The Extractors and climatocide |
by Jan Lundberg | |
05 July 2007 | |
Culture Change Letter # 164 - July 25, 2007 Sections: - Extraction culture dating from Sumer until present - Extraction aided by modern technology and social forces - Psych-op for nonstop hyper extraction - The Nazi system: brazen extractors - Conclusion: "alternative" economies are the only way Introduction The end of the extractive economy is in sight, when sea level rise alone will undermine and depopulate coastal cities worldwide, causing enough inundation and destruction to terminate most global trade. This apparent certainty is more than enough reason -- even though petrocollapse could happen faster -- to question the way we produce and live. To understand the rise of The Extractors through Western Civilization's reign can help us see how we have clung to a faulty and lethal system. Extraction is euphemised as "production," in part because the latter term is commonly considered a basic fact of life in our industrial minds. History reveals our succumbing to the extraction culture through force as well as feel-good advertising. The Extractors concept describes what we allow done to us when we submit to others for complete domestication in order to cater to their devouring the Earth, while we willingly participate. Extracting is also an apt vision, as depicted in the film The Matrix, for using humans as energy sources. This is only fanciful in the particular method in the movie, where people are bred from embryos on through maturity like cattle by heartless machine-beings. With a similar wake-up message, The Yes Men guerilla political-theater group has fooled oil-business addicts with an elaborate pseudo-corporate proposal for Vivoleum ("Solves Global Warming and Peak Oil"): left-over human biomass soon to be available when petrocollapse and climate disaster hit. These artistic depictions of the extractive mentality and our plight refer to the dominant culture's intent to plug everyone on the planet into slavish consumption and work. Extractive industries' colonialism and imperialism are sold as job-producing and "opening up markets" for "free trade." How can that really be "greened?" It can't, but some would use environmentalism to soften the extreme excesses of corporations and government and try to keep us on board the good ship Titanic with faith-based navigation. Questioning the ongoing waste economy and its global injustice, the green ethic of re-use and recycling is -- without necessarily realizing it -- antithetical to economic growth as measured by gross domestic product and mega-corporate profits. The Extractor Economy cannot do the right thing for the ecosystem, and neither can the environmental movement if it keeps undermining itself by accepting unending extraction and consumption. The consumer lifestyle depends on nonstop extraction for increased electricity use, although limits are starting to be seen along with fresh water shortages due to climate developments in this time of continued population growth. Environmentalists generally avoid focusing on stopping many activities threatening our future existence. Instead, they promote the status quo, e.g., higher C.A.F.E. standards for ever more motor vehicles, and constructing ever more buildings with greener materials such as mushroom-based insulation. There's an "unlimited market" for the technofix, such that the obdurate fundamentals of overpopulation-via-petroleum dependence are swept under the rug. In the previous Culture Change article on ecological economics, John Feeney wrote that mainstream economists were in effect promoting homicide when they try to grow the economy. Indeed, growth on a finite planet is not only crazy and homicidal, but is rushing at breakneck speed. Pouring gasoline on a fire, "The exploding growth in China’s and India's economies (current GDP growth of 11% and 9% respectively) is placing demands on the world’s natural resources in a way that is unprecedented." [Colorado's State Geologist Vincent Matthews, Peak Oil Review, ASPO-USA] Is this not "climatocide?" Extraction culture dating from Sumer until present Several thousand years ago, after about 200,000 years of anatomically modern human existence, a group of people in what is now the Middle East gradually gave up the hunter-gatherer way of life. They chose to rely on farming and town settlement. Thus, "civilization" was born. It ultimately gave rise to today's Western Civilization and all its trappings such as the global economy, and it inexorably led to the climate crisis becoming our worst fear in only the last few years. That original culture that developed agriculture and living in cities may have taken this path out of the need for simple survival and in incremental steps, assuming it was not a predatory impulse to begin with. Regardless, a clear case can be made that the preference for civilization was an ecological mistake that now, centuries later, on a grand scale threatens the world as we know it. Extraction of fossil fuels, of forests, of crops with the attendant tilling and erosion, industrial animal farming, as well as the regimentation of the population as workers and other forms of