Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet

I read this when it came out in 2011. I could not clarify my reactions sufficiently to write a review unti now. One thing can be confidently said ten years later -- the movement that "Deep Green Resistance" called for has yet to materialize.The logic of the DGR strategy is simple:1) Industrial civilization is destroying the planetary ecosystem, and that is all it can or will do.1b) Therefore industrial civilization must be destroyed before it destroys (any more) life on Planet Earth.2) Most people are too conditioned by the system to rebel against it.2b) Therefore the system can only be, and must be, destroyed by a small, radical group.I agree with #1 -- the history of the planet since the beginning of agriculture has been growth and collapse in a recurrent cycle. Human industrial society is now planetary in scope, and the ecological destruction is greater than ever before.After that it becomes questionable. How is #1b accomplished? DGR (the group) may be right about #2, but that certainly does not make #2b at all plausible. It's absurd, really. Taking down the entire infrastructure that people depend on for their survival? The infrastructure that will be defended by the power of the State as well as by the vast majority of the population?Reading DGR on Decisive Ecological Warfare is a psychedelic experience. Science fiction. It's presented very clearly and logically, but the basic premise is faulty.*** *** ***Here is what I think, ten years later. No human society or civilization has ever lasted forever. Infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet, as "The Limits to Growth" pointed out in 1972. The growth-based system will bring its own demise by making the conditions of its perpetuation impossible. Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies" is the key to understanding this. Of course the collapse of the planetary industrial society will be a vast human tragedy, and before it happens much more of the nonhuman life on the planet will be wiped out.What DGR calls for as a coordinated strategy will happen instead as a rising crescendo of uncoordinated actions motivated by desperation as ecocide approaches, becoming part of the apocalyptic scenario along with ever fiercer storms, inundated coastlines and cities, wars and militias, huge streams of refugees, epidemics as the health system breaks down, and of course the spiking rate of extinctions.Hopefully the inevitable system collapse happens in such a way as to leave a substantial chunk of biodiversity and ecosystems alive, if not intact. At that point, with the massive industrial infrastructure inoperative, recovery of life on the planet may be possible. Will any humans survive? Will the remnants be chastened sufficiently not to do the same thing all over again? Impossible to know.

This is hardly the first book to acknowledge the desperation of our current predicament. Many books have addressed the devastation of our planet's oceans, soil, and forests, have pointed out that we are living in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction of unprecedented speed and voracity. It's easy to find books discussing the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples, and the ongoing devastation of their landbases and rivers for the profits of the rich, working under the malicious banner of "progress". We have many books about soil erosion turning farmland to desert, and pesticide effluents killing rivers and leaving dead zones in our oceans. Many books are available that acknowledge we live in a pornographic culture and a rape culture, a culture with little respect for women and children. For decades books have been telling us that toxic chemicals from factories have entered our bodies, that women can no longer even nurse without passing along dioxins to their children, toxins dangerous at even at a few parts per trillion. We have books that recognize that corporations, as persons, are genocidal maniacs who will profit from any atrocity they can possibly get away with, will leave our planet a barren husk so long as we do not stop them. Nor is this even the first book to argue that we must stop them.What is different about Deep Green Resistance is that it is the first book that offers a solution that is scaled to the size of our predicament. In the past, books have usually suggested answers such as getting involved in your community, making better consumer choices, writing letters to the editor, planting gardens, donating to worthy charities, and spreading awareness of the problems we're facing. These are good moral decisions to make, but as political tools for change they are not effective, and it becomes an immense problem when these sort of actions become the backbone of our movement for a saner world. Self-improvement and token actions, although they might help us to relieve guilt, are not going to cut it. If we are going to save this sickly planet, we are going to need to organize ourselves squarely against systems of power, and fight them as hard as we can. The authors of this book have clearly thought long and hard about how we need to organize, how we need to strategize, and what sort of pitfalls we need to watch out for. If you love this planet as much as I do, I hope you read this book and take what it has to say to heart. We will need all the heart and courage that we can muster.

The authors present an even grimmer than usual picture of the current state of the biosphere that sustains us all, and lays the blame on nothing less than civilization itself. They advocate for action up to & including guerilla warfare to bring down the system before it's too late.To the immediate objection that violent action would result in civilian casualties, they ask what do we think the system is doing now, and on a far larger scale? Most of this killing is taking place in the Third World, where we don't see it, but it's happening, and on a scale that makes the Holocaust look minor league.The bulk of the text is devoted specifically to industrial civilization, but monocrop agribusiness comes in for its fair zhare of criticism. I was left uncertain as to their views on locally self-sufficient small scale organic, non-mechanized agriculture. The authors remind us that small group hunter-gatherers /gardeners are the "last known good configuration" of human society.This book lays out the choices we face far more clearly than most, and is well written. I'd rate it a "must read" for anyone interested in what we are doing to the planet.

The previous one star review of this book by 'Ashtar Command' is very good, in depth review of both the book and the aims of it. Although giving only one star rather downgrades it too much. The small amount i have to say about this book focuses on small but telling parts of the text and is intended to give a warning to those who may want to read it.The book is very well written and contains a lot of interesting information on how to gain a better world but its radical feminist outlook will alienate a lot of men, as very few of us like to be labelled as both "nazi" or "rapist". If you are willing to accept this then the possibly worst part of the philosophy (in my opinion) is the anti free speech stance. The book calls for a non-industrial, matriarchal society which is fine but the insistence of its authors that there can be no challenge the leader's opinions and decisions to this takes us into a feminist dictatorship, truly a leader that will be an eco-warrior Pol Pot.This book is worth reading and has a lot to say in the formation of a new world order but take care to see the Deep Green Resistance as disturbingly authoritarian and divisive, not as inclusive as they like to claim, it is transphobic! This is why Aric McBay has distanced himself from it.The final problem with the book? The authors. Are they high on the list of terrorists wanted by the governments of the world? No. I guess that would mean they have to give up their privileged positions as landowners and farmers. Until eco philosophers like these step out of their comfy chairs and down from their ivory towers there will be no revolution, good or bad.

This book is a call to action. It lays out the scale of the crisis and the lack of time for a general "change of consciousness" It is the core book of the Deep Green Resistance movement and advocates for radical action if we are to have any chance of facing the oncoming crisis.If you have any illusions regarding the state of the planet and our complacency regarding climate change, this book will shatter them. Be prepared to get angry and get active.

Mir wurde empfohlen, dies als ein interessantes und lesenswertes Buch zu erwerben, wenn man die Logik hinter aktuellen Protest Bewegungen verstehen möchte. Es ist sicherlich als Teil eines Spektrums Protestliteratur zu lesen. Aber ich, ein Pazifist durch und durch, fand die Leichtigkeit, mit der die Autoren über die mögliche Rolle von Aggression schreiben, sehr unangenehm.

El mejor libro de ecologia y de activismo. Te pone en tu sitio