserve 30% of US lands and waters
by 2030 [5]. Recently The Guardian ran a piece titled "Climate and nature
crises: solve both or solve neither"[6] citing a peer-reviewed report by
various biodiversity and climate experts as part of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, making the case for heeding the
UN Secretary General's plea[7] to end our "suicidal war on Nature".
As for the Bright Green Lies companion film, it has some interesting
bits such as the filmmaker Julia Barnes confronting David Suzuki for his
justification of sacrifice zones as the price to be paid for a "green
energy" future. It's somewhat short in run-time and doesn't really add
that much to what the book covers. To be honest I thought 'Planet of
the Humans' did a better job of debunking Bright Green solutionism.
Not surprisingly there hasn't been much coverage of either the book or
film in the usual media outlets, not even on the environmental / climate
news sites. There are however several good interviews with the authors
on YouTube; just search on the book title.
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[0] https://www.brightgreenlies.com
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
[2] https://deepgreenresistance.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Green_Resistance
[3] https://www.protectthackerpass.org
[4] https://www.half-earthproject.org/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/17/biden-public-lands-waters-30-by-30
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/10/\
climate-and-nature-crises-solve-both-or-solve-neither-say-experts
[7] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55147647