June 20 2021 Book review: Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It - (c) 2021 [0] by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, & Max Wilbert also the companion film by Julia Barnes. - - Seems I haven't posted much recently. Summer lull mostly; warm weather and things to do make sitting for hours with a laptop not so attractive. I have managed to read a few books; just finished 'The Ministry for the Future'[1] by Kim Stanley Robinson, sort of a science fiction novel though it does reference several real events. Turned out to dovetail nicely with Bright Green Lies which I'll elaborate on shortly. - - From the title one might think Bright Green Lies is a critique of the environmental movement and how it has changed since the 1970s. And it is, but it does it by way of methodically debunking much of what one encounters in the media as solutions to the climate crisis and pathways toward a greener future. In a lot of ways it's an expansion on some of the doubts raised by Jeff Gibbs in his film 'Planet of the Humans'. As mentioned in a prior post Bright Green Lies was a collaborative effort by it's three authors, all which are part of a group called deep Green Resistance[2], an environmental activist group. Max Wilbert is currently occupying a camp[3] at Thacker Pass in NV, site of a proposed lithium mine. The book starts by laying out The Problem -- it's civilization(!) -- and some inconvenient truths about civilizations past, much of which applies to our globe-spanning behemoth, from their beginnings with agriculture, to the creation of hierarchies, the unsustainable rapaciousness of cities, and of course slavery in all it's forms. Some fun facts: - civilizations need agriculture, specifically grain production - when soil is depleted civilization ends, usually 800-2,000 years - by the 1800s 75% of humans where slaves of one form or another - fossil fuels largely replaced human slaves. They also keep industrial agriculture going via synthetic fertilizers. - all fossil fuels are past their peak extraction rates The authors then go over some aspects of Life on Earth: - we are only possible because of other living things like bacteria - Life is a property of an ecosystem rather than of a specific organism - matter cycles between organic and inorganic forms over time As the hippies were fond of saying, All is One. And this is why accelerated extinction rates due to habitat destruction and resource over-harvesting is so serious and ultimately why myopically focusing on reducing atmospheric CO2 levels is, according the Jensen, "solving for the wrong variable". And that's really the crux of the argument made by Bright Green Lies. All of these so-called green energy schemes have a tailpipe and often a tailing pile. The authors go through how each of these technologies work, how they're manufactured, their embedded and operating energy requirements, what wastes and bi-products are produced, what happens when they are taken out of service. They do the same for recycling processes, many of which are quite polluting, use copious amounts of energy, often have poor recovery percentages, and frequently would be more accurately described as down-cycling due to the inferior quality of the recovered materials. It's a slog at times but also eye-opening. The thing is most of these processes have been around a while; the engineers know all about the limitations and shortcomings. And yet one rarely hears anything but gushing optimism about 100% green renewable energy powering all the Things produced of course in a zero waste closed cycle. It's the equivalent of promoting perpetual motion as a form of free energy. Which leads us to the Big Lie, that we can eat the planet and still have a living planet. The authors of Bright Green Lies call out several of the big names in the climate movement -- David Suzuki, Bill McKibben, and especially Naomi Klein -- for their promotion of destructive technologies as a way to keep industrial civilization going, Business As Usual de-carbonized. Except, as the book explains in detail, a civilization built upon fossil fuels can never be fully de-carbonized. There have been several recent meta-studies of wind and PV solar and Jevon's Paradox is still ruling the day: to-date it's all additive, no net displacement of fossil fuels has happened. To paraphrase Talking Heads, and the heat goes on. So, real solutions. The authors have a chapter devoted to this but they do qualify it in that they understand most people will not see their suggestions as anything practical: - industrial civilization is the problem; begin winding down - massive program of ecosystem restoration and re-wilding - particular focus on salt marshes, mangroves, peat bogs and sea grasses which apparently can sequester high levels of carbon - 20% cut in GHG emission's/year for 5 years - end all subsidies of harmful activities such as mining, road construction, logging, agricultural production, all energy production, etc. - immediate phaseout of all mono-crop agriculture - restoration of all waterways via dam removals and pollution sources Obviously this would entail a truly radical shift in how society is structured, something that sets the authors apart from most others advocating for a transition away from Business as Usual. Almost everybody else is pitching plans framed within modern civilization, usually with the assumption that humanity could manage to power some scaled down version of today with wind, solar, and those other "renewables" that they don't really want to talk about like hydro and biomass. But as the authors of Bright Green Lies illustrate, this means a commitment to ever-expanding "sacrifice zones" -- more mining, logging, dredging, and continued exploitation of the less-fortunate in far-flung places. In fact this sort of magical thinking is fully on display in Robinson's novel 'The Ministry for the Future'. Robinson seems to have incorporated literally every climate mitigation scheme ever proposed, everything from Half Earth re-wilding to Solar Radiation Management. While I quite enjoyed reading the novel I couldn't help but think that Robinson really didn't investigate the underlying physics of these techno-utopian fixes; if he had perhaps it would have been a shorter novel. Ironically what really seems to resonate with the readers of 'The Ministry for the Future', at least among the collapse crowd, is the eco-terror campaign of the Children of Kali, a group that makes use of all forms of asymmetric warfare against oil companies, jet-setters and other enemies of a livable future. If nothing else, it illustrates the frustration many feel with the lack of meaningful mitigation to-date. Getting back to Bright Green Lies, I do think at least some of their ideas are catching on. Biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson has been promoting his Half Earth[4] idea for quite a while and one can see hints of it in the Biden administration's pledge to preserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030 [5]. Recently The Guardian ran a piece titled "Climate and nature crises: solve both or solve neither"[6] citing a peer-reviewed report by various biodiversity and climate experts as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, making the case for heeding the UN Secretary General's plea[7] to end our "suicidal war on Nature". As for the Bright Green Lies companion film, it has some interesting bits such as the filmmaker Julia Barnes confronting David Suzuki for his justification of sacrifice zones as the price to be paid for a "green energy" future. It's somewhat short in run-time and doesn't really add that much to what the book covers. To be honest I thought 'Planet of the Humans' did a better job of debunking Bright Green solutionism. Not surprisingly there hasn't been much coverage of either the book or film in the usual media outlets, not even on the environmental / climate news sites. There are however several good interviews with the authors on YouTube; just search on the book title. - - [0] https://www.brightgreenlies.com [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future [2] https://deepgreenresistance.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Green_Resistance [3] https://www.protectthackerpass.org [4] https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/17/biden-public-lands-waters-30-by-30 [6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/10/\ climate-and-nature-crises-solve-both-or-solve-neither-say-experts [7] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55147647