[D66] Endangered species don’t need an Ark – they need a Living Planet!

[R.O.]

https://derrickjensen.org/2015/06/endangered-species-dont-need-an-ark-they-need-a-living-planet/


  Endangered species don’t need an Ark – they need a Living Planet!

June 11th, 2015

Last year I read an Op-Ed in the /New York Times/ entitled ‘Building an 
Ark for the Sociopocene’. No, I lied. It was entitled ‘Building an Ark 
for the Anthropocene 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/sunday-review/building-an-ark-for-the-anthropocene.html>‘.

But can’t you imagine how the article might have read were it accurately 
titled to reflect the sociopathic nature of the world we have created?

The article begins, /“We are barreling into the Anthropocene, the sixth 
mass extinction in the history of the planet. A recent study published 
in the journal Science concluded that the world’s species are 
disappearing as much as 1,000 times faster than the rate at which 
species naturally go extinct./

/“It’s a one-two punch on top of the ecosystems we’ve broken, extreme 
weather from a changing climate causes even more damage. By 2100, 
researchers say, one-third to one-half of all Earth’s species could be 
wiped out. As a result, efforts to protect species are ramping up as 
governments, scientists and nonprofit organizations try to build a 
modern version of Noah’s Ark./

/“The new ark certainly won’t come in the form of a large boat, or even 
always a place set aside. Instead it is a patchwork quilt of approaches, 
including assisted migration, seed banks and new preserves and travel 
corridors based on where species are likely to migrate as seas rise or 
food sources die out./

/“The questions are complex. What species do you save? The ones most at 
risk? Charismatic animals, such as lions or bears or elephants? The ones 
most likely to survive? The species that hold the most value for us?”/


    Finding time to mention the destruction of our planet. That’s something


    …

The article goes on to describe some of the efforts, which are of course 
desperately important, and some of the ways different people and 
organizations can make these difficult decisions. There’s a part of me 
that is happy the corporate news is taking time out of its busy schedule 
to mention the murder of the planet.

After all, these 1,200 words could have been used to cover other topics, 
like someone’s folksy reminiscences of gummi bears, or someone else’s 
analysis of how /“Ladyfag is the rave of the future”/ or the extremely 
important information that the stock market dropped sharply today over 
fears that the economy isn’t growing fast enough. And yes, these are all 
real articles in /The New York Times/.

Such is the poverty of our discourse that mere mention of the biggest 
problem the world has ever faced can be enough to make us, well, /happy/ 
isn’t the right word … Perhaps grateful, like a starving dog thrown the 
tiniest crust of bread.

Not surprisingly, though, my response is mixed. My first problem is that 
this is precisely where this culture has been headed since its 
beginnings: it has /always /wanted to play God and decide who lives and 
who dies. That’s a central point of the human supremacism that underlies 
and motivates this culture’s destruction of the natural world.

How do we know we’re superior? Because we’re the ones who are deciding. 
We’re the ones who do to, as opposed to everyone else, to whom it is 
done. We’re the subjects. They’re the objects. From the beginning 
members of this culture have wanted to be God.

That is, they’ve wanted to be the God they created in their own image. 
That is, the God created in the image of how they wanted to 
be-omnipotent and omniscient-and in the image of how they themselves 
actually were: jealous, angry, abusive, vengeful, patriarchal.

It pleases the supremacists no end to pick up the civilized man’s burden 
and pretend they’re being merciful in deciding which of their lessers to 
exterminate, and which to save. For now.


    What’s not on the chopping block – our frivolous consumption!

But there’s a much bigger problem than this. Did you notice who is on 
the chopping block, and what is not. Did you see it? What is missing is 
any mention of technologies, luxuries, comforts, elegancies.

Sure, we’re supposed to choose whether to extirpate or save Bulmer’s 
fruit bats or Sumatran Rhinos, wild yams or hula painted frogs (with the 
default always being extirpate, /of course/); and we’re supposed to make 
careful delineations of /how/ we choose who is exterminated, and who 
lives (at least until tomorrow, when we all know there’ll be another 
round of exterminations, complete with another round of wringing our 
hands over how difficult these decisions are, and another round of 
heartbreak; and then another round, and another, until there is nothing 
and no one left).

