Interview of Max Wilbert ― Resistance Radio

June 28th, 2015

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Derrick Jensen: Hi. I am Derrick Jensen. This is Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network. My guest today is Max Wilbert. He is from Seattle and spent a great deal of his childhood on the Olympic Coast on Makah Land. And now in his late 20’s he works with an organization called Deep Green Resistance to promote strategic eco sabotage and work to protect the land. He also served on the board of the directors of the non-profit organization called Fertile Ground and Environmental Institute. So, first, thank you for your work, and second thank you for being on the program.

Max Wilbert: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here, Derrick.

DJ: You are in your twenties, and it’s extraordinary to me how much work you’ve done for being so young. Actually, it’s extraordinary to me how much work you’ve done no matter what age you are, but especially for being so young. It’s absolutely extraordinary. If anything gives me optimism, its people like you.

MW: Thanks. That really means a lot coming from someone like you.

DJ: Well, thanks. So, let’s talk about Las Vegas and let’s talk about water.

MW: Great. The situation that we’re going to talk about today is happening because Las Vegas is running out of water. When they think about Las Vegas, they think about a giant city in the middle of a desert. And, before Las Vegas was settled and paved over, there used to be quite a few springs and natural water sources in the area. But, those have mostly been destroyed.

The city is completely based on importation of resources. It’s a place where you can’t grow any food, and there is not very much water. Las Vegas’ water sources have always been the Colorado River. One of the biggest dams in the world, the Hoover Dam, is located just outside of Las Vegas. The reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam is called Lake Mead. It is one of the largest reservoirs in the country. Lake Mead is the main water source for Las Vegas. Over the past fifteen years or so the Colorado River basin has been experiencing a prolonged drought. Climate scientists tell us that this is largely due to global warming. You’ve got declining snowfall in the Rocky Mountains, and the snow in the Rocky Mountains is most of what melts and makes up the flow of the Colorado River. So, because of this, Lake Mead, the reservoir, recently dropped to its lowest level in something like 70 years or more since the reservoir was first filled up in the 1930’s after the dam was built.

The city is in a bit of conundrum. They are already pretty efficient in terms of per capita water use. But, they need more, and Lake Mead is only going down. One of their solutions has been to build a new intake pipe into Lake Mead. There were two previous intakes, so this is the third one, which they are calling the third straw. The first two intake pipes were more towards the middle of the reservoir. As the level of the water has dropped lower and lower and lower, those intakes are in danger of becoming no longer functional because the water would be below them.

DJ: Do we know how deep Lake Mead was at one point and how deep it is now at its deepest? What is the difference in water level? Is it two feet, from what it used to be, or is it twenty feet?

MW: What I do have the sea level changes in front of me. At its maximum level in 1983, the surface of Lake Mead was 1,229 feet above sea level. Recently, in the last month or two, it’s right around 1,080 feet above sea level.

DJ: So it’s gone down 149 feet.

MW: Correct. Yes. Of course Lake Mead is enormous. We are talking about a reservoir that is 120 miles long. It’s got 500+ miles of shoreline. We’re talking on the order of trillions of gallons of water that’s been lost or that’s been overused from this reservoir.

They are building this third straw to try and get more water out of the bottom of the reservoir.

What I really want to focus on for this interview is what the Las Vegas water authority is in the process of doing. For the past 25 years or more, the water authority has been looking north towards some the more rural valleys of Eastern and Central Nevada, and taking the water from those areas and pumping it through a gigantic pipe down to Las Vegas.

This isn’t just a pipe dream for them. Over the past 10-15 years, they’ve been buying up ranches in the area. They’ve been working to secure water rights. They’ve been in courts. They’ve been filing for the right to do this. They have completed the Environmental Impact process with the BLM for the right of way of the pipeline which would extract or pump the water down to Las Vegas. It’s believed that they’ve spent something like 100 million dollars of taxpayer money already on this project. It is very much moving forward despite the fact that the people in those communities, in that area are almost unanimously opposed to it.