servants of empire, all derived from the original culture of extraction that evolved in the Middle East. The extractors, or "takers," do more than use the environment and other people. They systematically squeeze out all the benefit they can for selfish, short-term reasons. What is left behind is devastation and impoverishment. Desertification was one major result of this culture in the "Fertile Crescent" which supported the oldest of empires, Sumer. This was in all likelihood the beginning of rigid social hierarchies on a massive scale, and inequality that resulted in slavery, poverty as well as kings and opulence. The well-organized takers also allocated much of the extraction or wealth for social and political purposes, as in crumbs off the table to aid in the control of the population. This is called good government or altruism, but however generous or justified this can be made to appear, the main beneficiaries are the ruling extractors. In the beginning of this culture in the Middle East the process meant the first regular "surplus" created for armies, the priest-scholars, "public works," and other institutions. Combining with the first agricultural societies were herders or pastoralists, at first at odds with farmers that horsemen preyed upon. Eventually, animal husbandry and cavalry became a major feature of the nascent Western Civilization, and the pastoralists and nomads have been driven almost entirely to extinction. Animals in close quarters with domesticated, "penned" people caused diseases (and substantial immunity to them), as well as new strains still with us that are mutating. Today, animal farming is a major and growing extractive industry that is so unsustainable that cow flatulence ranks among the highest sources of global warming gases. Agriculture uses and wastes mind-boggling amounts of of fresh water, energy, and topsoil, but factory farms for animal products' extraction are the worst culprit. The greatest example of modern humanity's extraction-oriented way of living is the constant use of electricity. As we are hardly ever harvesting truly free electricity such as from a llightning bolt, the extraction of electric power comes with a cost, mostly in entropy (i.e., waste in the form of degraded states of matter). Despite the obvious consequences of electricity addiction, such as dams that hurt fish runs, radioactive waste lasting thousands of years, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain -- to name a few -- we still insist on using power wastefully instead of sharing appliances and using manual tools, for example. Older buildings had few electric plugs; now every wall has perhaps two sockets. The public is brainwashed to believe electricity is on a par with shelter and drinking-water as essentials. More is better: electric cars, electric tooth brushes, computer information instead of print media, etc. Instead of doing without, such as living without household refrigerators, the only option is supposedly more efficient units. This cycles more pollution-boxes into the landfills, as efficient models also wear out. From the July 16th disaster at the largest nuclear power plant in the world, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa in Japan, we are reminded that our addiction for extractive power remains unquestioned. The radiation leaks and the official deception have been criticized by news media, but weren't they inevitable, as are more so-called accidents in future around the world? Extraction aided by modern technology and social forces Today the dominant culture and the global corporate economy practice extraction on every level. Growing food was where it began, ending up so: farm soil is used as a mere medium, stripped of beneficial bacteria and other ingredients, for growing a few species of plant via petroleum fuels, machines, and petrochemicals. Tilling releases nitrous oxide to help warm the globe. Water and everything in it is considered a "resource" to be exploited and used up, rather than treated as a sacred, vital part of life to share and keep pure. [see Culture Change's global water crisis report; link at bottom.] A worker, in almost any job, has his or her time and energy legally extracted for the benefit or profit of the few. A job that is pleasant and good for our Earth is considered rare and it generally pays much ess. The principal extraction industries are usually identified as timber and minerals (including fossil fuels). But when we stop and think about modern human activity, it is organized around extraction. The pattern and objectives are short-term and not about sustainable use or restoration of the ravaged ecosystem. ![]() Oil operations in Brazil - use a car, we are extracting in the worst way, and not giving back to the ecosystem.A local-based economy cannot remain extractive for long. Therefore, extraction means a far-flung ecological footprint as well as aggressive tactics to obtain the "resources." Petroleum is the best example: its extraction is called production, even though depletion is the only possible outcome for the land whence it came. Oil peaked in global extraction in about 1964, and despite propaganda to the