Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [212]
to his neighbors would be trivial compared to the damage caused by a full-on industrio-chemical lettuce agricorporation, but, and this is the point, so would his profits. That’s why those who profit from this destructiveness will always have more money than we do, and will always be able to outspend us. An example should make this clear. Let’s say I make a boatload of money writing and selling books. Oops, scratch that, since the manufacture of books—even on recycled paper using soy-based inks—requires lots of water, energy (ghost slaves), and raw materials. In other words, it’s very destructive. Okay, so let’s say instead I make a boatload of money making a boatload of money (in other words, I haul out my trusty printing press, and I just make the damn stuff). Oops, I can’t do that, since the counterfeiting of money requires high-quality papers and lots of presumably toxic inks, lots of energy, and so forth. In other words, that’s very destructive too. So okay, darnitall, let’s say instead I just walk to a bank (wearing only used clothing taken from the dumpster behind Goodwill), and I take a boatload of money. I do this at night, because I don’t want to threaten or scare any of the tellers, or perform any other action that might be construed as violent. Even better, I don’t go to a bank, but go at night to Wal-Mart, and sneak in through an open door. I don’t want to break a window, because there are those who would consider this an act of violence. I don’t blow the safe because there are those who would consider this an act of violence. But let’s say the safe is open. I take a boatload of money. Or if the safe isn’t open, I take a bunch of consumer items, fabricate some receipts (okay, so this takes paper, but we’ll just ignore that) and return them over the next days and weeks and months for a boatload of money. Wal-Mart, with its $258.6 billion in revenues, isn’t going to miss it.408 The point is that I somehow find a way to acquire a boatload of money that a) didn’t cause me to “produce”—in other words, destroy—anything, and b) didn’t cause me to pay taxes—in other words, to pay the government so it can destroy things. The question becomes, what am I going to do with this cash? Let’s say I do what I actually would do if I acquired a boatload of cash: I buy some land and set it aside. Let’s ignore the fact that in so doing I’m reinforcing the extremely damaging idea that land can be bought and sold. I buy an entire small creek drainage, and I set to work to improve habitat in that drainage for salmon, Port Orford cedars, mountain lions, Pacific lampreys, red-legged frogs, and so on. I create a sanctuary, a place where salamanders, newts, tree frogs, towhees, phoebes, and spotted owls can thrive and live as they did before the arrival of our awful culture. I’ve done a good and great thing, maybe even as good and great as what Elser tried to do. But now I find I want to protect more land, because these creatures need more habitat. What do I have to do? Because I pulled this land out of production, and thus am not “making any money” off of it, I have to write more books, print more money, make more trips to Wal-Mart, and unless I’ve figured out non-destructive ways to acquire cash—like the nocturnal trips to Wal-Mart—then I’m basically creating sacrifice zones elsewhere that I do not see so that the land I do see can be protected. I have to do this every time I want to protect more land.
Now, let’s contrast that with someone who purchases this entire watershed not to create a sanctuary but to cut the trees. That person will “make money” off the land by harming it, and can use that money to purchase more land, where that person can cut more trees and make more money, and use that money to buy more land, and so on until there’s nothing left. See, for example, Weyerhaeuser, or any other timber (or other) corporation.
Because the civilized economy is extractive, because it rewards those who exploit humans and nonhumans, that is, because it rewards those who do not give back to the landbase what it needs, that is, because