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<address class="classic"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://derrickjensen.org/2015/06/endangered-species-dont-need-an-ark-they-need-a-living-planet/">https://derrickjensen.org/2015/06/endangered-species-dont-need-an-ark-they-need-a-living-planet/</a><br>
</address>
<h1 class="classic">Endangered species don’t need an Ark – they need
a Living Planet!</h1>
<span class="postdate">June 11th, 2015</span>
<p>Last year I read an Op-Ed in the <em>New York Times</em>
entitled ‘Building an Ark for the Sociopocene’. No, I lied. It was
entitled ‘<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/sunday-review/building-an-ark-for-the-anthropocene.html"
target="_blank">Building an Ark for the Anthropocene</a>‘.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>The article begins, <em>“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.</em></p>
<p><em>“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.</em></p>
<p><em>“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.</em></p>
<p><em>“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?”</em></p>
<h2>Finding time to mention the destruction of our planet. That’s
something </h2>
<h2>…</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>“Ladyfag is the rave of the
future”</em> 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
<em>The New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>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, <em>happy</em> isn’t the right word … Perhaps grateful,
like a starving dog thrown the tiniest crust of bread.</p>
<p>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 <em>always </em>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>What’s not on the chopping block – our frivolous consumption!</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <em>of course</em>);
and we’re supposed to make careful delineations of <em>how</em>
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).</p>
<p>But just as after Fukushima a Japanese energy minister said that
nuclear energy must continue to be produced because no one <em>“could
imagine life without electricity”</em>, so, too, entirely
disallowed is any discussion of what technologies should be kept
and what should be caused to go extinct.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>Not one of them is mentioned. Never. Not once.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>None of these are mentioned because none of the benefits of our
dismantling of the planet can be seriously questioned.</p>
<h2>Saving species? Or killing them?</h2>
<p>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 <em>do</em> -but so
many of them don’t seem to understand that you can’t have the
benefits of imperialism without having the imperialism itself.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<h2>Ultimately, the choice is ours</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This is, of course, both pleasing and flattering to human
supremacists: they’re making decisions on questions even God
punted. How cool is that?</p>
<h2>Civilization is the problem, as it always has been</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Until civilization collapses the murder of the planet won’t stop.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We know on which side our bread is buttered.</p>
<p>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 <span
style="text-decoration: line-through;">let go</span> drive
extinct without talking about which technologies to <span
style="text-decoration: line-through;">let go</span> get rid of;
and not only because of course they mentioned which species are
most useful to us.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>They don’t need arks – they need a living planet!</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Yes, the Franklins bumblebee must be saved, as must the Hunters
hartebeest and the Chinese bahaba and the Galapagos damselfish.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>First published in <a
href="http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/Blogs/2882373/endangered_species_dont_need_an_ark_they_need_a_living_planet.html"><em>The
Ecologist</em></a><em>, and republished at <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941">Tlaxcala</a></em></em></p>
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