Interview of John Seed ― Resistance Radio

January 7th, 2018

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(Sound of great-billed seed finch)

Hi, I’m Derrick Jensen and this is Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network. My guest today is John Seed. He is the founder of the Rainforest Information Centre and has dedicated his life to the protection of rainforests and their biodiversity since 1979. In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian Government for services to conservation and the environment. He also practices permaculture and is interested in the huge role that unsustainable agriculture plays in the destruction of native forests, rivers and reefs. Today we talk about efforts to stop planned mining in Ecuador.

So first, thank you for your decades of unparalleled work, and second, thank you for being on the program.

JS: You’re most welcome, Derrick. Thanks for inviting me.

DJ: So, people may not know much about Ecuador, or the mining that’s planned in Ecuador, or the reserves in Ecuador. So can you give us an introduction to all three of those?

JS. Okay. First, about Ecuador, it is the most biodiverse country on earth, on a per square kilometer basis, on the basis of its size. So it’s the most biodiverse place on earth, and the area where much of the proposed mining is being planned is in the Andes, which, scientists say, is the most biodiverse of the earth’s 36 biodiversity hot spots. So this is a horrible conjunction of the most toxic industry in the world with the most precious environment.

Concerning reserves, we became involved in the late 1980’s. We had found a good alliance with the sort of left-wing government of Australia at that time, and they had a Senate inquiry into the environmental effects of the Australian aid program, which we had initiated and lobbied for. And as part of the outcome of that inquiry the Senate mysteriously insisted that the Australian aid agency AusAID spend a million dollars a year inviting NGO’s like ourselves to create new standards of environmental excellence in the delivery of Australian aid.

One of the projects that got funded at that time was the creation of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve in the Andes, which we were sort of instrumental in. One of our volunteers in Ecuador at that time, Doug Ferguson, together with José DeCoux, who’s been the director of that reserve ever since, were instrumental in gaining the status of Bosque Protector, “Protected Forest.” And we’ve been helping José protect that reserve ever since.

30 years ago, when we first started this, it was a highly diverse area. But in the meantime nearly all of the other similar areas have been despoiled for one reason or another; so that now Los Cedros, according to professor Bitty Roy, from the University of Oregon, one of the many scientists who conducted research there; is now the best forest and watershed in western Ecuador.

And so it was with quite a shock that we learned about a year ago, through a press release from a Canadian mining company, Cornerstone Resources; that they believed that they had a mining concession that covered Los Cedros. And as we investigated this, we discovered that this was just the tip of a huge iceberg, and our relatively small reserve, about 7000 hectares, maybe 17,000 acres, was one of 39 Bosque Protector that had been secretly handed over to the mining industry, mining companies from Australia, Chile, China, you name it, and Canada of course, totaling more than 750,000 hectares. And as well as that, more than a million hectares, two and a half million acres of indigenous reserves, mostly in the Amazon, had been handed over to the mining companies at the same time.

In 2016, the amount of Ecuador that was covered by mining concessions went up from 3% to 14%, so an extra 11% of Ecuador was handed over to mining companies, with no fanfare, no announcements, no publicity, and certainly without the prior consent of the indigenous inhabitants, or the people who were running these biological reserves and the many governments around the world that had funded the creation, like the Australian government.

So in recent months, Ecuadorian civil society has formed an impressive coalition of environment groups and social justice groups, because certainly social justice, social injustice is another huge feature of the mining industry in South America or anywhere in the world. But also local governments who had joined this coalition calling for these concessions to be rescinded and that there be no mining in watersheds and protected areas and indigenous reserves and so on.

So, at the Rainforest Information Center we’re starting an international campaign in support of Ecuadorian civil society and in support of their demands, basically, to see if we can help to create a sense that the world is watching while Ecuador tries to create a national debate about the future of development in that country, whether it’s going to be extractivism or whether they might follow the paths of countries like Costa Rica, which has much better economic indicators than Ecuador, in spite of the fact that no mining whatsoever is allowed there.

