The Hybrid Car is Still a Death Machine
The Hybrid Car is Still a Death Machine: An Eco-Anarchist Manifesto
by Kalanu Buffalo
Save Feral Human Habitat
http://bullsheet.wordpress.com
I’m happy to see that ‘environmentalism’ has become trendy, and that there is a growing movement in our society to reduce the impacts of our civilized lifestyle. Yet, those of us who have long considered ourselves ‘environmentalists’ fear that it may be too little too late, and that the movement is becoming co-opted by the very forces that we have been struggling to defeat.
The crisis we face now can be traced back to decisions our culture made over 10,000 years ago, and compounded since then by millions of subsequent decisions. This process, whereby we went from a species in equilibrium with it’s environment to one that is currently destroying all life around it, has been greatly accelerated in the last 100 years or so. While this acceleration roughly corresponds with the rise of fossil fuel use, it is not these particular resources, or use thereof, that bear the entire responsibility for our current crisis.
The use and impacts of these energy resources, being such a prominent and immediate threat to life, have been focused upon by the new environmental (green consumer) movement as not only key targets, but in some cases, the only targets.
Many old-school environmentalists define their ideology and activism not just by a desire to reduce our 'carbon footprint', but also by a desire to have an abundance of intact eco-systems and a broad diversity of life on the planet. Hybrid cars and compact fluorescent light bulbs may reduce the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere as we go about our busy civilized lives, but unless we begin to take a brutally honest approach to a wide variety of elements of society, the toxic sprawl will continue to drive thousands of critical species (including our own) into extinction.
The problem lies in the centralized, industrial way that we choose to support ourselves as a culture. The most sustainable and ‘eco-friendly’ products of the mass consumer culture still require appalling amounts of water, energy, resources and labour to produce. All of these things need to be transported, and as these industries have been globalized, the distances that these things need to be transported have increased to the absurd and convoluted. The fuel used by the production and transportation is but one impact of the process. An army of heavy equipment, fabricated from steel, copper, zinc, iron and other resources (as well as petroleum products such as lubricants and plastic) are used in the production and transportation of ALL industrialized mass consumer products. In the case of the automobile, the vast majority of the energy and materials used and the waste and pollution created occurs in the production process.
Where do these materials come from? Whose land? Where does the massive waste our consumer society generates go? Whose land? Who builds the earth moving equipment and mining machinery? Who operates them? Who works in the factory that processes the raw materials and assembles the products? Who loads them onto trucks, ships, planes and trains? Who drives these vehicles? What are the working conditions for all these people? What kind of quality of life do they have? A great deal of exploitation is occurring around the world to bring us our ‘sustainable’ products. The cost of retrofitting the world with green technology and fuelling it with energy that costs more to produce than fossil fuel (as all other energy does) certainly doesn’t leave us much with which to pay a living wage to those who toil for our comfort.
These issues, though often referred to as ‘social justice’ issues, factor into the ideology of many environmentalists. Nowhere is an environmental issue not a social justice issue. Every step in the process of bringing mass consumer goods to the homes of the civilized world, impacts the lives of people who work in these industries and whose homes are downriver, downwind or have been destroyed by these industries.
A globalized mass consumer world is not compatible with the ideal of social justice for all. The industrial system requires slavery and exploitation. It requires increasing access to resources, which means displacing people, mainly poor and indigenous people, from their land base.
Mining and blasting processes, which are critical to the production of material for ‘green energy’ infrastructure, are apocalyptic to any ecosystem. The waste generated by these processes poisons rivers, lakes and oceans and in turn poisons the people who rely on these waterways for sustenance and survival.
These and other effects are also to be seen in the production, transportation and retailing of the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ products and infrastructure that is being created and proposed. (A good local example is the development on Spaet [Bear] Mountain, in which the future of the local indigenous cultures, which are in jeopardy in part from diabetes and other health effects of the western diet, relies on access to traditional wild foods. By reducing the land base of these peoples, you reduce their access to healthy food and sabotage their efforts to survive into the future. This can reasonably be called genocide.)
In short, any movement of ideology that does not advocate eliminating our dependence on a globalized industrial way of life can not with any real conscience call itself ‘environmental’, at least not in the sense that the word is used to mean respect and active protection of biodiversity and ecological equilibrium.
Any eco-philosophy that fails to take into account the impact of actions on all life from the smallest micro-organism up to entire human cultures is but a means to feel good about one’s excessive consumption and material addictions.
Those of us in the privileged world have become addicted to the comfort of abundant material wealth. Yet in the majority of the world, thoroughout the majority of history, people thrive, on far less, produced closer to home with less resources, used more efficiently for longer periods of time before being discarded, and discarded in a way that can even contribute to new products.
