Derrick JensenReseñas

Cité par Nicolas Casaux

Cité par Nicolas Casaux

Oh, Lord. Once I was blind and now I see.

This polemic on society’s addiction to growth and its implications for the natural world reads like revelation.

The authors take us on a whirlwind tour of green solutions to climate change and why they won’t work, and they won’t work because their objectives are to keep the economy humming along while the planet sags under the weight of resource extraction, the eradication of habitat, the continued domination of monoculture, and the greed of our cities.

It’s hard not to agree with the authors on their premise.

Whether it’s on bird-bashing wind turbines, the damming of the rivers’ effects on fish habitat, the scraping of the ocean floors, the impact of mining deadly minerals for solar panels and our infernal smartphones, strip-mining our landscapes for ever increasing mountains of coal to burn and lithium salts to refine, or dredging up the liquid hydrocarbons from the depths, it’s all bad news.

We think our cities can be green, but that’s only if we ignore the outsourcing of the pollution our cities create. We send our garbage and our recycling thousands of miles to poorer and more desperate jurisdictions. Less obvious, our cities demand and consume minerals, food, chemicals, and electricity that are only being harvested far away in ways that would make us pause if it happened in front of our eyes. That includes the materials needed for green solutions.

Do we reduce, reuse, recycle? At the end of the day we don’t reduce, we reuse, but recycling is never enough to satisfy demand.

The authors prefer us to start with reflection on the endgame of unmitigated growth, then advise that we refuse to go along with the paradigm, resist continued intrusion on the world’s biological bounty, and restore what we have broken.

I have read elsewhere what it would actually mean to the planet to build out all those electric cars, and develop the electrical grid to feed the electricity for those cars.

For one thing it would mean heavy mining of the seas and its attendant risks to the ocean habitat. Then there’s all the cement we’d need to build out wind turbines. Increased cement manufacturing would mean dredging up a lot of sand and dramatically increasing CO2 emissions to make the stuff.

Then there’s the question of how likely is it that the public and ultimately, politicians globally will stop the destruction?

The authors conclude the planet would be much better served if we reigned in our consumption, replaced asphalt with grasslands, and freeze any plans to mine the oceans. Nature has many ways to capture carbon but we have to stop interfering.

Now.

I loved the premise of this book- a group of knitting friends who discover they have all been raped at one time or another and all the rapists have got off scot free, so they decide to take justice into their well exercised hands. With a little help from their knitting needles...
The book is crazy funny but also cuts close to reality (as all good humour must). There's a female cop who is, of course, never listened to. There are groups of men who don't believe in rape because the Bible...and enough governmental acronyms to choke several horses, even if they were BCHs (bigClysedale horses). Tongue firmly in cheek, it blasts the gormless and violent men of the world- makes them ridiculous.
The final triumph is a duel, but I must say no more...
It's a light read, sometimes over the top, but my golly it is worth the time!

Proposition de Nicolas Casaux.

A bit more anarchistic than my usual fare, but it’s a thought-provoking book. Any book that makes you question why you do what you do is well worth the time, and this one certainly does that.

Some tough love for the consumer society. Much food for thought.

Vu sur le site https://www.partage-le.com½

This book is an interesting study of the history of the green movement and how the realization that good intentions put in place early in the environmental cause might have have caused more harm for lack of research or precedent that neglect could have done. The books is a strong mixture of opinion and selective research but is interesting in its premise. It is well structured and written so worth a read to challenge the notion of what being "green" actually means.

Scathing commentary about western civilization mixed with scathing memoir about his father's abuse. Details the violence at the heart of our society and so many of our interpersonal relationships. Very sad or outraging to read at times, but ultimately the insights and renewed perspective are worth it.

I love the different threads of this book and the way they are combined: writing, teaching, and the environment. Jensen passionately advocates for all three. You wish you could be in his writing class, because you know it would be a life-changing experience (in fact, it's an actual class assignment).

I was sent this book to review. I tired to read this book the whole way through multiple times without luck. I felt what I did read was very opinionated and wasn't sure if it was actual facts or not.

The authors premise is that the Green Revolution (Renewables, Solar Power, Wind, etc.) with all it's promise to lower CO2 emissions, is doing incredible harm to the more broader environment of our planet. The authors are very straight forward and to the point on their claims. The book is superbly organized and comprehensively documented with facts that support it's case. The authors also claim that the truer solution to the environmental ailments of our plant, lie in leaving behind our Industrial Society. Examples of how this is being done today in some places and how it might be continued are stated. I leave the choices of this matter to the reader, but I do highly recommend a reading of this book to anyone interested in the environmental future of Earth.