DJ: So I know this is an unfair question, because you just mentioned that 11% of the country has been put on the block here, put on the mining block, which is a lot of territory. But can you briefly introduce people to the landscape of Ecuador that is threatened. You said that it’s one of the most biodiverse hot spots, but who lives there? And are we talking, are these mainly rainforests going to be destroyed? Or is it also brush land? What are we talking about here, as far as the biomes involved?

JS: Because I haven’t visited Ecuador in 20 years, and I’m coming entirely from an activist perspective about how do we raise awareness and funding from around the world to stop this from taking place, my own interest is, my main interest is in rainforests and the Los Cedros Reserve is covered in rainforest. And I would certainly say that nearly all of the threatened areas are rainforest, because most of the undeveloped land in Ecuador is rainforest. But there certainly will be other biomes that are involved, but I’m afraid I can’t really talk about that. What I will say is that the whole thing looks like being illegal and one of the options that we’re looking at is; Ecuador was the first country in the world to include the rights of nature in its constitution. And the constitution was rewritten during a great period of turmoil and upheaval about ten years ago, and this was largely led by the indigenous people, who are more than half of Ecuador’s population. The rights of nature were included, so one of the things that we’re looking at is a class action suit on behalf of the threatened natural areas, where the nature itself is the plaintiff, and the Constitution may give us the right to speak on behalf of the earth.

DJ: That’s great. So another question I want to ask you is, you said that a lot of the local governments oppose these mining concessions. I don’t know anything about the politics of Ecuador. I mainly – I’ve been an activist in the United States. I know in the United States we have a terrible difficulty, because no matter how destructive some project is, quite often local governments will push it. Local governments are often extremely reactionary and frankly greedy in the United States. Do we have a different dynamic in Ecuador?

JS: I had the same reaction. This is fairly recent news, the last couple of months, that this coalition is formed, and I’ve been wondering when I’m going to find out more about Ecuadorian politics, because of course Australia; the way that you described local governments in the United States would describe Australia to a T. And so I think part of the thing is that because of the huge indigenous population, at least in certain parts of Ecuador the local governments are much more actually representing the ordinary people, rather than being the political class as they are in Australia and no doubt in the United States.

DJ: So how did this happen? You keep saying that it was pretty surreptitious. What happened to cause these concessions to be sprung upon the people?

JS: I guess the first thing that happened was that about 15 years ago the World Bank funded a program, many millions of dollars, to do geological surveys that included protected areas in Ecuador, even national parks, even icons like the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological Reserve. They both flew over the areas and conducted geological surveys from the air, and also on the ground. Our director at that time, Ruth Rosenhek from the Rainforest Information Center, was visiting Los Cedros and there’s a tale of how she chased these prospectors off Los Cedros Reserve at that time.

And so a geological map of likely spots of interest to the mining industry was created by the World Bank, and part of their mission at that time was also to draw up proposals or suggestions for a new legislative framework that would make it easier for mining companies to go and access. And so the mining industry last year awarded Ecuador their award of the best country in the world, the most favorable country in the world for mining because of this beautiful new regulatory framework that the government kind of slipped into place that makes it like a tax holiday. They can have their head office in the Cayman Islands or somewhere, you know, they can avoid taxes in a thousand different ways. And basically it’s a very sweet deal economically for mining companies. And then the government must have auctioned off these areas but we don’t know anything about that. All we know is who owns which concession. The process to the way that this happened is completely mysterious and hidden.

So yesterday the government of Ecuador announced that no new mining concessions would be handed out. So I believe that means that the campaign and the fact that people have found out and starting to gather in protest is beginning to have some impact. And the question is; okay, that’s a good start, no more, but then how far can we wind it back? That’s impossible to know.