DJ: Isn’t this just business as usual? Water gets stolen from Northern California for Southern California. The Colorado River no longer reaches the Ocean because the water is stolen; the Rio Grande doesn’t reach the ocean because the water is stolen; The Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union has been in many ways dewatered. Isn’t this just business as usual? Or is it the fact that its business as usual that makes it even worse? Why are you telling me this?

MW: I think it is business in usual and business as usual is an atrocity. One of the reasons why I am interested in this project is because it’s a stunning example of the hubris and inherent environmental devastation that is built into the fabric of how modern society is built. Thanks to your work and the work of many other people, I have better language to talk about that now. And so the phrase that I use is civilization. And as you’ve written when we talk about civilization, we are using an anthropological definition. Civilization is a culture built around the growth of cities. And when you have a city, that means there are people living in dense enough numbers that they can’t survive in that area without going out to other places taking resources from there and destroying those areas. It is a constant process of expansion. Las Vegas is a terrible example of this.

I was living in Salt Lake City when I originally became interested and got involved in this project. The region we are talking about is six hours south west of Salt Lake City. If you were able to drive straight there, there are quite a few mountain ranges in between. It’s a very remote area, so it’s hard to get around.

While I was living in Salt Lake City, a friend who was living in the area as well picked up the weekly paper and read the article in there. In the article, indigenous people from the Confederated tribes of the Goshute reservation were interviewed. It is a very small reservation located on the Utah Nevada border, South of Wendover. I believe the tribal membership is less than 600.

In the article several members of this community were interviewed about this water extraction project. What they said was that it was threatening to take away their water, and in fact it was threatening their entire way of life.

They live in a very remote area that, for the most part, is relatively ecologically intact compared to most areas in the United States. They rely on hunting, fishing, and gathering for much of their sustenance. This is an area that has some of the best wildlife habitat in the entire state of Nevada. There are massive herds of elk, beautiful elk. I was just down in the region a few weeks ago and saw about twenty five healthy looking elk. There are all sorts of other wildlife. And so, to me, as somebody who takes very seriously the importance of indigenous rights and respecting the traditions and ways and land of the first peoples of this place that we live, this was an issue that really called out to me.

DJ: And when you say it called out to you, so what are you doing? What is being done to oppose this, by you or anyone else?

MW: Right. Well, this project has been in the works for a couple of decades now. And people in the region have definitely taken the lead. I want to say that, first and foremost, I am not somebody who lives in this area. By no means can I take credit, nor do I want to, for any of the great work that has been going on for a long time to fight this project.

There is a group called the Great Basin Water Network that formed that consists of all local people who formed to fight this project. They’ve been involved in court battles for years and years now, relatively successfully, to delay and stop this project. In terms of other resistance, there’s been a lot of it. The tribes in the region have been a big part of the resistance. They have participated in lawsuits, they’ve gone to all the public comment sessions, they have continually thrown up blocks and work to make it as difficult as possible for the Southern Nevada water authority, the public water utility company, to do this project. We are talking about a collaborative effort of the Goshute reservation, the Ely Shoshone nation, and a couple of other local nations. Also, the local people are almost unanimously opposed to this project. Ely is in White Pine County. And White Pine County has also been opposed to it. Some of the other local governments have been opposed to it, and have been part of lawsuits. I know that the center for biological diversity has been fighting this project on an ongoing basis. They are getting ready to file another lawsuit.

As far as myself, when I heard about this project, I felt the need to get involved, and contribute in some way. So, after reading the article, my friend and I contacted the leadership of the Goshute tribe. And they ended up requesting that we come out to the reservation. So, we drove out there, in the winter, I believe it was 2012. We drove out to the reservation and we spoke in front of the tribal counsel, and we said this is who we are and we’re here because we believe in protecting the land. We believe in standing alongside indigenous communities that are working to fight for their traditions and their ways of life, and we would like to offer our services. So through that process we made some friends out in the area and we made some connections. We started to do a few more things to help. We held some events in Salt Lake City. You probably know the story of the Owens River Valley in California, right?