Many years ago there was an environmental movement. It began long before anyone knew Al Gore or Gretta and it was full grown before carbon footprint consciousness was trendy or cool. These activists that were screaming about every single creature lost and every blade of grass turned into concrete seemed about as extreme and crazy as anyone could be. Most were considered left over hippies with a new cause. In those long ago days, they were also treated like any extreme fanatical crazy would be treated. They were demeaned, arrested, sued and denounced by their opponents and they were mostly ignored or laughed at by the regular people.

The sad thing is that now we know that they really were onto something. It can be a really hard thing for someone who is busting their ass to pay the bills and maybe get just ahead enough to have some comfort to find the time, energy, and or motivation to give a damn about some disaster to the planet and nature half a world away. It is a challenging thing to understand that what happens in some remote mountain village in Asia or South American can have profound and direct impact on your life and or your way of life. Heck, it is even hard to care about what happens in places like Love Canal, New York or Picher, Oklahoma or any of the other more than 1300 Superfund Toxic Sties in the United States. The problem is that like a cancer in the body, if you do not care about what happens because the cancer is not somewhere important, by the time it spreads to somewhere important it will be too late to stop it. The same holds true with industrial practices that destroy the planet wherever they go. They strip out every usable resource and squeeze every bit of profit and then leave a permanent scar and move on to the next site with resources to strip bare and they will continue to do so as long as there is a profit to be made. No location on the planet is safe from their greed.

Even if you are proactive, unlike the cancer patient above, and go to the doctor and get the tumor removed; but now you have not a life but an existence scheduled around chemo treatments and down days and check-ups and tests and more down days you get a cure that is more damaging and destructive than the original tumor (depending on your priorities and definitions). There is NO perfect solution to ANY problem. That is part of the challenge of life, solving problems the best way possible and then dealing with not only the known or foreseen side effects but more importantly recognizing and understanding and learning from the unintended and unforeseen side effects. And there are ALWAYS unintended and unforeseen side effects. How do we make the best choices and decisions and pick the best solutions to the most daunting problems facing us? Hopefully, we use our minds, our intelligence and creativity, our morals, our sense of fairness and right over wrong, our hearts, our compassion and our humanity. Most importantly, we have to have clear worthy goals and be willing to make hard choices to reach those worthy goals and live with those solutions.

In the environmental movement this is not what happened. Instead, the movement was usurped by opportunists that could see a whole profitable movement sweep the world. Enter the age of the trendy, shiny, and very cool Bright Greens. They took the 3 R’s of the Green Movement and reduced them to the 1 that would be inline with profit margins and consumerism. Well done Corporate America and Corporate World. The original 3 R’s were to reduce the amount of waste that one created, presumably by reducing the amount of things that one threw out by reducing the amount of consumption and or being aware of the waste from each purchase or product, to reuse or repurpose those things that no longer worked in their original role, but could serve another purpose which would in essence also reduce, and the surviving R, recycle, the R that could be made into profit for the corporate world.

Most people today, consider themselves to be environmentally concerned citizens, but when you strip away all the marketing and trending hashtags, do you know just how you stack up in your roll of Steward Of The Planet? You might think that you are doing your best, buying products that are “organically” grown and packaged in recyclable packaging. Donating to the right causes. Voting for the right candidates. Supporting the right parties. But are you still buying the latest iPhone, every release date and remote working from your favorite coffee shop on your Mac Pro? Going home and still binging Netflix most nights while you order take out Sushi or pho delivered by your Uber Eats, Door Dash guy in his electric Mini, your water from bottles, cause tap water, GROSS! You have sworn off meat cause cow farts are second behind humans for causing CO2 emissions. You’ve gone vegan cause all the pretty people are and science proves we are herd animals so we should be eating plants and fake things.

However, there is a kink in your movement! It is built on a foundation of half-truths with walls of lies surrounding delusions of a Happily Ever After that cannot be. For every scientific study that proves one of the Bright Greens slogans there is at least one that disproves and more that find flaws with it. No this is not an article to bash lifestyles or living choices, but to ask you to make them with your eyes wide open and to engage in preferred behavior understanding all the implications. How do you do that, you ask.

Simple.