The other fact, that besides the World Bank writing a new set of laws for Ecuador, is that the Chinese have come in to rescue Ecuador. When oil prices dropped and this sort of left-wing government couldn’t keep up payments for the ambitious social programs and other programs, they borrowed many billions of dollars from the Chinese. We’re confident that these concessions, many of them to Chinese companies, are part of the quid pro quo.

DJ: Let’s talk about the effects of mining on rainforest in general, and what you have seen over the decades of your work. Let’s be very clear about what mining does to the land.

JS: The first thing that it does is the roads that allow the equipment in become the roads that allow illegal logging, poaching, illegal land development, all kinds of activities can get access into areas that were previously extremely difficult to access. Then, what we’re talking about here with these concessions isn’t the mining, but mining exploration. And a lot of people say “Oh, they’re only exploring, it’s not like they’re going to dig holes in the ground many kilometers wide and then have millions and millions of tons of tailings pouring toxic heavy metals into the rivers” and so on and so on. They’re “only exploring.” But the interesting thing is that apart from the physical damage caused by exploration, because of course they need roads to explore, and we’ve got lots of photographs of areas where exploration has taken place, and it’s not pretty at all. The process of exploration from the mining companies’ point of view is how to corrupt the local population and bring them into the picture. And so they typically promise, make incredible promises about how many people are going to be employed, and they’re going to get four times as much as they earn as farmers, and they buy sewing machines for the women, they do all kinds of amazing things to ingratiate themselves with the population. And to make sure that if they find anything they’re going to have strong alliances with local people on their side. There’s this incredible process of corruption of the social fabric that’s going on during the exploration phase.

One of the projects we’re looking for funding for at the moment is that one of the bravest of the activists who’ve been working in that area in the Andes to try and stop mining for more than 20 years in the Intag region, very close to Los Cedros, is Carlos Zorilla, who’s had threats to his life and has been named by the president of the country as being a traitor and so on. And his colleagues want to make a film of interviews with the miners in areas where the mining has come and gone, and what the promises were and what the impacts were. It turns out that it ends up looking very very different, as I’m sure won’t surprise you, looks very very different from the promises made by the mining companies.

But in those areas where any exploration has been allowed, the mining companies do have a very strong subversive element within the community that will undermine. And also there’s a huge amount of corruption that’s involved. They are hiring indigenous leaders to divide those communities. They cause an incredible amount of havoc socially. And the corruption goes to the highest levels, so that a couple of months ago the Vice President of Ecuador, a man called Glas, ended up in jail for accepting bribes. It’s a kind of horrible corrupting atmosphere, not only of the environment. Most of the environmental corruption takes place during the actual mining phase. The amount of destruction that takes place from the exploration is relatively small, although of course includes fragmenting habitats by putting roads in. It’s much easier to put in a road than it is to close it later.

And then the rain forests themselves; we, on our website, Bitty Roy and her colleagues, who published the kind of scientific paper with the maps of the areas where these concessions have been surreptitiously granted; are working on their report on the biodiversity of the areas involved. Many papers have been written about the effects of mining, 10 kilometers, 50 kilometers, 100 kilometers from the mine, and the effects on biodiversity are visible.

DJ: Can you tell me a little bit more about that, before we move on to some more social justice stuff. What would be some of the effects – how would it have an effect 100 miles from the mine? I’m not disagreeing, I just really want to know.

JS: I understand, and I wish some of my colleagues were here who would be able to give you a much more satisfactory answer. It’s just that many of the species that we’re talking about, a huge amount of Ecuador has already been cleared for agriculture and for this, that and the other thing. Many of the species, I believe that Los Cedros has 60 endangered species on this small area of 17,000 acres, a relatively small area. Some of these species have quite large ranges, especially the big cats and so on, so as they are driven closer to local extinctions, that has effects on the populations further afield. And so I’m not exactly sure of the mechanism but I do know that before-and-after studies have traced the impacts of the mine to many, many kilometers from the site of the mine itself. And especially downstream, the impacts go all the way to the ocean, because of the acid mine drainage that inevitably follows when they dump the tailings. Cyclonic rains leach the heavy metals out of those tailings and they destroy the ecology of the streams all the way to either the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean.

