We Must Reclaim True Environmentalism!

By Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith
Guest Writers for Wake Up World

True environmentalism is not about making our rapacious and destructive industrialism a little more sustainable, but transforming humankind’s relationship with Earth and the life she sustains — for us to take our true place within, and as part of, the living biosphere.

Once, the environmental movement was about protecting the natural world from the insatiable demands of this extractive culture. Some of the movement still is: around the world grassroots activists and their organizations are fighting desperately to save this or that creature they love, this or that plant or fungi, this or that wild place.

Contrast this to what some activists are calling ‘the conservation-industrial complex-­big green organizations’, huge ‘environmental’ foundations, neo-environmentalists, some academics -­ which has co-opted too much of the movement into ‘sustainability’, with that word being devalued to mean ‘keeping this culture going as long as possible.’ Instead of fighting to protect our one and only home, they are trying to ‘sustain’ the very culture that is killing the planet. And they are often quite explicit about their priorities.