Pick up or order the new work Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert. I recently received a copy of the book and wow. First, it is a long read, but it is worth it, so stick it out if you really care about Planet Earth. Second, if you read it with an open mind and with the intention of learning and understanding it is full of information, a lot of it stuff that we really truly should know, but we do not think about and some that we might have had some idea about but not the full and complete implications. To keep things balanced, the authors are original, dyed in the wool environmentalists, not the chic, trendy brand influencers of social media. So while a lot of their suggestions for solving the problem might seem out there and or crazy extreme, they, themselves, are aware that most of us cannot be that committed and or dedicated. And in that regard they show their humanness by openly sharing their short comings in reaching the ultimate goals that they layout. That being said, most of us can be more intentional and more aware and make better informed decisions about how we live our lives and how we spend our money and how we focus our lives.

While the book addresses most of the impacts of today’s most common way of life and supports their arguments regarding the pros and cons of all the popular trendy solutions, they also provide references to a multitude of other sources for you to research for yourself. Another words, unlike the politicians and CEOs and even popular activists their stance is not “take our word for it” but go do your own research and make up your own mind. To get your started I have included a couple links in the article that are short reads and barely scratch the surface of existing damage. Or you could continue letting industry lead the way to solving any environmental problems, most of their own making while claiming that they care.

I can honestly say that I will never live up to the goals of the book. However, having hard numbers and even theorized numbers from ‘expert’ solutions spelled out has brought details that I knew superficially into much better focus. The result is that I want to strive to live a much more intentional life and make more intentional choices in every aspect of my life. Most importantly, I want to be able to live with my choices, because I make them as informed as I can be. Will all my choices be perfect, no, they will not, but, it is my goal that they will be the best choices that causes the least negative impact all the way around. And that in my opinion is a very good start.

For your sake, for my sake, for the sake of your loved ones, for the sake of strangers read Bright Green Lies and make up your own mind, based on the research and not the trending hashtags.

This book is fine if you are super depressed and want to stay that way. But it says everything but kill all humans. If you think something you are doing helps the environment you are wrong. They also fail to mention nuclear power and work on nuclear fusion, but I feel confident they would have poo-pooed that as well.

Worst of all, they don't follow their own beliefs. So they are hypocrites.

Disappointing read.

I felt that the authors belabored their points – pages of examples to illuminate the same argument. One could say that the information is important enough to warrant the many examples, but sometimes it makes for tedious reading.

The majority of us have been blissfully unaware of the problems created by green technology, and the inability of this technology to bring about the desired planetary benefits which we would like to see. The authors present compelling arguments for a complete rethink of how we live our lives, and why big changes are needed in order to bring about a reversal in the destruction of our planet. These changes, although necessary, will not be easy – we all like our luxuries and conveniences.

The subtitle of the book is How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. I would have liked to have seen more details on ‘what we can do about it,” but that could be a book by itself.

A powerful thought provoking book that explains why the green initiatives are all not as good as one thinks. Some are costly, scandalous and just not good for the environment. The writing was intense and sometimes dry (I am not used to reading this type of book), but found it fascinating and worth being discussed further.

I enjoyed reading a new perspective on the environmental situation. It really made me think and re think, challenging my beliefs. I also appreciate the parts that point out the discrepancies in our more main stream logic. Like sustainable energy is impossible. Good point. However that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reduce our effects on the environment, learn to adapt our way of life where we can. Try to be as close to sustainable as we can. We aren't all going to move into the woods, close down grocery stores and stop agriculture, oil or war. But maybe we just haven't found the solutions yet that allow us to rein our selves in. Let's keep trying. So I must be a bright green, because I am more optimistic and hopeful that we can do better, we are a part of the planet, we belong here and we can change. We have to keep the conversation going and open with a bit less judgement. We're all in this together. Blame doesn't lead to solutions and really we are all to blame. Yet it's somewhat out of our control too. Bigger than each of us individually. Maybe terra homes are not perfect but they need less energy. Let's build on that. Stop mowing our lawns and let them be wild. Plant bee/pollination gardens. Forrest gardening is great for the environment and wildlife. It's just a lost art. Only use absolutely necessary plastics. Like medical uses. Grow our own food without tilling the ground. Instead build mounds of dirt on top and plant in them. Aluminum can be recycled almost indefinitely. Create homes that generate electricity or Telsa batteries that individually run the lights or fridge. Have roof gardens and change the color of the roads so they don't heat the earth. Reconfigure the horrible way our road system is mapped so we can walk places again and bike. Add so many more trees and stop tearing up the planet by devaluing the things they are digging up. Greatly reducing the amount of animals processed for meat, while still having meat. Smaller scale. Have meals that only have one meat in them is a good start. Composting. Planting seeds from everyday fresh produce. I felt the labels like bright green helped make their point more clearly. While it also felt superior and condescending. Like I am a fool to believe a combination of innovation, creating new solutions and giving up somethings we don't need entirely would help. For me there is a middle ground. We cannot be perfect, that's not reasonable. Perfectionist will always be miserable. But we can do good and strive for better, push for change. It will take so many changes that when we look at the big picture it seems impossible, like what's the point. However a step at a time is more manageable and less impossible. Plus it gives courage and confidence to the next step that can be taken in the right direction. What we do to the earth is absolutely horrible and we must do better. I just expected more solutions. Although the way Bright Green Lies opened my mind to a more realistic reality makes it a very good read for me. I may not agree with everything, or the downer tone, but I understand so much more than ever before. I am a fan of how direct and detailed Bright Green lies was written. I love all the facts and numbers. I am a better person for having read it. I have less tunnel vision. It seems Capitalism or money and economy are the main hurtles. I hope we can one day get past our greed and need. Reduce and compromise, then re-evaluate and compromise again so we don't lose everything. Knowledge is power and influences our decisions. We do need to stop lying to ourselves. I had to re read this book a second time over year later just for it to sink in more.