contrary, subsequent wars were essentially over resources, especially petroleum. Why is the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan? We now import fully two thirds of our oil. The State Geologist of Colorado recently wrote that U.S. history does not support the view "that technology will save us." "Since the U.S. peak (in oil extraction) in 1970, we have had huge advances in frac technology, seismic processing, 3D seismic, CO2 oil recovery, computing power and software innovation, horizontal drilling, and on and on. Yet, our oil production has been in nearly constant decline." [Vincent Matthews]Extractors use up a vital component of the environment -- the web of life -- and then move on, in "boom and bust" fashion. From forests to coal to oil, modern civilization has come to offer us plastic chairs, plastic eating utensils, patented petrochemical medicines and massively accelerated entropy, in place of high quality goods and local-based plant medicines, to cite a few examples. The extractors only know removal, growth of this removal, and brutal repression of those who directly question and fight extraction. Extraction is violence. Whether reformers of today's extraction, or the blind fanatics of growth who support military-means for continuing extraction, they are determined to keep their system running regardless of the impacts. They know no other way of living or of organizing society to be a real community. So, despite their disasters, they tell us what must be, as they cling to holy Civilization and admonish us to support their schemes. Their message dominates because people, including some environmentalists, are well paid to spout it, or delude themselves to believe it. People accept this unfair, teetering system of never-ending extraction in part because they are so trusting. The limited information and slanted news consumed by any citizens open to change passes, unfortunately, for answers to problems of resource depletion. But these problems are very rarely publicly acknowledged as relating to today's hyper-extraction. Recycling can never overcome relentless extraction and throw-away consumption. Re-use, however, gets closer to doing so. Creating a non-extractive economy based on local ecological limits is clearly what is needed, and the test for acceptance by the extractors would be how much it would upset them. The extractors will never give up, so unless we put our hope in the collapse of their ability to keep extracting, they should be consciously stopped. How to do this with hope for success toward evolving a modern nonviolent culture, when we're running out of time? Measures involving yanking dollars from the insatiable maw of the growth economy suck the life blood of extractive industry. So, they offer more hope and are more reasonable and effective than fighting cops or smashing SUVs, for example. Julian Darley and I, in our 2005 joint essay, had some ideas in cutting car use drastically which would tend to bring down the extractive U.S. economy (and likely other parts of the global economy). The car is the ultimate in extraction, such that the mining and manufacturing processes spew more air pollution than what exits the tailpipe. Each car in its lifetime is responsible for three dead trees and 30 ‘sick’ trees. [Environment and Forecasting Institute, Heidelberg, Germany ]. ![]() ![]() culturechange.org/cms "Ways to end car culture along with the globalized trade godzilla" - articles by Jan Lundberg and Julian Darley, March 11, 2005: culturechange.org/cms A Green History of the World and A New Green History of the World, by Clive Ponting rbooks.co.uk (Random House UK) Ishmael and My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn: ishmael.org "Increased Global Demand for Energy and Mineral Resources" Vincent Matthews, Peak Oil Review, Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas - USA: aspo-usa.com "The Environmental Cost of the Car", "dirty from cradle to grave," by John Whitelegg, covering the study by Umwelt-und Prognose-Institut Heidelberg "Öko-bilanz eines autolebens" (Environment and Forecasting Institute, Heidelberg, Germany: lead.org.au Sea level rise: "Puget Sound: Deeper troubles," Seattle newspaper editorial: seattlepi.nwsource.com Discarded stuff: incredible images and stats on consumer culture (e.g., two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes): chrisjordan.com Honor The Earth (exective director is Winona LaDuke) creates awareness and support for Native environmental issues by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom: honorearth.org * * * * * Historical note from the American Heritage Dictionary Su·mer (soo-mer): An ancient country of southern Mesopotamia in present-day southern Iraq. Archaeological evidence dates the beginnings of Sumer to the fifth millennium B.C. By 3000 a flourishing civilization existed, which gradually exerted power over the surrounding area and culminated in the Akkadian dynasty, founded c. 2340 by Sargon I. Sumer declined after 2000 and was later absorbed by Babylonia and Assyria. The Sumerians are believed to have invented the cuneiform system of writing.
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