The true sustainable energy sources in this world are direct solar (to heat food, water, grow food, etc), methane digesting of food waste to produce electricity, heating and cooking fuel, and other technologies that can be built and maintained on a personal or community level.
Further energy reduction is achieved by localizing resource use and reducing the need for most transportation, as well as eliminating many of the products that those of us in the privileged world take for granted.
It’s true that we live in a world where many communities lack the resources for even basic survival, and must rely on imports from other communities, but from this need has arisen a system that is wasteful, inefficient and in most cases unnecessary. If we cannot return to a localized economy than we should be focusing on a future where these impacts occur only where they truly need to, and resources and energy used in the most efficient ways.
Those of us who live in areas with abundant resources could do a much better job of utilizing these resources. Cities could be growing food on rooftops, or in yards that are now only used for ornamental grass and shrubs. Rainwater can be utilized and grey water collected to reduce impact on watersheds and oceans. Food and other waste can be used to produce methane to eliminate the need for hydro-electricity, natural gas and home heating fuel. (And to save land from landfill and avoid flushing it into the ocean where it harms marine life.)
Other waste materials can be used to make new products, and this reduces the impact of extracting, producing and transporting materials and products.
We need to start perceiving the true impacts of using new products. As necessary as each new product may be in our lives, each time we purchase and consume them it is like throwing a live grenade into the communities affected by the production of these products. As necessary as each product may be, it can never be forgotten that we must TAKE LIFE to create it, and in the case of the land and ecosystems from which the raw materials and energy originate, that life may take thousands of years to return, if it returns at all.
Some purchases are unavoidable, but in the case of our culture, most ARE avoidable, thus we have no excuse for such casual taking of life.
‘Sustainable’ products and energy are that which can be harvested and produced close to where we live, with the least possible impact on the natural environment, with attention to quality (so they last), that fill a needed role in our lives, and can be re-used, recycled or discarded in a way that creates the least impact. All other products are destructive and counter-productive to our struggle to survive on a healthy planet.
The green consumer movement is not ‘environmentally friendly’, and the measures being proposed by the new mainstream environmental movement are nowhere near a solution for the crisis we face. If the power to ‘save the environment’ is in the hands of the people, than we need to use those hands to create the world we want, not to hand power over to the corporations and governments to pervert and waste. A centralized industrial world can only create ecological damage, genocide and exploitation. It’s time we began taking the radical alternatives seriously and begin to examine the impacts of every aspect of our lives.
by Kalanu Buffalo
Save Feral Human Habitat
http://bullsheet.wordpress.com
I’m happy to see that ‘environmentalism’ has become trendy, and that there is a growing movement in our society to reduce the impacts of our civilized lifestyle. Yet, those of us who have long considered ourselves ‘environmentalists’ fear that it may be too little too late, and that the movement is becoming co-opted by the very forces that we have been struggling to defeat.
The crisis we face now can be traced back to decisions our culture made over 10,000 years ago, and compounded since then by millions of subsequent decisions. This process, whereby we went from a species in equilibrium with it’s environment to one that is currently destroying all life around it, has been greatly accelerated in the last 100 years or so. While this acceleration roughly corresponds with the rise of fossil fuel use, it is not these particular resources, or use thereof, that bear the entire responsibility for our current crisis.
The use and impacts of these energy resources, being such a prominent and immediate threat to life, have been focused upon by the new environmental (green consumer) movement as not only key targets, but in some cases, the only targets.
Many old-school environmentalists define their ideology and activism not just by a desire to reduce our 'carbon footprint', but also by a desire to have an abundance of intact eco-systems and a broad diversity of life on the planet. Hybrid cars and compact fluorescent light bulbs may reduce the amount of carbon we emit into the atmosphere as we go about our busy civilized lives, but unless we begin to take a brutally honest approach to a wide variety of elements of society, the toxic sprawl will continue to drive thousands of critical species (including our own) into extinction.
The problem lies in the centralized, industrial way that we choose to support ourselves as a culture. The most sustainable and ‘eco-friendly’ products of the mass consumer culture still require appalling amounts of water, energy, resources and labour to produce. All of these things need to be transported, and as these industries have been globalized, the distances that these things need to be transported have increased to the absurd and convoluted. The fuel used by the production and transportation is but one impact of the process. An army of heavy equipment, fabricated from steel, copper, zinc, iron and other resources (as well as petroleum products such as lubricants and plastic) are used in the production and transportation of ALL industrialized mass consumer products. In the case of the automobile, the vast majority of the energy and materials used and the waste and pollution created occurs in the production process.
