Endgame Volume I_ The Problem of Civilization - Derrick Jensen [73]
I must be honest with you, even at the risk of offending or alienating you. When I read of the torture and murder of these whales by scientists from the National Science Foundation, and of their and their attorneys’ response to concerns about the whales, my first impulse was to wish someone would put a gun to the heads of the scientists and pull the trigger. If somehow (unfortunately) caught by police, the person could respond, “There is no evidence that there is any connection between the operation of this gun and the reported holes in these men’s heads.”
Even if I do admit this fantasy, decorum requires my next paragraph to be a denial of it, a statement of its unthinkability, its immorality, a plea for forgiveness for my fall from grace. I should disown it as dishonorable, disgusting, and having no place in any discussion of social change. But I won’t do that. I can’t. There is no accountability in this culture, at least for those who work for the centralization of power. And that lack of accountability is not sustainable. It is killing the planet. It is killing those I love. This lack of accountability is itself obscenely immoral.
I have a student at the prison who, when he was seventeen, killed someone. He did so in what he has since described as drug-induced psychosis. He is now spending the rest of his life in prison. Never again will he put his feet into a stream. Never again will he even see a stream. Never again will he pull an apple from a tree. Never again will he feel the long, slow kiss of a woman, nor feel her breasts against his chest, feel the muscles of her vagina contract around his penis. Never again, unless and until civilization comes down, will he walk free. He is paying for his decision, his action, with every moment of his life.
Yet scientists decide fish don’t need water, and a judge goes along with them. Activists, including me, wring our hands and cry. Salmon die. There’s no accountability anywhere in this web of non-relationships except for the salmon. They pay with their lives. Engineers design oil processing facilities, CEOs and shareholders gain profits from them, politicians pass laws protecting the profits of the corporations against all environmental and human costs, police protect the property against all trespassers, and from this volatile stew of immorality emerges a cancer cluster. The ones who pay are the children who receive the gifts of asthma, leukemia, and other illnesses. And of course the land itself pays. The land always pays. And when that facility is no longer profitable? Those in charge move on to destroy some other place. But the children—those in graves, and those not yet there—remain. As does the land. There is no accountability anywhere. I will not back away from my fantasy. Accountability needs to be brought into this web of non-relationships. And it needs to be brought in quickly.
I’ve little doubt the whales would agree.
I need to say, furthermore, that scientists from the National Science Foundation and Columbia University aren’t the only ones deafening, torturing, and killing whales, dolphins, and other sea life. In fact they’re rank amateurs. The U.S. Navy has begun to deploy a system that will soon blanket 80 percent of the world’s oceans with pulse blasts of at least 200 db. And oil companies routinely run ships around the ocean exploring for oil by blasting at 260 db. It’s happening right now. It’s got to stop.
We’ve got to stop it.
In the particular case of whales being killed in the Gulf of California, the “accountability model” probably wouldn’t have been the best choice. The good folks at the Biodiversity Legal Foundation were able to get a temporary restraining order against the organizations involved, and halt the experiment.
It ends up, also, that the judge in the case had, probably accidentally,