Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [195]
Six or seven years ago I gave testimony before several panels of the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Northwest Power Planning Council, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies overseeing the murder of the salmon. The ostensible purpose of these panels was for citizens to give representatives of government and industry input concerning the fact that dams on the Columbia and other rivers kill salmon. The real purpose was for all of us—myself included—to make ourselves feel good by pretending to do something useful while we stood by and watched salmon rapidly slide to extinction.
Here’s the testimony I gave at one such panel:
“In 1839 Elkanah Walker wrote in his diary, ‘It is astonishing the number of salmon which ascend the Columbia yearly and the quantity taken by the Indians. ’ He continued, ‘It is an interesting sight to see them pass a rapid. The number was so great that there were hundreds constantly out of the water.’ In 1930 the Coeur d’Alene Press wrote, ‘Millions of chinook salmon today lashed into whiteness the waters of northwest streams as they battled thru the rapids.’ The article went on to say that ‘the scene is the same in every northwest river.’ The Spokesman-Review noted that at Kettle Falls, ‘the silver horde was attacking the falls at a rate of from 400 to 600 an hour.’
“And now? In order to serve commerce this culture dammed the rivers of the Columbia watershed. Local groups and individuals—including those who knew the salmon most intimately, the Indians—fought against the federal government and the river industries, but dams were built, and now most runs of salmon in the Northwest and California are extinct or on the verge.
“The destruction of the salmon is not unique. It is the story of this culture. After a leak of poisonous gas from Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, India, killed up to fifteen thousand human beings and injured up to five hundred thousand, an anguished doctor made the common-sense proclamation that the company ‘shouldn’t be permitted to make poison for which there is no antidote.’ That’s what dams have been since the beginning: ‘a poison for which there is no antidote.’
“In order to make the cultural pattern perfectly clear, here are more poisons this culture has created without creating antidotes: It created the toxic mess at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with no consideration for how to clean it up; before the first atomic bomb’s detonation, scientists feared the explosion would create a chain reaction destroying the atmosphere, yet they proceeded; this culture has clearcut its way across this continent—indeed across the planet—with no thought to an inability to restore those forests; politicians do their damnedest to allow pollution of aquifers with no clue how to clean them up; global warming, the ozone hole, acid rain, and other results of technological ‘progress’ are examples of poisons for which there are no antidotes.
“Why does this culture do this? One reason is that within this culture knowledge and technological ‘progress’ are driven by fiscal profitability. This fiscal profitability inevitably involves forcing others to pay for the economic activities of the producers. The Downwinders��and all humans and nonhumans who will live in eastern Washington for the next 250,000 years—pay for Hanford with their health; those who drink from Spokane’s aquifer pay with their health for the economic activities of those who pollute it; the salmon and those of us who would have eaten them—or merely watched them climb Kettle Falls—pay for the profits of the industries that have turned the rivers into a series of lakes.
“Recently, Senator Slade Gorton commented on salmon: ‘There is a cost beyond which you just have to say very regrettably we have to let species