Updated 2023 The first read was very much like a slap in the face. But a necessary one. The second time lead to more understanding. The authors are very opinionated and intense. But, I think it's because they feel like they are going crazy pointing out the obvious things that are the problem. While the rest of us pretend everything okay. Denial is a heck of a thing to overcome. Accountability is a whole other mountain we can't even reach right now. I personally have tried many so called green products that do not deliver and break down. Like a mower and hedge trimmer. The batteries last two years max and are horrible for the planet to make and replace. Yet, the old gas versions that are over a decade old still work. I pulled out our 10 year old mower and sanded some rust off a fuze and it works like new. The electric is just sitting unused due to a battery replacement that cost more than the mower originally did. I am starting to see the Green lie more and more. So, what is really better to use? Based on cold hard facts. Not some lifestyle idea I am being sold. So much information about what is green is inaccurate and conflicting. It's our responsibility to fact check these new "Green" technologies and make sure they really are better vs a lie that digs us deeper in the hole but makes us "feel" like we're doing better. A lot turns out to be worse for the planet and just another way to get us to pay more money for worse and messier harmful products. It's a vicious cycle, I now get why the authors feel so intense. It is hard to digest once you start seeing it clearly.

"Bright Green Lies" is an intra-environmentalist argument written by committee. The authors claim that their brand of environmentalism is the only true brand. You are not an environmentalist if you believe alternative energies like wind, hydropower, solar, and nuclear are the key to the environmental crisis, or if you think recycling and improving cities will solve our problems. The authors are the only devout believers and all others are idolaters. They may be right, but their collective writing is repetitive, overly poetic, and not fully fleshed out.

I believe sincerely that if we're to finally make some inroads toward environmental salvation - it might be too late - we'll need to lower our standards of living. In that, I agree with the premise of the book.

Authors Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert seem to be saying that all nations and civilizations need to reduce energy consumption dramatically. That means we will need to give up conveniences like air conditioning, motored transportation, and myths about creating greener cities with electric vehicles. Civilization will need to be dramatically rethought. While they say this, they offer neither suggestions nor details about how we get to a civilization that reduces our energy consumption.

Very off-putting is their constant name-calling. People who are pushing for greener cities are "insane," their favorite epithet, while people who want emissions offsets spout "nonsense." I appreciate conviction in writing, but Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert spend entirely too much effort scrimmaging with straw men and not enough effort explaining what their vision is.

There are fifteen chapters. Each chapter is divided into bite-sized (one to four paragraph) anecdotes. They are often disjointed, unfortunately, and sometimes don't seem to fit in a given chapter's topic.

The book includes multi-paragraph author biographies, a list of movies to watch, and an odd list of organizations which, I suppose, the authors are a part of. There is no index. The book is printed on unrecycled paper with a slick cover.

Points out many of the untruths many environmentalists use, EVEN ON THEMSELVES. How can the unsustainable be sustained? This book asks the questions and delves into the reality.

This is an intensely frustrating book. I just concluded my 2nd attempt to get through it.

Let me say that I am passionately in agreement with the authors' contentions. I just think this book shoots itself in the foot.

The first time I tried reading it, I put it down because I was starting to feel hectored/harangued. The general tenor of my reaction was "look, I agree with you, I'm a member of the choir, why are you shouting at me?" And so based on that experience, my capsule review would have said the main problem with the book was one of tone.

