Encyclopedic Empathy: a book review of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It
Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert
(Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2021).
“What do you know about this mendacity thing? Hell! I could write a book on it! Don't you know that? I could write a book on it and still not cover the subject?”
- Big Daddy in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams
What at first seemed a daunting 500 pages chock-full with information and detailed research soon turned into a page-turner to learn more, find out how to stop the madness, and learn what can be done, or undone (as in removing dams), or not done (as in not destroying the Earth by perpetuating the same so-called lifestyle with a green veneer).
Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It is an encyclopedia with empathy, relentlessly exposing the side-effects of environmental extractivism and its greedy, heartless master “industrial civilization” – and more currently, exposing the global wave of greenwashing.
“What's the point of making [LED] bulbs that last 30 years if they're going to be obsolete in 10?”[1]
That's one of the green kōans put forth in this thought-provoking, action-inspiring, most timely book.
While the toxicity of mining from Roman times can still be detected today, one of the more recent hooks of a root of the problem is “planned obsolescence”:
“The origin of the phrase planned obsolescence goes back at least as far as 1932 with Bernard London's pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence. The essence of London's plan would have the government impose a legal obsolescence on personal-use items, to stimulate and perpetuate purchasing.”[2]
Bright Green Lies will change how you read news and reports, as well as how you assess environmental organizations, some of whom espouse Orwellian hypocrisies. Plus various statistics can be deceiving, for example, because of “pollution outsourcing,” Britain claiming its “domestic emissions” are down, fails to include the “global emissions” for producing a product such as “imported steel.”
Along with deceptive adjectives such as “renewable”, “clean energy”, “energy saving”, one can no longer take a noun at face value because a noun is not really a noun, rather an extenuated process of global supply chains with varying levels of toxicity:
“Steel is made of iron alloyed with a smaller portion of at least one other element, most often carbon but sometimes manganese, chromium, nickel, or tungsten. About 2 billion tons of steel was produced in 2018, with more than half coming from China.” And steel is the “most critical ingredient for wind turbines,” as well as being “one of the most important global commodities, essential to many parts of industrial civilization.”[3] To keep up with increased demands for steel would require, can you guess?! … “increased mining.”
What or who is more troublesome, climate change/chaos or the global corporate consumer system which literally feeds off of resource extractions, leaving trails of toxicity, abuse, and destruction?
“Remember that it’s possible to have a carbon-neutral civilization and still destroy the planet. Remember this as if your life depends on it, because it does.
Global warming plays a role in only a small percentage of the two hundred species driven extinct every day. Salmon were nearly exterminated before climate change became significant. So were bison. So were old-growth forests and ancient grasslands and so many rivers. Fossil fuel is an accelerant, but it’s not the reason. The catastrophe is civilization itself. The roll is so long and grim. The Syrian elephant was hunted to death for its ivory before 100 BCE. The Roman Empire sent the Atlas bear in decline, capturing them by the thousands so their deaths could be enjoyed in the Coliseum. The Mauritius blue pigeon was rare by 1775 and extinct by 1830s when its island was deforested; its scientific name Columba nitidissima, means “most brilliant pigeon” for its metallic blue feathers, and three taxidermic specimens are all that remains.”[4]
Chapter by chapter the “lies” are exposed, as the chapter titles make clear: The Solar Lie; The Wind Lie; The Lie of Green Energy Storage; The Green City Lie; The Green Grid Lie; The Hydropower Lie; Other Lies. Fear not, though, because there is a chapter, Real Solutions, plus mention of solutions elsewhere in the book. While reading, I made note of about 19 solutions/rightwise-ways of getting along with the Earth, and there are probably more.
One broad solution message is to stop the destruction!, whether of rivers, mountains, habitats, etc., with the encouragement to do whatever you can in your area. Months before reading the book, I called my town's office and it took numerous calls to different departments to get a request in to have the front of a small wooded area, adjacent to a main road, cleaned of litter. Thankfully, it was cleaned up. And could be again soon as idiot citizens continue to dump bottles, plastic cups, and other trash. While my action pales in comparison to going heart-to-head against corporate bullies sometimes backed by police with visors, pepper spray, rabid dogs, and such like, the point is that we can no longer wait for others to take action and we can no longer simply speak truth to too-often deaf power, then expect that all will be solved.