DJ: I’m thinking about harming the species 100 miles away. My question was kind of silly, I realize, because we’ve seen this a bunch. When Fish and Wildlife traps a creature and puts it out in the wild, quite often it dies, because you’re putting it in somebody else’s habitat, somebody else’s home. You move a bear, and there’s already a bear living there. And in this case, if you’re displacing somebody, they’re going to displace somebody else who’s going to displace somebody else who’s going to displace somebody else. And we see this all the time with indigenous humans, too. As the white people went across this continent there was a wave of refugees in front of them, who were often fleeing, and that would create social dislocation in people hundreds of miles away because there’s this influx of refugees. And we can assume the same thing would be absolutely true with nonhumans, where the refugees then crowd out those who live there.

JS: That’s a very good point and I’m sure that’s correct. And it actually reminds me of a friend and colleague Alastair McIntosh, who wrote about the impact of the British colonizing Scotland, and the Scots fleeing to Canada, and wreaking the same havoc in Canada as had befallen them, until the English turned Scotland into estates and things like that, and destroyed the social cohesion and the livelihood of the people there. Otherwise there’s no reason why anybody would have taken a perilous trip to Canada, and once they’re in Canada they do the same thing to the people already living there. So there’s this incredible knock-on effect.

DJ: So let’s talk about the history in mining of social injustice. Because it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about heading into the Black Hills of the Dakotas, or whether we’re talking about the Gold Rush of 1849, in the United States, in California. When you see this – around the world, mining is notorious for human rights abuses. So can you talk just a little bit about that and your experience, especially as it relates to the humans who live in or near rainforest, in your experience, or in your work.

JS: The disruption of the indigenous world by any kind of development so-called development is ubiquitous. There’s nowhere in Australia, anywhere that I’ve ever been where this disruption doesn’t take place. And in certain countries I’d stand at the point of a gun, so at the moment the military are in the Shuar territory in the Amazon, and that’s related to the fact that 50% of their territory has now been conceded to mining companies, and 75% of the Awá territory on the Columbian border in the Andes has been conceded to mining companies.

So, indigenous people are killed, environmental activists are killed, people who oppose the spread of mining are killed. There’s a huge amount of money involved and according to the mining company press, they anticipate an extra $8 billion in investment over the next two or three years in Ecuador, based on this new regulatory framework. I have no idea what that translates to as profits, but I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot more than $8 billion, given the sweet tax deals and labor laws and all the rest of it, that the Ecuadorian government with the help of the World Bank has created for them.

To tell you the truth, I’m much more at home looking at the mechanics of running a blockade in Australia or the United States, or the mechanics of creating a crowdfund to help support these things than I am with the details on the ground. I’ve spent very little time, myself, in the countries involved. Many of my colleagues have spent their lives there. So I feel like I’m coming across as a little bit ignorant because I am. What I know is that the rainforests are the very womb of life. They’re home to more than half the species of plants and animals in the world, and the satellite photographs that show them disappearing at a rate that – there’s no doubt that we’re witnessing a mass extinction event that’s comparable to the cause of the dinosaurs or any of the other huge extinction events where more than half of the species of plants and animals present at the beginning of such an event have disappeared at the end. And the only question is, how severe is this going to be? That’s what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting to limit the severity of this extinction spasm.

I believe that when the dinosaurs were extinguished, approximately half of the species of plants and animals that were alive at the time disappeared with them. Before that, 230 million years ago, at the end of the Permian era, there was an extinction event where more than 90% of all of the species living on earth disappeared. We believe that we know that it was an asteroid and a kind of nuclear winter scenario that followed, that caused the extinction spasm 65 million years ago. But there’s no scientific consensus as to what happened 230 million years ago. All that we know is that wherever we are in the world, as we dig down and we come to that layer, we come to a layer where suddenly 90-95% of all of the species disappear. So we’re in the middle of, is it going to be 50% or is it going to be 95%? That may be something that we can have a say in, still. But there’s no doubt that 100 million years from now, should there be a geologist around, they will see this extinction spasm written in the fossil record.