DJ: Tell me.

MW: Back when Los Angeles was looking to expand, they needed more water. They were looking up in the Sierra Nevada. They found a valley, the Owens River Valley that they wanted to take water from. And so they started to do it. They put in all these wells, and canals and pipes. They took out all the water. And what happened was an ecological catastrophe. The entire valley collapsed. All the trees died, most of the plants died. The wildlife went away. And so, Owens Valley has become this cautionary tale about the dangers of water extraction. By taking away the water, they dried out the whole landscape so much that any time storm would come along and there’d be heavy winds, it would pick up tons and tons of dust. The dust would be thrown all over the place. This made for a huge air quality and pollution problem.

For people who live in Salt Lake City, this is something they should be thinking about as well because Salt Lake City has the worst air quality in the country right now. The main reasons for that currently are a gigantic copper mine, the largest copper mine in the world, is in the valley. That’s the number one source of pollution. The number two source of pollution is the oil refineries that are in and around Salt Lake City. There are five of them, I believe. The number three source is interstate trucking, because there are two major interstates that converge in Salt Lake City. The number four source is personal vehicles which make up less than 20% of the pollution problem.

But if this water grab project goes through, an additional source of air pollution in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area will be dust coming from this region because the prevailing winds blow from this area right across to the Salt Lake valley. So that will be a big issue. So, I kind of got off track there.

DJ: No. That’s great. And, one of the things that I wanted to say is that is just one of the things I love about you is the fact that you found yourself disturbed by this and you did something. Because so many of us, so often will be disturbed by something, and we’ll get mad, then we just get back on Facebook, or go to whatever it is we’re going to do, or we might make a comment on Facebook, that’s the size of it, as opposed to actually doing something.

MW: Right.

DJ: And, that’s just one of the things that’s great about you. You brought up the ecological devastation of Owens Valley. Tell me what’s wrong with taking water away from the area around Ely? I mean it’s just a desert anyway, so who cares, right?

MW: Yeah, it’s funny you say that.

So, a big group behind this ground water development project is real estate people and developers and speculators in the Las Vegas area because there is a lot of land north of Las Vegas and in the suburbs that they want to develop that could be extremely valuable but they need water. It’s worthless without water. So for the people who are in Las Vegas who are thinking, Hmm maybe this project is a good idea, it’ll give us more water. The water, for the most part is not actually going to be for the people of Las Vegas, it’s going to be to subsidize developers and corporations. So, in that sense it’s a giveaway of public funds and we’re talking about on the order of ten plus billion dollars that this project could cost.

DJ: What’s wrong with this? What’s wrong with taking this water that’s obviously not being used?

MW: Right. Beyond the fact that that it is a giveaway of public funds, there are a lot of things that are wrong with this project. First, I just want to paint a little picture of the area that we are talking about so people know.

DJ: I want to say one thing. I lived for a couple three years in Elko County which is one or two counties to the north. It’s called Elko County because there used to be big herds of Elk. But, I believe that the last Elk in that county were shot in 1948. It should be Elkless County now. It was nice to hear about the Elk there. People don’t know this, but the Elk used to be plentiful all over the place in places that seem very desolate.

MW: I think a lot of people have this picture in their head of Nevada being a sandy desert with nothing in it. I know that was what was in my head. I have never visited Nevada before 2012, so that was the first time I was in the state.

I was stunned by the beauty and the natural life that I saw there. I’ve heard that Nevada is very similar to the Tibetan Plateau because both landscapes are very hot in the summer, very cold in the winter, very dry and are mostly composed of mountain ranges separated by big broad valleys. That is the terrain we are talking about up here. Nevada is the driest state in the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a sandy desert. There are some sandy places here and there, especially down south, but this area is actually quite lush.

