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'We Need to Stop This Culture Before It Kills the Planet' A Conversation With Derrick Jensen

As you begin reading this interview, take a look at the nearest clock. Now, dig this: Since yesterday at the same exact time, 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed, over 100 plant and animal species have gone extinct, 13 million tons of toxic chemicals were released across the globe, and 29,158 children under the age of five died from preventable causes.

Worst of all, there’s nothing unique about the past 24 hours. It’s business as usual, a daily reality—and no amount of CFL bulbs, recycled toilet paper, or Sierra Club donations will change it even a tiny bit.

As you do your best to convince yourself of the vast chasm between the two wings of America’s single corporate party, I suggest you listen carefully to hear if even one of the politicians mentions any of the following:

• Every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic
• Eighty-one tons of mercury is emitted into the atmosphere each year as a result of electric power generation
• Every second, 10,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in the US
• Each year, Americans use 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides
• Ninety percent of the large fish in the ocean and 80 percent of the world’s forests are gone
• Every two seconds, a human being starves to death

This is just a minute sampling, folks, and sorry, but your hybrid ain’t helping. That reusable shopping bag you bring to the market has zero impact. Your home composting kit is not gonna start a revolution.

In fact, even if every single person in the US made every single change suggested in the movie An Inconvenient Truth, carbon emissions would fall by only 21%—in contrast to the 75% emissions decrease that scientific consensus believes must happen … now.

None of this, of course, is news to Derrick Jensen. He is the author ofessential works such as A Language Older Than Words and Endgame. His worldview has nothing to do with party politics, incremental reform, leftist in-fighting, corporate compromise, or anything that seeks to tweak but ultimately maintain the ongoing global crime we call civilization.

…

Why this is not more important to more is mind-numbing. Mad Max days are looming. Who will run Barter-town?

(Source: cuntymint, via 3qbc)