But it has worse problems. I got through more of the book this time, but reached a point where I was thinking "okay -- there've been 150+ pages about why this or that approach is misguided or is not enough. I'm gonna make it to the next section and hope against hope there is some sort of specific instruction regarding what DOES work." And then I got to the next chapter, "Other Plans" ("'other' plans?" I thought -- "you haven't presented ANY plans yet"), and on page 195 author Keith started in on another list of three approaches that don't work. I put the book down.

The writing here is passionate and, in a surface sense, "good." There is not much wrong with it qua writing -- and I certainly nodded along vigorously, although I think I was told six times that 200 species died today (PLEASE don't take this as my saying that that fact is not catastrophic -- it is). But FFS, DGR friends, you can't just tell me that "we have to stop using fossil fuels NOW" without providing concrete HOWTOs for the kind of resistance you're envisioning. Yes, okay, "classical liberalism" is too personality-based ... but you keep telling us what DOESN'T work and haven't told us what DOES. Surely in the first 200 pages there should have been some hint. Maybe I missed it.

I hate to single out author Lierre Keith for the blame, here, but the bulk of those 195 pages are hers. It's shitty of me to say, but how many species died while I was trying to get to the part of this book that recommends specific actions?

I had my suspicions about this book before I read it, thinking it would probably be some facile, hand-waving, propagandist claims about what other people said and how to change what we do, but it was sure to be a very quick read, being basically a comic/cartoon book. I was right about it in some ways, but wrong in others.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the book took digs at authoritarian control structures and pop culture propaganda, sometimes even in marginally intelligent ways. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that this was essentially an accidental symptom of a pathological, anti-rational approach to problem solving. It is as if the author of As The World Burns had never heard (by now overused and hackneyed) phrases like "correlation does not imply causation". There is no meaningful philosophy behind the core themes of this book that I could discern -- just some blindly accepted mystical assertions bolstered by nothing more substantive than talking mushrooms and manatees.

Yes, it is true (as this book asserts) that our authoritarian, corporatist, warlike culture is bad for us and our environment. No, it is not reasonable to live (or die) in a cave to save a mushroom. In fact, the arguments deployed in this book to the effect that it is reasonable to live in a cave to save a mushroom are, in many ways, self-defeating, as there is no meaningful ethical theory presented to adequately explain why it is okay to kill to sustain one's life sometimes but not others. There is only some vague presentation of the farcical notion of the "noble savage" and a mystical attachment to considering the feelings of inanimate objects such as rocks (yes, really, the rocks talk too, and they want to help us destroy industrialization).

This is the kind of writing that is meant to convince people by telling them to turn off their brains, even as the words tell us (correctly) that our brains are already pretty much shut down, acting only as passive receptors of propaganda. It seeks only to displace one form of anti-rational dogma with another.

I only stuck with it until the end because of the fact it is quick and easy to read a story told largely in pictures like this (and it took longer than I expected because I needed to come up from the propaganda for air), and I wanted to be sure there was not some satirical purpose in the ridiculous anti-rationality presented throughout. As Poe's Law tells us, "Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing." Put another way, any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from genuine, honest, crazy fundamentalism. I had to read the whole book to be sure this was the latter (fundamentalism), and not the former (parody).

In short, this book was even worse than I feared when I started.

True environmentalists don’t buy into The Green New Deal. They think all the encouraging words from other environmentalists are bright green lies. Because at bottom, all the positive noises are simply a sop to industrialized society and the giant industries that run it. And according to Bright Green Lies, the book, it’s all about maintaining the current opulent lifestyle, and continuing to destroy the planet. No sacrifices will be made that might slow the consumer economy.

This dramatic, sane and passionate book lays out the lies with evidence like simple math and direct observation. It is a straightforward deconstruction of things like “renewable” energy, “sustainable” agriculture and pointless optimism that it is not too late if mankind would just take any kind of action right now. The book is wide-ranging and constantly challenging of common knowledge and perceptions. From hydropower to soil remediation, everything gets its moment to fail.

It is only not too late if mankind is willing to back away from 21st century luxuries. That means abandoning capitalism, because capitalism cannot stand retrenching. It is all about digging up resources without payment, while obtaining huge subsidies for doing it. And more. Always more.

Sadly, environmentalists are all about the subsidies too. Like all capitalists, they want government to foot the bill so they can succeed, financially. It is not about saving the planet at all, the authors have found. Lifestyle over ecology is the operating manifesto, whether they admit it or not say Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert, the three authors of Bright Green Lies.

