This civilization is killing the planet

May 13th, 2010

This civilization

is killing the planet.  They say

that one sign of intelligence is the ability

to recognize patterns. I’m gonna lay out a pattern here

and let’s see if we can recognize it in less than 6,000 years. When you

think of the hills and plains of Iraq, do you normally think of cedar forests so thick

the sunlight never touches the ground? That’s how it was before. The first written myth

of this culture is that of Gilgamesh deforesting that area to make cities. Plato complained

that deforestation was drying up springs and destroying the water quality in Greece.

The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoencian and Egyptian

navies. We can go north and ask, Where are the lions who were

in Greece? Where are the indigenous of Europe? They’ve

been massacred, or assimilated — in any case,

genocide was perpetrated against them

by definition because they’re

no longer there.

If you start asking questions,

the questions just keep moving back and back and back.

This is a pattern that’s been going on for a long, long time. This culture

has been unsustainable from the beginning. On a finite planet,

you would think that we would think about that.

You can’t exploit a planet and

live on it too.

…In the end,

I think the primary measure

by which we will be judged by those who come

after will be the health of the landbase. Everything else builds

from there. The people who come after aren’t going to give a shit as to

whether we voted Democrat, Republican, Green, anarchist, or none of the above.

They’re not going to give a shit about whether we were pacifists or not pacifists.

They’re not going to give a shit about whether we signed or didn’t sign online

petitions. They’re not going to give a shit about how hard we tried. It’s no

good to live in a groovy eco-socialist utopia with free love if the planet

is toxified. Those who come after are going to care about whether

they can breathe the air, whether they can drink the water,

whether the land can support them. Everything else

comes from that. This seems so obvious I’m

embarrassed to have to say it, but this

culture is so insane it needs to be

said. And it needs to

be lived.

Derrick Jensen