Endgame Vol.1 (71 page)

Another reason we can’t spend our way to sustainability is that we will
always
be outspent by those who are actively destroying the world. Destroying the world is how they make their money. It is always how they have made their money: through production, through the conversion of the living to the dead, through forcing others (the natural world, human communities) to pay the price for their activities. If you don’t produce—that is, destroy—you won’t make money. That still isn’t to say that there aren’t degrees of destructiveness: the damage caused by a permaculture farmer hand-delivering his lettuce leaves to his neighbors would be trivial compared to the damage caused by a full-on industrio-chemical lettuce agricorporation, but, and this is the point, so would his profits. That’s why those who profit from this destructiveness will
always
have more money than we do, and will always be able to outspend us. An example should make this clear. Let’s say I make a boatload of money writing and selling books. Oops, scratch that, since the manufacture of books—even on recycled paper using soy-based inks—requires lots of water, energy (ghost slaves), and raw materials. In other words, it’s very destructive. Okay, so let’s say instead I make a boatload of money making a boatload of money (in other
words, I haul out my trusty printing press, and I just
make
the damn stuff). Oops, I can’t do that, since the counterfeiting of money requires high-quality papers and lots of presumably toxic inks, lots of energy, and so forth. In other words, that’s very destructive too. So okay, darnitall, let’s say instead I just walk to a bank (wearing only used clothing taken from the dumpster behind Goodwill), and I
take
a boatload of money. I do this at night, because I don’t want to threaten or scare any of the tellers, or perform any other action that might be construed as violent. Even better, I don’t go to a bank, but go at night to Wal-Mart, and sneak in through an open door. I don’t want to break a window, because there are those who would consider this an act of violence. I don’t blow the safe because there are those who would consider
this
an act of violence. But let’s say the safe is open. I take a boatload of money. Or if the safe isn’t open, I take a bunch of consumer items, fabricate some receipts (okay, so this takes paper, but we’ll just ignore that) and return them over the next days and weeks and months for a boatload of money. Wal-Mart, with its $258.6 billion in revenues, isn’t going to miss it.
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The point is that I somehow find a way to acquire a boatload of money that a) didn’t cause me to “produce”—in other words, destroy—anything, and b) didn’t cause me to pay taxes—in other words, to pay the government so it can destroy things. The question becomes, what am I going to do with this cash? Let’s say I do what I actually would do if I acquired a boatload of cash: I buy some land and set it aside. Let’s ignore the fact that in so doing I’m reinforcing the extremely damaging idea that land can be bought and sold. I buy an entire small creek drainage, and I set to work to improve habitat in that drainage for salmon, Port Orford cedars, mountain lions, Pacific lampreys, red-legged frogs, and so on. I create a sanctuary, a place where salamanders, newts, tree frogs, towhees, phoebes, and spotted owls can thrive and live as they did before the arrival of our awful culture. I’ve done a good and great thing, maybe even as good and great as what Elser tried to do. But now I find I want to protect more land, because these creatures need more habitat. What do I have to do? Because I pulled this land out of production, and thus am not “making any money” off of it, I have to write more books, print more money, make more trips to Wal-Mart, and unless I’ve figured out non-destructive ways to acquire cash—like the nocturnal trips to Wal-Mart—then I’m basically creating sacrifice zones elsewhere that I do not see so that the land I do see can be protected. I have to do this every time I want to protect more land.

Now, let’s contrast that with someone who purchases this entire watershed not to create a sanctuary but to cut the trees. That person will “make money” off the land by harming it, and can use that money to purchase more land,
where that person can cut more trees and make more money, and use that money to buy more land, and so on until there’s nothing left. See, for example, Weyerhaeuser, or any other timber (or other) corporation.

Because the civilized economy is extractive, because it rewards those who exploit humans and nonhumans, that is, because it rewards those who do not give back to the landbase what it needs, that is, because it rewards people for disconnecting themselves from the reciprocal relationships that characterize (human or nonhuman) sustainable economies (and relationships), those who value the accumulation of money or power over life will always have more money or power than those who value life over money or power.

After a talk I gave last year in Portland, Oregon, several of us anarchists wanted to grab a bite to eat. One said he knew of a place that served great organic food and paid workers a livable wage.