These three are clearly on the side of the planet. They even use the pronoun who for any animal, bird or insect, as if they were on the same plane as humans, a very nice touch in a relentless book of destructive practices bent on eliminating every other species and burning every bit of carbon:
-Extinctions have gone from just over a hundred a day to more than two hundred every day, just in our lifetime.
-Topsoil on the prairies has gone from 12 feet deep in the late 1800s, to inches today, requiring constant input of artificial fertilizers on what was once the most fertile land on the continent.
-“If your culture trashes your environment and destroys almost all the old growth forest in a couple of centuries, then your civilization is not sustainable.”
-Agriculture, the biggest crime of all, is “biotic cleansing”.
-Sustainable agriculture is an oxymoron.
-A green industrial facility is an impossibility.

A lot of the book is dedicated to debunking renewable systems. Solar, wind, tidal and geoengineering projects all require gigantic convoys of tax dollars, while providing no real reduction in greenhouse gases over fossil fuels. For one thing, all the mining, manufacturing, transporting, assembling and maintaining of these systems add tremendously to the environmental toll. Wind and solar are not dependable sources. And environmentalists lie about how they are taking over in some economies. Their math is bogus, cherry-picking short periods of otherwise slack demand on a sunny or windy off-day to report that renewables carried the burden almost entirely on their own. They then attribute dominance of renewables to the entire country. This, the book says, is how Germany got its reputation in wind and solar. The truth is much more pathetic. Environmentalists have learned to game the system.

There is an entire chapter on dams and hydropower, long considered the poster child for renewables and sustainables. The authors show how the dams (they say there are two million in the USA alone) wreak havoc with animals, birds, fish and insects as well as topsoil and air. The interruption of water flows prevents fish from doing what they must to contribute to the balance, with hundreds of other creatures dependent on them. Silts no longer flow downstream. Flooding no longer feeds the forests, meadows and plains. Species like the huge variety of salmon all over the world, now face extinction thanks to dams. The huge amount of natural resources commandeered to build and maintain the dams makes them far from benign players in the carbon buildup. Not to mention that they are responsible for nearly a quarter of the methane that escapes into the atmosphere from manmade sources. As with every method and means they explore, the chapter ends with the question – call this sustainable?

The same story applies in the chapters on wind and solar. It’s hard to tell which one is worse. They consume vast amounts of concrete, steel and rare earths. They are hugely expensive and are only competitive thanks to massive subsidies at every step. They kill endangered species. They are dependent on weather and so are not at all dependable sources of energy. There are scary stats to ponder: Scotland cleared 17,000 acres of 14 million trees to install wind energy systems. Was this a good trade?

Not for the first time, the authors show that mathematically, there just isn’t enough space, money or resources to make the whole civilization run on renewables. They say it would take 80 billion metric tons of extraction to effect the switch. The planet would basically have to devote everything it produces for years to come to pull off this conversion. And it wouldn’t be worth it because ultimately, renewables provide a net-zero reduction in carbon emissions per dollar. Not net zero as in carbon reduction, but net zero difference from fossil fuels. It’s an environmental con game for the authors.

Clearly, many environmentalists have been drinking the corporate Kool-Aid. They get agreement from Big Industry by softening their attacks and promising everyone can keep doing what they’re already doing while they somehow heal the planet. This is pie in the sky environmentalism. The truth is much more grim.

As long as corporations are considered people, they will hide their true calling – milking government and the planet for as much money as possible. And for anyone who has followed my reviews, it is clearly the corporations in their immoral quest to rule the world that all this rests on. The entire global economy is based on taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the air by burning it. The cost of doing this is trivial; there is essentially no charge for it. Paying for the effects of it is not to be mentioned in the same breath as corporations.

One of the more insulting episodes is the ongoing LEED scam, in which high-priced engineers certify the environmental friendliness of buildings and factories. They give the example of the ideal home, displayed at a Las Vegas trade show in 2013. This LEED-certified platinum home is 7000 square feet, has a four-car garage and redundant energy systems. A perfect fit for the environmentally conscious American.

Another travesty I found is an energy report in The Economist. It projects that by just 2030, Saudi Arabia will consume as much energy just for air-conditioning as it sells in petroleum. This is nothing like sustainability. Sustainability is an urban legend – wishful thinking only.