Whether you're on the front lines stopping pipelines or mining, in a quiet suburban neighborhood, or anywhere, really, action is needed.
Perhaps the biggest green bubble-buster is revealed with:
“... the amount of emissions reductions you get per dollar invested in 'renewable' energy is essentially zero. In fact, the emissions actually increase, because the production, installation, maintenance, and disposal of these 'renewable' energy forms release greenhouse gases. … In terms of stopping the destruction of our planet, or at least stopping global warming, all the mainstream solutions are, at best, distractions.”[5]
As one of the solutions, a quote from a 2019 article by Josh Gabbatiss in The Independent: “Massive restoration of the world's forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions.”
Instead of being an obedient citizen-consumer listening to and following the soundbite mantras of bright green trendy industrial civilization, this book will make you question more: What does “renewable” mean? What does “sustainable” mean? Bright Green Lies will give you a blueprint for debunking much of what the mainstream, the so-called experts, the scientists, the politicians, the corporations are putting forth as the problem and the new savior.
While the authors don't discourage actions that can help a little bit, such as recycled paper (also a toxic process), they admirably are going at the bigger picture. Any skeptics of the lies would be advised to learn “How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled”[6] That's right, the push to promote recycling plastics was a scam to promote an endless cycle of feel-good green consumerism. If the powers that extract and consume lied about recycling, odds are the authors of Bright Green Lies are spot-on telling the truth.
A positive global example that people worldwide are aware of is how after a few months of the corona-virus, the air quality improved and fish could be seen in rivers; the potential for a reversal of doomsday scenarios can happen —
and rather quickly — IF deep changes are made.
Looking into the future for changes requires looking into the past. Many examples are given as to how Indigenous cultures can serve as role-model examples of how not to mine yet live sustainably with the Earth. How such ancient knowledge can be applied to current situations could be THE conundrum of our times yet we must start somewhere and the very, very least we can do is to stop destroying what feeds us and stop consuming like heroin addicts desperate for a fix.
And speaking of heroin, recent news of Afghanistan (a land of poppies) has me wondering if much has to do with the estimated “$1 Trillion Worth Of Minerals”[7] with an ample portion of lithium, a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries. Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are also lithium hot-spots, along with Nevada where Protect Thacker Pass, an assemblage of Natives and non-Natives, including one of the authors, Max Wilbert, are working diligently with gatherings, prayers, lawsuits and more so as to stop the lithium mining which would destroy the habitat of the Native lands and employ toxic processes so as to help produce “green” vehicles.
“Thacker Pass / Peehee Mu’huh is just one of so many industrial sacrifice zones around the world. Remember too, that along with lithium, EVs and batteries require copper, cobalt, graphite, bauxite, nickel, and rare earth metals, all of which require sacrifice zones.”[8]
Bright Green Lies prompts the reader to answer many questions, including: What are you willing to sacrifice from your comfort zone so as to help defend and protect the well-being of the planet aka Mother Earth, for the immediate future as well as future generations?
“As well as stopping this culture's murder of the planet we must align ourselves with the natural world to help restore it to whatever health it can achieve. We must restore grasslands and wetlands and rivers and streams and forests and seagrass beds and soil. The living earth will do most of that work. We just need to help out along the way.”[9]
PS
For those wishing further background/studies as to the long-standing systemic extractivism, a few suggestions:
- Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent – Eduardo Galeano;
- The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth — Tom Burgis;
- Columbus and other Cannibals – Jack D. Forbes.
- Any audio about mining by John Trudell, and the documentary film Into Eternity , as well as, though I haven't seen it, the documentary Bright Green Lies directed by Julia Barnes
NOTES:
[1] p. 236.
[2] “Planned obsolescence” &
“Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence”
[3] Bright Green Lies, pp.116-117.
[4] Ibid, p.251
[5] Ibid. p.438.
[6] See here.
[7] “Afghanistan: Taliban Now Control $1 Trillion Worth Of Minerals, Here’re The Details”
[8] “In the name of lithium”
[9] Bright Green Lies, p.300.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic. His newest book is Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out. In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.
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