One of the most well-known features in the area of the water grab is the Great Basin National Park. The mountains in Great Basin National Park get up to more than 13,000 feet in elevation. There is a lot of snow up there. There is a glacier, I believe on Wheeler Peak. There are quite a few mountains in this whole region that are 11,000 feet or more in elevation. Most of these mountains have large forests on their sides. Great Basin National Park and many others of these areas, have the Bristlecone pines. Those trees grow to be five thousand years old or more. Actually the oldest known Bristlecone pine was in Great Basin National Park. And that’s an area that if the Southern Nevada water authority gets their way, that national park would basically be reamed with wells that would pull all the water out from underneath it.

Besides the National Park, there are also about 10 wilderness areas in the region that would be affected by this water grab. Most of the land in the whole area is BLM land, its federally owned land, so that’s land that supposedly belongs to the American people. It is very very sparsely populated. There are a few ranches here and there and a few small towns. A lot of these valleys you can be driving on dirt roads all day and see not a single other car, let alone a house or dwelling of any sort.

DJ: When I lived in Northeastern Nevada, I would go to some valleys and I would get out of my car. I would walk quite a ways, and it would be so quiet. I used to carry a pocket watch, and I would put the pocket watch on the ground. I would walk ten or eleven steps away and it was so quiet I could still hear the pocket watch ticking at a distance of ten or fifteen feet.

MW: Absolutely.

DJ: That’s one of the main things. Another thing I want to mention from my time in Northeastern Nevada. Where I lived, there was a lot of sage brush. Some areas have terrain that has more contours. Not even a mountain range, but just like some hillocks. You might go around the corner and all of a sudden you see an oasis. Where you’re walking along this sage brush and all of a sudden there are all these cottonwoods; because there’s a little spring and a little stream coming out there.

MW: Absolutely.

DJ: You know I’m a forest person so I really like the forest here, but I like the desert. It was stunning and so much more diverse than I would have thought.

MW: Absolutely. Yeah, and a couple years ago we went to the Goshute Indian reservation and we visited one of their sacred springs on the reservation. There are a number of springs coming out of the deep creek mountain range just east of the place where the people live there. Many if not all of them are sacred. This spring was just a torrent of water gushing out of this limestone rock outcrop. And it’s stunning walking in from what is definitely a sagebrush desert into this little oasis. And all of a sudden there is this stinging nettle and there is watercress, and there’s all this flowering shrubs and there’s humming birds and a huge diversity of rare plants species and wildlife coming to visit the area to drink.

And, that particular area the tribe has been working with the fish and wildlife service. They’ve created a small pond and started raising Bonneville cutthroat trout, which are a threatened species of fish that they’ve started raising in these waters. That is one of the many reasons that the tribe is opposed to the water project. They worry that many of their sacred springs could dry up and stop flowing completely if the ground water is taken out.

As far as other impacts, we’re talking about ecological devastation. If you imagine sticking a straw into a glass of water and sucking on the water, pulling it out, the water drops everywhere. These massive wells that they want to put in would lower the water table across the whole region. These wells would pull water away from the roots of many of the plants, called adophites that are surviving by tapping the groundwater. These include many trees and plants in the region, and they would no longer be able to survive.

When many of the plants die, that has a cascading impact because every animal species is completely dependent on the plants. They are the base of the food chain. And really, nothing could survive, at least as well. If not complete ecological collapse, we’re looking at a partial collapse that would hugely decrease the ability of local lifeforms of all sorts to survive across an area of several hundred square miles.