“Sounds perfect,” I said.

“One problem,” he responded. “None of us can afford to eat there.”

Heck, what does it say about this culture and its economics that people must pay for food? And what does it say about this culture and its economics that a very few very large corporations control a very large majority of the food supply?

Worse yet, if people are going to be forced to pay for food, what does it say about this culture and its economics that we face a two-tier system of paying, where it’s cheaper to buy food that has been raised using poisons than it is to buy food that has been raised without using poisons, which means where the rich have enough money to buy organic, and the poor do not? How strange is it that you have to pay extra to be exposed to fewer poisons? It is for this reason, by the way, that I am opposed to labeling genetically modified foods.
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It’s not good enough for me to simply make it possible for the rich to pay extra to not ingest these artificial mutations. That is morally wrong. And because the government has not stopped and will not stop those who can make a buck by releasing these organisms (and pesticides) into the world, and into our bodies, it falls upon us to stop them. How are we going to do it?

Sure, it’s a good thing to try to do good with your money. And sure, because this strange and destructive economic system based on ownership and exploitation has pretty much overrun the globe it is extremely difficult to avoid participating in it (which means, among other things, that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much for purchasing the vehicle we need to carry explosives to dams [or kids to soccer practice], nor should we beat ourselves up if we buy some pesticide-laden, genetically modified pseudofoods at the grocery store [smothered in monosodium glutamate they taste so very yummy, don’t you think?]). But we must never forget that if we attempt to economically go head to head with those who are destroying the planet, we will always be at a severe, systematic, inescapable, and functional disadvantage. Not buying an airline ticket won’t do squat. But all is not lost. The question, yet again: Where are the fulcrums? How do we magnify our power?

Here’s the problem. Two people walk through a forest. One considers how extraordinarily beautiful the forest is, and how wonderful it is to be alive. The other notices how much of this forest could be turned into immediate fiscal profit, and thinks about how that could be done. Question: Which of these people will probably make more money off the forest? Question: Within this culture, which of these people is more likely to end up in a position of power, making decisions that affect the human and nonhuman communities in and around the forest? Question: How do those of us who care stop them from destroying the forests?

All places and all beings of the earth are sacred. It is dangerous to designate some places sacred when all are sacred. Such compromises imply that there is a hierarchy of value, with some places and some living beings not as important as others. No part of the earth is expendable; the earth is a whole that cannot be fragmented, as it has been by the destroyers’ mentality of the industrial age. The greedy destroyers of life and bringers of suffering demand that sacred land be sacrificed so that a few designated sacred places may survive; but once any part is deemed expendable, others can easily be redefined to fit the category of expendable. As Ruth Rudner points out in her article “Sacred Land,” what spiritual replenishment is possible if one must travel through ghastly fumes and ravaged lands to reach the little island or ocean or mountain that has been preserved by the label sacred land?

There can be no compromise with these serial killers of life on earth because they are so sick they can’t stop themselves. They would like the rest of us to embrace death as they have, to say, “Well, all this is dead already, what will it matter if they are permitted to kill a little more?” Even among the conserva- tion groups there is an unfortunate value system in place that writes off or sacrifices some locations because they are no longer ‘”virgin.” Those who claim to love and protect the Mother Earth have to love all of her, even the places that are no longer pristine.
Ma ah shra true ee
, the giant serpent messenger, chose the edge of the uranium mining tailings at Jackpile Mine for his reappearance; he was making this point when he chose that unlikely location. The land has not been desecrated; human beings desecrate only themselves.

WHY CIVILIZATION IS KILLING THE WORLD, TAKE TWENTY.
In the Q & A after a recent talk, a woman said that part of the problem is that most of the people she knows who care about the health and well-being of oppressed humans and salmon and trees and rivers and the earth—life—do so because, by definition, they care about others. They empathize. They feel connections with these others. They identify with these others.
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Those who don’t care about the health and well-being of oppressed humans and salmon and trees and rivers and the earth—life—don’t care because, also by definition, they don’t care. They don’t empathize.
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They don’t feel connections with these others. That’s a problem, she said.