But just as after Fukushima a Japanese energy minister said that nuclear 
energy must continue to be produced because no one /“could imagine life 
without electricity”/, so, too, entirely disallowed is any discussion of 
what technologies should be kept and what should be caused to go extinct.

There’s no discussion of extirpating iPads, iPhones, computer 
technologies, retractable stadium roofs, insecticides, GMOs, the 
Internet (hell, Internet pornography), off-road vehicles, nuclear 
weapons, predator drones, industrial agriculture, industrial 
electricity, industrial production, the benefits of imperialism (human, 
American, or otherwise).

Not one of them is mentioned. Never. Not once.

Why? Because we are God and God never relinquishes power. We are 
omniscient and omnipotent, and we are the top of the pyramid. We are the 
champions, and we can and will do whatever the fuck we want.

None of these are mentioned because none of the benefits of our 
dismantling of the planet can be seriously questioned.


    Saving species? Or killing them?

Anti-imperialist discourse provides a great example of this lack of 
serious questioning. Of course anti-imperialists rail against 
imperialism-that’s what anti-imperialists /do/ -but so many of them 
don’t seem to understand that you can’t have the benefits of imperialism 
without having the imperialism itself.

So they will argue against imperialism at the same time that they argue 
in favor of, for example, high speed rail or groovy solar panels. But 
you can’t have high speed rail and groovy solar panels without mining 
and transportation and energy infrastructures, and you can’t have those 
infrastructures without the military and police to control them.

And in terms of the planet, you can’t have any of those infrastructures 
without the harm those infrastructures and their related activities 
cause. And since almost none of the anti-imperialists will question 
those basic infrastructures, that means most of them aren’t in all truth 
questioning the imperialism.

Here’s how it works regarding this Ark for the Sociopocene: we gain the 
benefits, and now we’re pretending that we face this terrible dilemma as 
to which of our victims we’re going to save (for now). But that’s not 
really a dilemma. Let’s pretend I’m going to kill either you or your 
best friend.

And no matter whom I kill I’m going to take everything you both own and 
everything you hold dear. I gain and both of you lose, including for one 
of you your life. I choose which one dies. That’s not a dilemma for me. 
To qualify as a dilemma I have to have something at stake. Instead of a 
dilemma it’s murder and theft.

But from a supremacist perspective, I’m not a murderer and thief. I’m a 
savior. I saved one of you from certain death (admittedly at my own 
hands, but still). And being this savior is more evidence of my 
superiority. A lesser being might have mindlessly killed you both. Gosh, 
aren’t I great?

And since I’m so smart, maybe I can come up with all sorts of criteria 
by which today I’ll make my decision as to which of you I’ll kill. Then 
tomorrow I’ll make another decision based on these or whatever other 
criteria I want as to whether to kill the survivor from today or your 
second best friend. And the day after I’ll make this decision again with 
someone else you love.

I find it deeply troubling that at least some members of this culture 
can feel even remotely good about themselves for choosing who lives and 
who dies, if they don’t also work toward stopping the actual cause of 
the murders. It’s analogous to a guard at a Nazi death camp feeling like 
a hero for giving Sophie the choice as to which of her children he won’t 
murder (tonight).


    Ultimately, the choice is ours

The murder of the planet is not some tragedy ordained by fate because 
we’re too damn smart. It is the result of a series of extremely bad 
social choices. We could choose differently. But we don’t. And we won’t. 
Not so long as the same unquestioned beliefs run the culture.

Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who is working to protect wild places or wild 
beings from this omnicidal culture is in that sense a hero. We need to 
use every tool possible to save whomever and wherever we can from this 
culture.

But it’s ridiculous and all-too-expected that while there’s always 
plenty of money to destroy the Tongass and every other forest, and 
there’s always plenty of money for various weapons of mass destruction 
(such as cluster bombs or dams or corporations) somehow when it comes to 
saving wild places and wild beings, we have to pinch pennies and ‘make 
difficult decisions’.

Also, I need to say that the whole Ark metaphor doesn’t work. In the 
original story, God saved two of every species (as He, like the humans 
who created Him, destroyed the planet). Here, modern humans are going 
where even God didn’t tread, and explicitly not saving every species, 
but instead deciding which species to save, and which species to kill off.

This is, of course, both pleasing and flattering to human supremacists: 
they’re making decisions on questions even God punted. How cool is that?


