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By Root 2473 0

”394 She understood that. We sent her a copy of the book. She said they might have me on the program. They didn’t, which is fine. But here’s the point. Stossel went ahead with the program anyway. Further, he explicitly said that an indicator that deforestation isn’t happening is that white-tailed deer are increasing. He had been made fully aware that his statements are untrue. He was made fully aware of the facts. These facts—that seedlings are different than ancient trees, that monocrops of trees are different than forests, and that increasing numbers of white-tailed deer are not an indicator that forests are increasing—are neither controversial nor cognitively challenging. They are not opinions. They are facts as clear as water is wet and fire is hot and ancient trees are ancient. This means he no longer had the first excuse, ignorance.395 Like Streicher, he is committing violence by lying: violating the truth, violating what is sacred in words and discourse, violating our psyches, and paving the way for further violation of the forests.

All writers are propagandists. That doesn’t mean we’re all liars. Some are liars. Some are not.

I probably shouldn’t pick on Stossel. He’s not the only liar. The entire culture is based on lies, from the most intimate and personal to the most global. The smartest lines I ever wrote were in A Language Older Than Words: “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It’s not necessary that the lies be particularly believable, but merely that they be erected as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided.”396 Members of abusive families lie to each other and to themselves in order to protect the violent perpetrators (they convince themselves—and are convinced by the perpetrators and by the entire family structure—that they are protecting themselves), and to keep their violent social structures intact. Members of this abusive culture lie to each other and to themselves in order to protect this culture’s violent perpetrators, and to keep this culture’s violent social structures intact. We tell ourselves we can destroy the planet—or rather, for those of us who care, allow it to be destroyed—and live on it. We tell ourselves we can perpetually use more energy than comes in from the sun every year. We tell ourselves that a 90 percent decline in large fish in the oceans may not be unreasonable. We tell ourselves that if we are peaceful enough that those in power will stop the killing. We tell ourselves that civilization is the most desirable form of social order, or really the only one. We tell ourselves things are going to be okay.

Stossel is not the only liar.

SPENDING OUR WAY TO SUSTAINABILITY

The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them. Take our crazy energy consumption. For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government.397 So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution. I mean, sure, go ahead and live a responsible environmental life; recycle, compost, ride a push-bike; but do it because it is the right, moral thing to do—not because it’s going to save the planet.

If we really want to understand why this happened we have to ask ourselves another question: “Why is it that we seem willing to live with the threat of apocalypse rather than trying to seriously alter a world where consumption, of anything, is seen as unrelieved virtue, production, of anything, is regarded as a social and economic necessity, and more, of anything (like children or cars or chemicals or PhDs or golf courses