What is Radical?

How about murdering defenders of an inhabitable planet?

Photo by Mauro Pimentel /AFP from an article about environmentalists and land defenders killed in 2020.

Words are filled with power and routinely abused to advance nefarious agendas. One of the most twisted words is “conservative.” Politically, conservative can be defined as the support of traditional views and values that oppose change, but also embody the fatally ignored concept of conservation — the preservation and replenishment of resources. Some resources should be renewable with wisdom and proper care such as forests and oceans, others, namely fossil fuels are one and done.

Pictures of Earth from space make it undeniably apparent resources on our planet are finite. Neither of our parties, conservative or “liberal” recognize this fundamental, THAT THERE ARE limits to growth. The book, The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 in an era that the routinely used insecticide DDT was recognized as a carcinogen (thank you, Rachel Carson) linked to failure of eagle, osprey and pelican reproduction, and the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Just 211 pages long, the book’s warnings should have been heeded.

Obviously, this wisdom was ignored. I mean, we have plastic in our BRAINS now. Plastic is in your TEA BAG.

Cuyahoga River 1969. Is this what we’re returning to as Trump and sycophants kill environmental protections and open national parks for drilling and mining?

There’s not much liberal left politically after five decades of the virulent pestilence called neocapitalism, spread by both parties. Perpetrated by unrelenting violence world over, country by country, this plague started in South America, courtesy of Nixon, war criminal Kissinger and the CIA. The logical conclusion of neocapitalism has come home to the US, fascism, as energy resources dwindle. That’s the primary driver, oil running out. The oligarchs don’t intend to share anymore. They have their money, bomb shelters and delusion of omnipotence. We’re now banging our heads against hard limits as the fossil fuel era rapidly approaches its end, likely in 40 to 60 years (scroll about halfway down the article link) according to longtime oil geologist Art Berman. Berman’s well-considered work and analysis of oil and the reality of what renewables can achieve can be found here.

On denial of reality and the resulting destruction of the planet, there is little daylight between the two parties.

As our Earth becomes increasingly turbulent from warming clearly evidenced in longer, more destructive fire seasons, record droughts and melting ice caps causing flood disasters at scales never before seen in our short existence as humans on Earth, we flirt with extinction. The basis of civilization, agriculture is in danger.

Powered by fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, the “civilization” we have created (never mind all those icky genocides) has also created the mechanism of our own demise. This is not to say I don’t enjoy its most basic benefits. Who would want to go without sanitation, indoor plumbing and central heat in the deep freeze of winter for instance? There are also wonders — the probes that have allowed us to see the rings of Saturn and the storms of Jupiter for instance and most recently the James Webb telescope that can discern the near origins of the universe. If anything, these discoveries should give us humility.

However, each step away from living simple, subsistence lifestyles is a bargain with the devil, trading on our longevity as a species. It’s a question of choices. Are central heating and the James Webb telescope reasonable trades? What about our insistence on eating planet warming beef and absorbing brain shrinking entertainment, rather than embracing knowledge and education? Our opposable thumb enabled invention has brought cynical manipulation and hubris, not wisdom, as we blow past the limits of survivability.

An article in Scientific American points out:

It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.

From fast-fashion, pet rocks and plastic shedding bottled water we could simply drink from the tap, to driving needlessly behemoth vehicles, we’ve been brainwashed by predators to participate in our self-destruction. We’ve been taught to believe nature is to be feared, not revered, its sole purpose exploitation for mindless profit. The world’s human superpredators (billionaires and their lackeys) are a perversion of the survival instinct demanding only the fittest survive. Wall Street traders and oligarchs are not fit. They are the deadly result of a system far removed from reality that destroys community, the environment, our bodies and mental health.

Did you get your gene altering PFAS today? There is no excuse for single use plastics or bottled water. About 90 percent of plastic is not recycled, nor can it be.

Consumer culture. Endlessly vacuous.

The good news is that fossil fuels which created the illusion of a limitless world are running out. The Permian Basin is a prime example. This article from Goehring & Rozencwajg, cold-eyed natural resource investors, not “greenies,” points this out. Oil has become far more energy intensive to harvest. There will be a breaking point on EROI. That places a hard cap on the CO₂ we refuse to stop pumping into the atmosphere. However, that CO₂ will linger for hundreds of years, enveloping the Earth in a heat trapping, pole melting blanket. Sad irony, the bad news is also that fossil fuels are running out. That puts us in a horrifying dilemma. Our population in excess of eight billion was built on coal and oil, from agriculture to vaccines. We’re on a path of painful, violent withdrawal characterized by collapsed economies, massive climate migration and resulting increased military conflict and disease, driven by greed and ignorance, creating fertile grounds for desperation fueled fascism.

The extremes the “fittest” will go to in maintaining our path to extinction is amply demonstrated not just by profit over people, but by the genocide in Gaza. I have often said we are all Palestinians now. I haven’t been kidding.

The murder of the defenders of the Earth

I have searched for the truth about climate change and overshoot our mainstream media won’t address with the detail, urgency, and consistency demanded for four years now. Rigorous journalism, the backbone of a free society is nearly dead. My browser is filled with thousands of article links organized into hundreds of folders. Today, I wish to address the state-sponsored suppression and violence being carried out in countries around the world in oppression to our right to an inhabitable planet.