For me, the most dramatic quote in the book comes from corporate anthropologist Jane Anne Morris. She wrote in Help! I’ve Been Colonized and I Can’t Get Up: “Corporate persons have constitutional rights to due process and equal protection that human persons, affected citizens, don’t have. For noncorporate human citizens, there’s a democracy theme park where we can pull levers on voting machines and talk into microphones at hearings. But don’t worry; they’re not connected to anything and nobody is listening except for us. What regulatory law regulates is citizen input, not corporate behavior.”

There is a remarkable chapter on recycling as well. The book examines the component parts of various recyclables, showing where they came from, what properties they have, how they are made, how they are saved, and how much of them can appear in new products. It is not very encouraging, though there are some bright spots. Bottles are recycled at the rate of 10%. Clothing is pretty much a disaster, with the average American consumer purchasing nearly 50 new pieces every year and disposing of others. Steel has a pretty decent story but it is clearly an exception.

When they speak publicly about their hard truths, the authors find there is quite naturally resistance. Participants refuse to consider solutions that would reduce their luxuries and their lifestyles. Their criticism is couched in - but that would hurt the economy! Which the authors take as further proof (if any were needed) that it is the economy that is destroying the planet.

There’s lots to argue about in these 400 pages. Just one example: they try to pin the death of birds on wind turbines, even to the drop in pressure from the blades that can burst the heart of a passing bird. The numbers they come up with amount to under two million, way down the list from the real killers.

Ordinary housecats annually kill 2.5 billion birds in North America alone. And for no reason other than boredom. The authors acknowledge this, but seem to think it is somehow natural, acceptable, and/or irrelevant, which it is not. The seven billion humans on this planet keep a billion cats as pets. Compare this to the 35 remaining Scottish wildcats the book mentions several times, or the 3000 total number of tigers left in the world. It is another instance of Man’s sheer weight upsetting yet another balance. We have domesticated the cat into a weapon of mass destruction for our own simple pleasure.

There are simply not enough fish in the ocean for a billion housecats, as we are finding out now. Housecats are not benign beings in the environment. Like Man, they are removed from the ecological system, not dependent on any other species and not participating in any other chain. Every other living thing is dependent on other beings for its existence and can only exist because of them. Not so Man. Or cats. These exceptions are proving to be intolerable to the health of the planet.

Their conclusion, they say, is simple: to stop destroying the planet, stop destroying the planet. They mean this literally. In the conclusions, they show that cleanup experiments from England to India show that nature rushes back in given half a chance. Grasses revitalize the soil, birds are attracted to the increased presence of insects, top predators keep the ruminants from destroying the plant growth, and the soil comes alive with literally trillions of interactions between species from bacteria on up the chain. Unexpected and unpredicted relationships show how quickly nature can restore the balance, but it means letting nature take control, and that is something Man will not even consider.

They take the 3Rs of environmentalism (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and add three of their own – Refuse, Resist, and Restore. These are fighting words and show the authors’ true colors.

Let there be no doubt, this is a tough book. The reality of restoring balance means Man sacrificing what he has built. Cities can never be carbon neutral. Vertical farming is a nice demo project, but it does not scale. Cities will always have to outsource to supply themselves, pushing the pollution and the carbon onto others, for a huge net loss – somewhere else. Industrial agriculture can never be sustainable. Nor can mining or manufacturing. As long as Man insists on transporting everything globally, the planet will suffer the consequences.

The book provides no acceptable path to success. It is either do it right now or suffer the consequences. But in a country where getting people to wear masks during a pandemic has failed miserably, and people protested for months when the government sought to eliminate incandescent light bulbs in favor of LEDs, any kind of sacrifice at all will not play. The authors show that stopping deforestation and restoring logged lands would remove more carbon from the air than is generated by all cars (over a billion of them). And a mere 2% increase in carbon sequestration in soil would offset 100% of greenhouse gas emissions. But there is zero will to do these things.

The prize will go to whomever figures out how to make palatable the sacrifices that are minimum requirements to save mankind from itself. Bright Green Lies isn’t it, but it does call out the environmental movement for its bogus positions and hypocrisy. Is that a help?

David Wineberg

I keep trying to read and like Derrick Jensen, and I keep failing. My last serious attempt was with Endgame many, many years ago; and here I tried again.

Again, I found I agreed with much of it, but the parts I disagreed with were as close to batshit insane as one can get within the printed confines of a book. As Dreams progressed it gradually became more and more repetitive, grandiose, bizarre and incoherent. By the end I was grimly hanging on with my fingernails just to be able to say I finished the damned thing.