    Civilization is the problem, as it always has been

There’s an even bigger problem than all of these, though, which is that 
this culture is systematically and functionally killing the planet. All 
the wonderful and necessary work of every activist who is fighting as 
hard as she or he can to protect this or that wild place won’t mean a 
fucking thing so long as this culture stands.

And all this fine work that goes into creating decision-trees as to whom 
we deem worthy of saving and whom we will drive extinct is meaningless 
when we completely fail to address the cause of the murders in the first 
place.

Until civilization collapses the murder of the planet won’t stop.

Picture this. A gang of sadistic, vicious, insane entitled sociopathic 
murderers has taken over your home, and is holding everyone you love 
captive. They are systematically pulling your loved ones from the room 
and torturing them to death.

What do you do? Do you make decision-trees to help you make ‘difficult 
decisions’ as to which of your loved ones you’ll hand over next? Maybe 
you do. But I have to tell you I’d be more focused on stopping the 
murderous motherfuckers in their tracks, stopping the murders at their 
source.

 From the perspective of human supremacists, though, it is easier, more 
pleasing, and certainly reinforces one’s own identity as superior, to 
‘reluctantly’ make ‘difficult decisions’ as to who will be driven 
extinct. So long as we never, ever, ever question the supremacism and 
the culture that is driving them extinct.

And so long as we never forget to go along with what Lewis Mumford 
called the ‘magnificent bribe’: the comforts or elegancies we receive in 
exchange for not opposing the exploitative system.

We know on which side our bread is buttered.

Let’s drop the rhetoric. The op-ed broke my heart not only because the 
murder of the planet breaks my heart; and not only because the op-ed 
discussed which creatures to let go drive extinct without talking about 
which technologies to let go get rid of; and not only because of course 
they mentioned which species are most useful to us.

But entirely absent among their criteria for saving species was that of 
which beings best serve life on Earth (and of course missing entirely 
was any discussion of what technologies serve life and what harm life). 
But even more so because it completely ignored what is in many ways the 
only thing that matters: stopping the primary damage.

The truth is that these other beings wouldn’t need to be saved if 
civilization weren’t killing them. The truth is that they can’t be saved 
so long as civilization is killing the planet. And the truth is that in 
this culture there are certain topics which must never be discussed, 
certain self-perceptions and perceived entitlements which are never 
negotiable.

We would rather kiss ourselves and the entire planet good-bye than to 
look honestly at what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will, 
so long as we have this supremacist mindset, continue to do.


    They don’t need arks – they need a living planet!

Another big problem with the idea of an ark for the Sociopocene is that 
it’s based on and promotes this culture’s harmful and inaccurate view of 
the natural world, that you can take a creature out of its habitat and 
still have the complete creature, that a prairie dog is just a bundle of 
DNA in a fur and skin sack, and not part of the larger body of the prairie.

This culture seems to believe – completely anthropomorphically – that 
the world is like a machine or a chair. Some human artefact. Something 
where the whole is no more than the sum of the parts. You can take apart 
a chair and swap out some parts, then put the chair back together, and 
you still have a chair (except that this culture would steal a bunch of 
screws, two legs, and the seat, then wonder why they can’t sit in it).

But that’s not how life works, whether we’re talking about a human body 
or the body of a river or a prairie. The whole is more than the sum of 
the parts. And if you don’t think so, have a surgeon take you all apart 
and put you back together. Call me when they’re done. I’ll have my Ouija 
board set on vibrate.

You can’t remove a wolverine from its habitat and still have a 
wolverine. You have something that looks and smells like a wolverine. 
But the wolverine is also the scents it picks up on the breeze and the 
soil under its feet. Without the weather patterns and everything else 
about where it lives it would not have become the being it is.

Yes, the Franklins bumblebee must be saved, as must the Hunters 
hartebeest and the Chinese bahaba and the Galapagos damselfish.

But they don’t need arks. What they need is a living planet. What really 
need to be protected are the larger bodies who are their homes, the 
oceans, the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the entire larger communities.

/First published in /The Ecologist/ 
<http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/Blogs/2882373/endangered_species_dont_need_an_ark_they_need_a_living_planet.html>/, 
and republished at Tlaxcala 
<http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941>//

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