The planet does not belong to billionaires. However, it’s going to take blood to prove that. Every day they demonstrate their disregard for life and ignorance of limits. They are deluded by their wealth and power. There’s blood in fire and flood deaths the world over daily now. We must fight. Passiveness has only one outcome.

The poorest, the victims of neocapitalism, their natural resources plundered and cultures in turn destroyed, already know. Between 2012 and 2022, nearly 2000 people defending the land and environment were killed worldwide.

Far too many have been murdered to tell each story, and it’s not just about the killings. It’s also about laws being changed to make protests illegal and surveillance. Activists in the UK such as Roger Hallum have been imprisoned for years for merely disrupting or planning to disrupt traffic to call attention to the plight of our situation. No one wishes to go to extremes, but petitioning our corrupt governments gets no results. Greta Thunberg was abused in an Israeli prison for being part of the Sumud Flotilla attempting to bring food and aid to starving Palestinians. In the US, Trump is attempting to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the US military and National Guard in suppression of any expression he deems at odds with his personal interests as he loots the country. This certainly includes any protests against planet destroying drilling and mining.

A few of the murders

Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips shot dead in the Amazon

In 2022, Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips working together were killed for protecting the Amazon rainforest. Pereira was a defender of the rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples and Phillips, a British reporter who often wrote for The Guardian researching a book on how to save the forest. They were shot dead on their boat by fish poachers. This investigative article points out that in just six years, an astonishing 800 million acres of rainforest were destroyed for the beef industry.

The destruction of the rainforest is well-known. Less well-known are hired invaders who illegally poach fish and animals, resources of local, poor subsistence Indigenous communities. Like those who burn the forest for profit, violence — even murder is an exercised threat. Murder for billionaires is remote and impersonal. Not so much for the henchmen and mercenaries they employ.

Efraín Fueres, Ecuador, gunned down in a protest

Efraín Fueres, a land defender was marching with thousands in protest of high costs of living and government crackdowns on Indigenous and environmental activists when he was gunned down. Authoritarian moves by the government, including freezing activists’ bank accounts, suspending a media organization and government policy that removed fuel subsidies raising gasoline prices by over 50 percent were reasons for the protest. Ecuadorians live on less than $100 a month.

Military bullets took his life.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, is seeking to boost ties with Donald Trump by allowing military bases in the country. No doubt this would be convenient as Trump threatens war with Venezuela to procure its oil, pretending there’s a drug war.

Noboa instituted a “state of emergency” on September 16 in provinces across the country, empowering the government to limit public travel, impose curfews and restrict other freedoms. He also moved to rewrite the Constitution, which currently includes strong protections for the environment and Indigenous peoples.

Noboa also signed a security agreement with Erik Prince, founder of the former US defense contractor Blackwater responsible for the Baghdad Nisour Square massacre in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed and 20 injured.

It’s all fine.

Juan López, Honduras, six bullets to the chest, one to the head

Juan López was outside a church when he was gunned down. An environmental defender, López was leading the fight to protect dense jungle and precious water in a country filled with corruption and drug trafficking. The gunman wore a mask, just like ICE agents who are abducting people and deporting or throwing them into prison camps without due process or legitimate charges.

Think it can’t happen here? It IS happening here. Trump is making this nation as lawless as Honduras.

It is thought that López’s killing was because of his fight against an iron oxide mining project with close government ties and a corruption among members of the Honduran president’s political party. I’m so glad we don’t have to worry about that in the Land of the Free as long as you shut up, and home of Billionaire Thieves stealing life itself from food for the poor to healthcare for the elderly — $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over ten years projected to cause millions to lose their health insurance coverage.

The fight is NOW

There is no way to underestimate the gravity of the situation we have created. Four years of difficult work motivated to thoroughly understand climate change led to understanding overshoot and the reality of the end of the brief fossil fuel age which has led to artificially over boosted population and the trashing of the planet and biosphere as well as our bodies and mental health. Plastic literally falls from the sky in the rain. Nothing about industrial life is sustainable and with the end of oil less than a generation away, the “green” economy was at best a naive lie. It can’t be built without fossil fuels, particularly diesel for heavy equipment. We are destined for a low energy world akin to what was achievable in pre-industrial society.

Most disturbing, rather than address our problems honestly and directly, world leaders have been led down a fool’s path by billionaire technologists who believe in their drunken, illusory state of omnipotence they represent the next stage of human evolution, seeking to meld Homo sapiens with silicon and achieve immortality in robotic bodies or by uploading their consciousness to computers while the world the rest of us lives in burns, floods and crashes.

People near the equator are dying from wet-bulb temperature extremes. The Arctic is melting and threatening to release more GHGs than we have pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Our increasingly barren soil is no longer sequestering carbon, and we’re laying forests low. We’re all drones in a death machine.

Now is the time to show the courage of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips, Efraín Fueres and Juan López. We must organize at a local and regional level and strike, boycott and protest. We must have a tax revolt. NO taxation without representation. We must pull our money from fossil fuel sponsoring banks (an ordered list of offenders is here). We’re fighting stage three cancer and our money is growing the tumor.