DJ: In many ways, the most important thing that we can do – it’s like an environmentalist friend of mine says; as things become increasingly chaotic he wants to make sure that some doors remain open, by which he means that if bull trout are still alive in 10 years, they may be alive in 100, but if they’re gone in 10 years, they’re gone. And so he basically has a “not on my watch” attitude. He’s going to protect every wild being and every wild place he can, because we can’t know the future.

JS: That’s right. And because it’s not over until it’s over. Once one has seen this, then it’s difficult to find anything else all that important. Or, for some people, like myself, it’s like the only game in town. Not because I have some hope of success, because, with your help, I don’t believe in hope. But just because, what else is there to do under such circumstances? I used to sort of believe that we were witnessing the emergence of a new consciousness in human beings, during the 60’s and 70’s. Many of us, I suppose, had this feeling that we were watching the birth of a new consciousness.

And I’m not completely cured of that yet. The sense that it’s coming, it’s coming. It would be hard to be confident about that. You’d have to be in denial to be confident about that. But the fact that it’s a possibility remains. Because nothing less than that could save us, frankly. No technological change, no tinkering with the edges. Nothing could save us except a revolution in consciousness where human beings wake up to who we really are, you know, part of this thing. That there is no “out there” to dump our tailings. It’s all in here, it’s all cycling through us. We’re just part of this incredible, enormous, beautiful worldwide web of biology, and that if we not only understood that intellectually, but also experienced ourselves that way, if a change in identity took place where we understood who we really are, underneath that thin veneer of social fictions, of nationality and religion and all the rest of that nonsense, then I believe that we’re clever enough, and the technology exists where there’s every chance that we could turn this thing around. So there’s nothing missing except the correct understanding, the correct identification, the correct understanding of who we really are and where our interests really lie.

And so, should that change take place, then I’m sure our descendants will be immensely grateful to whomever was able to protect this species or that species, because that is going to be the basis of where evolution will continue from, with humanity reduced to a much, much more humble and much smaller presence. Because of understanding that all that vast wildness out there is the only hope for a truly sustainable, in geological terms, sustainable future for humanity.

Humans are a young species. Dinosaurs were around for 100 million years before they were extinguished. We’ve just been around for a million years or two. And of course we, like everything else that’s alive today, have this incredible pedigree. When I’m feeling particularly morose I think about the fact that every single one of my ancestors, going back to the first cell of life on earth 4 billion years ago, every single one of those ancestors succeeded, at least in reaching the age of reproducing itself before it was consumed. Not a single one of those ancestors failed to pass life forward or I wouldn’t be here talking shit with you.

So that’s a tremendous pedigree and it gives me a feeling that there must – and every being that’s alive today has that pedigree. So, and on the other hand, 99.99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct. It’s very few that get through the sieve, especially of these mass extinctions, and so the fact that we’ve made it this far is absolutely no guarantee as to what happens next. But it does mean that a certain confidence in the possibility of making the necessary moves to get through this may be there. And the crucial piece then is, if the change in consciousness and protecting everything that we can in terms of biology, indigenous culture and the old ways will help us to create a livable future.

DJ: Thank you for that. You know, so many indigenous people have said to me that the first and most important thing that we have to do is to decolonize our hearts and minds. And one of the things that they’ve talked to me about, about that, is that one of the things that that means is transferring our loyalty away from the system, to which we – our loyalty is made to the system very young. And one of the things to do is to transfer our loyalty away from the system and back to the living earth.

JS: Very beautifully put. I couldn’t agree with you more, or with them more.