That would include a variety of threatened and endangered species. There are quite a few snail species that live in springs across this region, and because the springs are so isolated from one another, almost every one of those species is endemic to this area. They only live in this one spring; that’s the only place it lives on the whole planet. Many of those spring snails, as they are called, are endangered species. There’s also small fish that live in many of these springs and small creeks. Many riparian species, birds like the southwestern willow flycatcher and the yellow billed cuckoo would be impacted. And then, more common species like prong horned antelope, big horned sheep, elk, deer; And, just because they are common doesn’t means that it’s okay to destroy their habitat and their lives. And this is also an area that’s sage grass habitat, and that’s obviously a very controversial species that should be listed as an endangered species but they won’t do it. And, that species is also threatened by this project.

DJ: Just as an aside. We can say that they won’t lift it, because to do so would affect public lands ranching, public lands fracking, public lands oil and gas exploration in general, etcetera. Just so we have that on the table.

MW: Absolutely. I know there are a lot of people who are really into horses as well. And there are a lot of wild horses in this area, too that would be impacted. So, for better or for worse, the horses would be in it for it as well.

This is some of the most important wildlife habitat in the whole state. It doesn’t matter if you are an indigenous person, or a bird watcher, or a hunter or even a rancher, or somebody who has a farm in the area, they would all be negatively impacted by this project. The opposition is pretty widespread. Believe it or not, a Mormon church owns a ranch in this area, in Spring Valley, a large ranch out there. They have come out against this project because it would de-water their ranch. When you’ve got environmentalists, and tribes, and ranchers, and the Mormon Church fighting a project, then you might think it’s a bad idea.

DJ: What is the short term prognosis for this project? We’ll talk about a long term in a minute. I mean, do you think it’s going to go through in the short term? Or, do you think there will be some victories in slowing it?

MW: There have been some victories in slowing it. It’s definitely not pending anytime in the next couple years.

How water law works in Nevada is that you have a state engineer who is in charge of the water rights. They can grant the rights to whoever they want. The job of the state engineer is to give away public waters, and give people rights to them. So the state engineer gave the rights to the water authority. The Supreme Court of Nevada recently ruled that they have to go back and do that all again; they have to demonstrate that the project will be “sustainable”. Of course that means that they can sustainably take the water, not that it will be sustainable for the creatures who live there.

There have been a number of legal victories, but a lot of the people who have been fighting this project for years feel like their delaying the inevitable. They feel that maybe they’ll be able to keep fighting it again and again, and keep stopping it in the court.

The Southern Nevada water authority has been relentless and continues to be relentless in working all the kinks out of their plans and then just coming back again and again and again. And there is a possibility that some of the Nevada politicians, including the governor, and others, may actually work to change some of the laws specifically to allow this project and others like it to go through.

Currently you’re not allowed to do water mining. A water table is how high the water is underneath the soil. You are not currently allowed to do water mining. This means you can’t just keep pumping it out to the point that it’s just dropping precipitously all the time. You are allowed to lower the water table by 50 feet and keep it at that lower level. So, you can legally do a ton of damage, already. There’s rumors going around that they are talking about legalizing much worse destruction, where’d you be allowed to just essentially, take all the water rapidly out of an area.

Short term the situation looks okay. But, that could always change. This is essentially a situation, where the courts have, to this point, been friendly to the opponents of the project. But, if you get some different judges in place or you get a couple decisions that don’t go your way, all of a sudden things could be moving pretty quickly.

A lot of the wells are already in the ground. They’ve drilled test wells throughout the whole region, and we visited them. We could smell the round-up that they had just sprayed throughout the whole area of about 200 square feet of land, to keep everything dead. Then there is the big well sticking right out of the top, with ironically, a little solar panel made by BP on the front of the well to power their monitoring instruments.

DJ: Well, heck, that’s solar power, it’s sustainable, right?

MW: Yeah, absolutely. Especially, yes, Beyond Petroleum is making those solar panels now. So, I think we’re saved. But that’s a whole other conversation.

A lot of the opponents believe that these test wells that they’ve drilled are actually the production wells. All they’ll have to do to get production going is to retrofit the wells, attach them to the pipeline, and they’ll be ready to start pumping right away.