Where do these materials come from? Whose land? Where does the massive waste our consumer society generates go? Whose land? Who builds the earth moving equipment and mining machinery? Who operates them? Who works in the factory that processes the raw materials and assembles the products? Who loads them onto trucks, ships, planes and trains? Who drives these vehicles? What are the working conditions for all these people? What kind of quality of life do they have? A great deal of exploitation is occurring around the world to bring us our ‘sustainable’ products. The cost of retrofitting the world with green technology and fuelling it with energy that costs more to produce than fossil fuel (as all other energy does) certainly doesn’t leave us much with which to pay a living wage to those who toil for our comfort.
These issues, though often referred to as ‘social justice’ issues, factor into the ideology of many environmentalists. Nowhere is an environmental issue not a social justice issue. Every step in the process of bringing mass consumer goods to the homes of the civilized world, impacts the lives of people who work in these industries and whose homes are downriver, downwind or have been destroyed by these industries.
A globalized mass consumer world is not compatible with the ideal of social justice for all. The industrial system requires slavery and exploitation. It requires increasing access to resources, which means displacing people, mainly poor and indigenous people, from their land base.
Mining and blasting processes, which are critical to the production of material for ‘green energy’ infrastructure, are apocalyptic to any ecosystem. The waste generated by these processes poisons rivers, lakes and oceans and in turn poisons the people who rely on these waterways for sustenance and survival.
These and other effects are also to be seen in the production, transportation and retailing of the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ products and infrastructure that is being created and proposed. (A good local example is the development on Spaet [Bear] Mountain, in which the future of the local indigenous cultures, which are in jeopardy in part from diabetes and other health effects of the western diet, relies on access to traditional wild foods. By reducing the land base of these peoples, you reduce their access to healthy food and sabotage their efforts to survive into the future. This can reasonably be called genocide.)
In short, any movement of ideology that does not advocate eliminating our dependence on a globalized industrial way of life can not with any real conscience call itself ‘environmental’, at least not in the sense that the word is used to mean respect and active protection of biodiversity and ecological equilibrium.
Any eco-philosophy that fails to take into account the impact of actions on all life from the smallest micro-organism up to entire human cultures is but a means to feel good about one’s excessive consumption and material addictions.
Those of us in the privileged world have become addicted to the comfort of abundant material wealth. Yet in the majority of the world, thoroughout the majority of history, people thrive, on far less, produced closer to home with less resources, used more efficiently for longer periods of time before being discarded, and discarded in a way that can even contribute to new products.
The true sustainable energy sources in this world are direct solar (to heat food, water, grow food, etc), methane digesting of food waste to produce electricity, heating and cooking fuel, and other technologies that can be built and maintained on a personal or community level.
Further energy reduction is achieved by localizing resource use and reducing the need for most transportation, as well as eliminating many of the products that those of us in the privileged world take for granted.
It’s true that we live in a world where many communities lack the resources for even basic survival, and must rely on imports from other communities, but from this need has arisen a system that is wasteful, inefficient and in most cases unnecessary. If we cannot return to a localized economy than we should be focusing on a future where these impacts occur only where they truly need to, and resources and energy used in the most efficient ways.
Those of us who live in areas with abundant resources could do a much better job of utilizing these resources. Cities could be growing food on rooftops, or in yards that are now only used for ornamental grass and shrubs. Rainwater can be utilized and grey water collected to reduce impact on watersheds and oceans. Food and other waste can be used to produce methane to eliminate the need for hydro-electricity, natural gas and home heating fuel. (And to save land from landfill and avoid flushing it into the ocean where it harms marine life.)
Other waste materials can be used to make new products, and this reduces the impact of extracting, producing and transporting materials and products.
We need to start perceiving the true impacts of using new products. As necessary as each new product may be in our lives, each time we purchase and consume them it is like throwing a live grenade into the communities affected by the production of these products. As necessary as each product may be, it can never be forgotten that we must TAKE LIFE to create it, and in the case of the land and ecosystems from which the raw materials and energy originate, that life may take thousands of years to return, if it returns at all.
Some purchases are unavoidable, but in the case of our culture, most ARE avoidable, thus we have no excuse for such casual taking of life.
‘Sustainable’ products and energy are that which can be harvested and produced close to where we live, with the least possible impact on the natural environment, with attention to quality (so they last), that fill a needed role in our lives, and can be re-used, recycled or discarded in a way that creates the least impact. All other products are destructive and counter-productive to our struggle to survive on a healthy planet.
The green consumer movement is not ‘environmentally friendly’, and the measures being proposed by the new mainstream environmental movement are nowhere near a solution for the crisis we face. If the power to ‘save the environment’ is in the hands of the people, than we need to use those hands to create the world we want, not to hand power over to the corporations and governments to pervert and waste. A centralized industrial world can only create ecological damage, genocide and exploitation. It’s time we began taking the radical alternatives seriously and begin to examine the impacts of every aspect of our lives.