In Dreams, Jensen argues that (literal) dreams (as in, stuff that happens in your head while you are sleeping) are actual messages from the Other Sides that tells you what you should do, especially if what your dreams are telling you is that you should dismantle and destroy industrial civilization, which is what his dreams tell him that he should do. Why this is what dreams ought to tell you, or what should be done with dreams that do not tell one to dismantle and destroy industrial civilization, is never made clear. He spends much time pondering these creatures on Other Sides, and wondering why it is they haven't intervened themselves to dismantle/destroy industrial civilization already; this also is never satisfactorily resolved, possibly because it's a ridiculous question. Assuming that, should these Other Sides exist, whatever lives there has the same values, perspectives, lifespans, perspectives on time, etc., as we do is surely among the most narcissistic of conclusions, and he has no trouble drawing it.

Now: in the 80% of the book where he urges people to take more seriously their own dreams, regardless of their source, act in accordance with their deeper values (particularly environmental), develop a meaningful spirituality that includes non-human nature, etc., he wrote beautifully and I found myself agreeing with his general points. Certainly his very pointed critiques of technology and techno-fetishism were well done, and he has some interesting critiques of science as well (though they, too, later foundered into incoherence and absurdity: there is no objective methodology to distinguish between his eco-warrior dreams of taking on the flesh-eating zombies and a fundamentalist christian's dreams of establishing dominion over the earth; if one is to evaluate them on the criteria he establishes for his own dreams, they are equally worthwhile and therefore neither provide any meaningful guide. Only science would provide such a methodology, and he has no trouble using and relying on it when it suits him, and then dismissing it as yet another religion when it comes to a conclusion he doesn't like). It's unfortunate that the 80% of the book that makes sense is so overshadowed by the end by all of the crap. I say this, incidentally, as a committed environmentalist who works and volunteers to do everything I can to "keep this culture from killing the planet," and who has no trouble listening to and relying on dreams etc. Interesting that my dreams do not tell me to start blowing up dams. I must be having the wrong ones.

This is the third Derrick Jensen book I've decided to inflict on myself, but probably not the last. They each start with great promise and by the end descend to infuriating illogical leaps, and this one was no different (it is the promise of each that lures me into trying again). However, the presence of two co-authors aided in readability.

Deep Green Resistance aims to motivate the formation of an underground army to carry out something they call Decisive Ecological Warfare. This is not a joke. Through reading guerrilla and resistance books and manuals from many historical periods, they put together a strategy for identifying the goal (destroy industrial civilization), developing a strategy, and identifying tactics (blowing things up, mostly). They helpfully include suggestions on things like minimizing security leaks and performing background checks on new recruits (again, not a joke). I can't speak to the practicality of any of this, never having run nor even participated in underground armies, but I can say that as I have no immediate nor long-term plans to assassinate anyone, I skipped that section altogether.

However, what the authors overlook in their very thorough review of global resistance movements past and present, is that this is not Nazi Germany, nor is it the Niger delta. That is: the very fact that they were able to write and publish this book through a mainstream publishing house, and that it is sold at large national bookstore chains, would seem to indicate that we live in a society where people have enough personal freedom that the extreme solutions they advocate are possibly not necessary, and almost certainly something most of us are not yet desperate enough to entertain. This is as kindly as I can put it. This would all point towards a 1/5 rating.

Also frustrating: the section on horizontal hostility (aka "infighting," where sub movements critique each other rather than their actual targets), then followed by approximately 100 pages of attacks on other kinds of environmentalists, and why their kind of environmentalism is inadequate. I don't know why this is necessary. Surely, even if you don't think they're using their time well by building wind farms, using cloth shopping bags and making community gardens, this does not make them the enemy and you don't need to call them names.

What bumps it up at a 3/5 is the analysis, which is spot on in many respects, and what they call the "aboveground" movement and tactics. In other words, if you can't go around blowing stuff up because you have other responsibilities, here are some things you can do that might actually help move this culture in a sustainable direction. And that's useful and, as with all of Jensen's books, beautifully written. Their passion for the natural world is unquestionable and their assessment of our straits is bang-on. But taking potshots at other environmentalists is totally unnecessary, their assessments of the other environmentalists' positions is inaccurate and unkind, and the comparison of industrial capitalism with nazi germany/nigeria renders much of their analysis and suggested solutions unuseable. I mean, for crying out loud, here I am, under my own name, writing a review of a book advocating the destruction of infrastructure and the assassination of capitalists, said book bought at Chapters, review published on a public website, and I have every expectation not to be arrested for it. Doesn't that say something?