So, apart from my practical conservation work, which started with the first blockade to protect the rainforest in 1979, the first in the world that we know of, in Terania Creek just a few kilometers from where I was living in a sort of hippie meditation community, which turned my life around – in all of that time there’s this sense that unless we can change this psychological dimension or spiritual dimension, unless we understand why humans are behaving in such a self-defeating manner and do something about that, then none of the on-the-ground efforts is going to be sufficient.

In the mid-80’s I came upon a philosophy of nature called “deep ecology,” which has had some kind of impact, but not nearly as much as it deserves, because it remains the only explanation that satisfies me as to what this is about, why we behave in this fashion. So the term “deep ecology” was coined by the professor of philosophy from Oslo University Arne Dekke Eide Næss. And he said that underlying all of the symptoms of the environmental crisis is the illusion of separation between human beings and the natural world. The illusion of separation. So it sounds a little mystical, but all you have to do to understand what he meant is hold your breath for five minutes while you think about it. So in other words, we don’t – when we think about who we are, we don’t think “Oh, I’m a breather.” But if we hold our breath for five minutes it quickly becomes clear to us that whoever we think we are, unless we take another breath, we’re not going to be there for much longer.

And it’s the same with the food we eat and the water we drink, that we are inextricably embedded in nature. We have no independent existence. But according to Ness, as a result of anthropocentrism or human-centeredness, this illusion of separation has sort of corrupted our psyches and corrupted our cultures for thousands and thousands of years. And he traces it back at least as far as the Old Testament, the idea that man was created in God’s image and that nature is to be in fear and trembling of us while we subdue and dominate it.

So as a result of the psychological and cultural forms that have been created by this pernicious and mistaken view of life – many indigenous societies understand that the world is web, and we’re just one strand in that web, and we’re not the spider in the middle the way that we think we are.

So with Joanna Macey, about 1987, I began to create experiential processes to try to give form to Arne Ness’s call. He said that what we need are community therapies to heal that illusion of separation, to heal our relations with the wisest of all communities, that of all living beings. And so these experiential deep ecology workshops, the first of them was called “The Council of All Beings” and I continue to facilitate these eight or ten weekends of the year. But I can’t say that they’ve taken off like wildfire or anything like that. The book that Joanna and I wrote with Arne Ness; Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, which was published in 1988, and the text of which is available for free on the Rainforest Information Center website, has been translated into a dozen languages and last year it was translated into Mandarin. So the information is out there. It hasn’t really found fertile ground yet, I’ll be the first to admit. But on the other hand, things can change so quickly now. You know the story of the 100 monkeys? It’s a good kind of metaphor. I always think; imagine if there were 99 monkeys there, and then I didn’t show up? There’s no way to tell what it is that might be the key to creating that change in consciousness that could lead to the protection of the future of humanity and all of our Cenozoic Era buddies that we’ve coevolved with.

DJ: You know, one of the things that I loved about your work, for 30 years now, is that you combine that direct activism of protecting ground through whatever means are workable, in that circumstance, and also the spiritual work. I think that’s an incredibly important combination. I think that it is perfectly valid for some people to focus on spiritual work and some people to focus on physical work, depending on their proclivities. But there’s a certain sort of magic that occurs when you can bring both of those together.

JS: I agree, and it reminds me that when we first started doing our direct actions, the very special poet Gary Snyder came from California to do poetry readings in Australia, and we went to see him and he introduced me to Earth First! And he had a copy of the Earth First! Journal with him, and I was so excited because this was the first really radical environmental group I’d come across. And so I wrote to them and they said “Write for our journal.” So I started to send them articles about the direct actions that we were doing in Australia for the rainforests, and they invited me over to start a rainforest campaign in the United States, which I did in 1986. I did a road show with Dave Foreman and Mike Roselle, two founders of Earth First!, and Cecelia Ostrow, and we went all around many many states for six weeks doing a show every night and starting rainforest action groups and so on.