For the past three years, along with some local people, I’ve helped to organize what we call the sacred water tour of the area on Memorial Day weekend. Now, every Memorial Day weekend, we’ve been going out to this region, and spending three days exploring the area, meeting with local people, visiting some of the important sites throughout the region, and planning and talking about resistance to the project. And I think that is really important because as you joked earlier, most people do think this is just an empty desert. But when you visit you can’t help but fall in love with it. And, when you love a place, you will fight to defend it. So, that’s the main reason behind those trips that we do every year.

DJ: So, what you’re saying about how the water authority being relentless; this is what we see whether we are talking about oil drillers, or so-called developers, or just any garden variety abusers.

MW: Right.

DJ: It’s all the same. That’s one of the ways they keep winning, is that they keep applying pressure.

MW: Right.

DJ: And, I’m thinking of also what David Brower famously said about how all of our losses are permanent and all of our victories are temporary.

MW: Right.

DJ: And also, interestingly, what one of the people fighting along with Cromwell against the royalists back in the English civil war said that we can win a hundred times, and we still have to keep winning, but if they win once, it’s all of our heads.

MW: Right.

DJ: And, it’s the same deal. That we win, and then they just come back, they come back and try the same thing, and if they win, the whole thing is over.

MW: Absolutely.

DJ: This is something that every activist in the entire world has faced so many times.

MW: Right.

One of the people I’ve been working closely with on this project is Michael Carter, who is a good friend, who lives in Moab. One of the major issues around there is off road vehicles and four wheelers. There are a lot of issues going on where people are punching roads into wilderness areas and destroying or impacting significant cultural sites, and ruins, or burial sites, or what have you, or impacting sensitive natural areas, and endangered species. What he always says is that the only way off road vehicles are going to be stopped is if fossil fuels are stopped, is if the fuel stops flowing. And I think that’s possibly a similar situation here.

I think there’s a lot more that can be done, to fight this project. Next year we are looking at doing expanded sacred water tours. We are going to have a big BBQ, invite all the community members out, try and get people together, to talk about more issues. But, I really think the next big front in this fight is in Las Vegas itself. I think opposing this project is a no-brainer for people who live in Las Vegas because of the issues that they are looking at in terms of hugely increased water bills, and public subsidies for private developers.

I’m part of Deep Green Resistance and the reason that I’m part of a group like that, which advocates for forcibly dismantling the industrial economy of the entire planet, bringing the global machine of capitalism to a halt, is because these types of projects are so hard to fight; is because they are relentless as you say.

They will keep fighting until we take away their ability to fight. That’s one of the main principles of any strategic conflict, is that to win you have got to take away the ability of your opponent to keep fighting. These types of court battles, all the environmental work that goes on in this country, I think most of it fails that test. And, that’s not to say it’s not great work, that’s not to say that it’s not worthwhile. But, as a movement, the environmental movement has not been effective at taking away the ability of our opponents to keep destroying the planet. And, so, that’s why Deep Green Resistance talks about strategic eco-sabotage and resistance of that type to stop the flow of the fossil fuels, stop the flow of electricity across the continent, stop the flow of goods and commerce completely, in order to give the planet some breathing room, so that it can actually live.

DJ: If there are people living in Las Vegas, who want to help, what can they do? If there are people living in the Great Basin who want to help, what can they do? And people living elsewhere, who want to help, what can they do?

MW: Great. Okay, I’m going to throw one more thing in before I answer your questions.

DJ: Please.

MW: One thing that I think is really important to point out, and to add to this discussion, is to talk about the massacres that happened in this area.

