"If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely to step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home." Derrick Jensen
- Posts filed in Essays
Self-Evident Truths
July 1st, 2012There isn’t a chance in hell that something like the original Wilderness Act could be passed today. Environmentalists today are too much on the defensive. Sure, there have been green platforms and policy papers, but nothing I’ve read matches the urgency of this moment. So I decided to draft a declaration. It goes like this: […]
Read More... Filed in EssaysDemocracy of Destruction
May 1st, 2012When the will of the people spells demise for the planet By Derrick Jensen / Deep Green Resistance The United States is not a democracy. It is more accurate to say we live in a plutocracy — a government of, by, and for the wealthy — or more accurate still, a kleptocracy — a government […]
Read More... Filed in EssaysLoaded Words
February 24th, 2012Recently, I’ve been thinking about something I wrote fourteen years ago, which has become one of my most quoted passages: “Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write, or blow up a dam.” Despite having faith in my work as a writer, I knew that it wasn’t a lack of […]
Read More... Filed in EssaysA New Declaration
February 1st, 2012We hold these truths to be self-evident: That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise. Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all […]
Read More... Filed in EssaysA Modest Proposal—How Cigar Cutters Can Save the Environment
January 24th, 2012An inability to acknowledge that one has been wrong is one of the reasons this culture is killing the planet. Collectively, we cannot simply acknowledge that, as Jared Diamond has said (and many others also have made clear), agriculture was (and continues to be) the worst mistake humans have ever made. Agriculture, then civilization, then […]
Read More... Filed in Essays