And I went to my first Round River Rendezvous. I don’t know if they still do it. I’m a bit out of touch, but it’s the festival that Earth First! used to have, at least, every year. They would choose the site of the rendezvous, of a wilderness area that was close enough to a destructive development so that the day after the rendezvous, people would converge on the development and shut it down. I think the first one I went to was on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, where we had this beautiful four or five days in the wilderness, and then we shut down a nuclear power plant nearby.

So one of the things I really like about Earth First! is their distrust of woo-woo. They don’t like crystals, they don’t like the kind of New Age – they pronounce it “newage” and rhyme it with “sewage.” So I was in this peculiar position where I was well known to everybody there because of the writings that I’ve done and I was known as an activist, as part of a really successful movement in Australia that had protected lots and lots of rainforests, through direct action and blockades, but here I was talking about deep ecology and doing workshops called “Council of All Beings.” What could be more woo-woo than that?

And so I started to hold workshops at the Round River Rendezvous where I would try and point out the distinction between “woo-woo” and true woo-woo. That there is actually like a baby that could be thrown out with the bathwater there, and I claimed to be representing that baby, that there is something very important about the rituals and ceremonies that all indigenous peoples have always conducted, to honor and praise and worship, and maintain that connection between the human and the rest of the natural world. That this isn’t something that’s left to chance. That every society has these experiential processes where many times during the year, people gather to remember all our relations, and to make sure that human tendency to drift off into merely social and economic ways of looking at the world, that there is a kind of correction for that.

So I feel that the deep ecology work that I’ve done has been kind of instrumental in keeping me on the straight and narrow. That I continually need to be reminded of who I really am, underneath the stories that I tell myself.

DJ: So we have about three or four minutes left, and to wind down, I have two questions. One of them is how can people find out more about the Council of All Beings and those workshops, and your deep ecological work, and then the other question is; if people want to help with what is going on in Ecuador, how can they find out more and what can they do? If they’re in the United States, if they’re outside the United States, whatever.

JS: The Rainforest Information Center website, the old website, is
http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au

There’s a link on the Welcome page called “deep ecology” that then links to a treasure trove of information about the Council of All Beings, including my schedule. But I’ll have to say that I haven’t traveled outside this part of the world for ten years or so. My carbon credits have been totally maxed out many years ago. But there are many people in the United States who offer experiential deep ecology workshops. If you can’t find it any other way, just send me an email on that connection on the website and I’ll put you in touch with it. And I’m otherwise happy to send you links to answer any questions that you’ve got about that.

And as to helping with Ecuador, there’s a new website

http://www.rainforestinformationcentre.org

And that leads to a petition that we’re asking people to sign. And by signing that petition you’re having the opportunity to leave a tick in the little box that says “You can send me updates, keep me informed.”

http://www.rainforestinformationcentre.org/save_ecuadors_forests_from_mining

You also have an opportunity to tick a little box that says “volunteer.” Because we could use lots and lots of help, I haven’t got time to go into the details, but wherever you are in the world, you’ll be able to help with this campaign. And there’s a link from that petition to a crowdfund, where Paul Gilding, another Australian who was for a long time the executive director of Greenpeace International, likes this campaign and has offered to match funding up to $15,000 on a dollar-per-dollar basis.

https://www.fundmyplanet.org/campaign/11/save-ecuadors-forests-from-mining

So if you’ll go to this crowdfund, you’ll help us to support the civil society in Ecuador to try and turn this thing around and your dollar will generate another dollar from Paul Gilding.

So, thanks so much, Derrick. I’m a deep admirer of your work. I believe that your kind of analysis of the situation is one of the few that goes deep enough into the real causes and the real solutions. So it’s an honor to be on your program.

DJ: Well thank you so much. And it is an honor to speak with you, too. And I would like to thank listeners for listening. My guest today has been John Seed. This is Derrick Jensen for Resistance Radio on the Progressive Radio Network.

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