Spring Valley is an area that has been inhabited by Goshute Shoshone people. I think if you asked many of those people they won’t say there’s actually a difference between their communities. But it is an area that has been inhabited for at least thousands of years. And, in the 1800’s, there were three massacres of Goshute and Shoshone people in and around the area of this water grab. Two of them happened in the southern part of Spring Valley, just outside Great Basin National Park. And, they were pretty bad massacres. In one of them around 1863, more than 350 men, women and children were killed by the U.S. cavalry. And, they were slaughtered.

This was in the context of ongoing conflicts as the European settlers moved in and began to take over the land. But, 350 people were killed. And, there was another massacre in 1897, and I believe 50 or so people were killed in this massacre.

Two little girls survived that massacre. One of the sisters is the great grandmother of Rick. Rick is one of the indigenous people, a good friend, who we work with in this area. Rick and his mother Delaine have been fighting this project for decades. They live right in the area.

Every time when we go out there, we visit the site of these massacres, which is this place called the Swamp Seeders. It’s a place that is ecologically unique, and scientists can’t really explain how that community of juniper trees lives there. But, in the tradition of the Shoshone and Goshutes, those trees started growing on the bones of the people who were killed at that place. It was a sacred place, long before the massacres happened. Now it’s both a sacred place and a graveyard, and a place of mourning for those people.

So I wanted to add that in, because I think it’s an important component. There are a lot of sacred and important sites throughout this whole region that would be destroyed by this project. That site, the Swamp Seeders, it’s believed, would be one of the first places to go if the water grab goes forward. The water would be pulled out from right underneath those trees, and they wouldn’t be able to get any water anymore and they’d die. That site was one of the three largest, if not the largest massacre of indigenous people in the history of the United States, up there with Wounded Knee and Bear River. I think that’s important history for people to know.

DJ: It’s the same impulse today. I mean, it’s nothing but theft and murder.

MW: Absolutely. Yes. Let’s get to your question. People in Las Vegas who are interested in fighting this project, there’s a lot that needs to be done. And, really a lot of it is pretty simple, to get started. I think that there needs to be a lot of education of people in the Las Vegas area. Recruiting, bringing people in who can help organize, who can do simple things like flyering, handing out pamphlets and knocking on doors, talking to people, to really generate some grassroots opposition in the community to the project. If there are people who are out there that want to talk to me about that, if you look up Max Wilbert, you’ll find me. I would love to talk to anyone about that sort of thing. I would love to work with you to help make that happen.

If you live in the broader region, there’s a lot that can be done as well. We’d love to have anyone who’s interested come out with us next year on Memorial Day weekend to the area. If you follow the Deep Green Resistance Great Basin website, we’ll be sharing all the details on there, as the date approaches next year. But there’s a lot that can be done. There’s lawsuits going on, those lawsuits need help; the Great Basin water network needs donations; Center for Biological Diversity needs donations. One thing that helps the lawsuits is when they get people who just go out and enjoy these areas, whether they are birdwatching, or hunting or hiking, or just camping or doing something spiritual; that can really make a difference, and strengthen the lawsuits against these projects by bringing in some voices of people who have ties to the area. We have an email list, I’d love to add you to keep you updated on what’s going on here. So there is a lot that can be done.

As far as people around the world, and elsewhere, I would encourage you to do many of those same things, if you are interested in this project. The number one thing is to realize is that these projects aren’t going to stop unless, unless this entire industrial civilization is stopped. These really are just symptoms of a much larger cultural disease that has infected every level of this culture and is driving it to destroy the planet. I think that in order to stop it, we need to dismantle the physical infrastructure of civilization that allows them to destroy the planet. And, we also need to dismantle the social systems and the psychological infections that run throughout our culture that facilitate that destruction.

That’s obviously a huge process. But, if you don’t live in this region, then I would say look into your local issues because there are things like this going on all over the world that need to be fought. And, overarching we need to bring down this whole industrial civilization to allow the planet to be free.

DJ: Well, thank you so much for all your work, and thank you for saying all that. I would like to thank the listeners for listening. My guest today has been Max Wilbert. This is Derrick Jensen from Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network.

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