Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [25]
Following quickly on the heels of the second premise is the third, that this way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread exploitation and degradation. This includes exploitation and degradation of the natural world—for what is unsustainability except a fancy word for exploitation and degradation of natural communities?—and it includes exploitation and degradation of those who do not want us to take their resources (or, to another way of thinking, to kill and sell their nonhuman neighbors). It also includes harming those humans and nonhumans who will come later, and who will inherit a pauperized world.
A few months ago I received an email from an activist who wrote, “I’ve been inspired by Bucky Fuller’s vision for years. He says that we have enough of everything to give everyone on the planet a standard of living no one has known so far. But it will require taking all of our resources and technology off of weaponry and fully devoting them to ‘livingry.’ In other words, we can make it happen, but there’s no room for greed in the equation. His whole thing was ‘a world that works for everyone with no one left out.’”
Leaving aside the standard conceit that the civilized have higher standards of living than traditional hunter-gatherers (if you measure by some standards, such as the number of automobiles, yes; if you measure by others, such as leisure time, sustainability, social equality, and food security—meaning no one goes hungry—hunter-gatherers win hands down), Fuller’s is a powerful—and powerfully dangerous—fantasy, and an odd statement coming from someone living on land taken by violence from its original inhabitants, and using the sorts of technologies—for example, industrial forestry, mining, smelting—that violently shape the world to industrial ends. Just because Fuller designed groovy structures like geodesic domes (the one at Expo ’67 in Montreal was way cool!) did not mean that violence was not done to the land—and to people—both there and elsewhere. Where, precisely, did Fuller believe these resources came from, and how did he believe he would get them without using force against both the “resources” themselves and against the humans who live in close proximity to them?
I enjoy railing against the absurdity of the U.S. military budget as much as the next sane person. I often marvel at the extraordinary amounts of money that are spent seemingly for no other purpose than to kill people, and dream of what good could be accomplished if those who serve life had the same easy access to cash as those who serve death. Corporate Senators and Representatives are fond of complaining, for example, that it’s too expensive to save species driven to the brink of extinction by the actions of the industrial economy, and that the corporations these men (and token women) represent must be allowed to continue their actions unimpeded. An industry front group calling itself the “Grassroots ESA Coalition” (a subgroup of the similarly deceivingly named industry front group “National Wilderness Institute”) has stated that total costs for “the ten species covered by the most expensive endangered species recovery plans are: Atlantic Green Turtle $88,236,000; Loggerhead Turtle $85,947,000; Blunt-Nosed Leopard Lizard $70,252,000; Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle $63,600,000; Colorado Squawfish $57,770,000; Humpback Chub $57,770,000; Bonytail Chub $57,770,000; Razorback Sucker