Fastest growing fossil fuel consumers in the world and all kinds of horrible anti-environmental things going on there.

Go on. Sick e’m boy!

It’s his creative contribution to the ongoing (and sometimes pretty tiresome) debate over what kind of tactics are appropriate for resisting environmental destruction. As you can probably tell, Jensen is in the “by any means necessary” camp.

PK Dick(from Valis, p.134)

Any argument or point he makes fails, because using pop culture shows an unabashed knowledge and slight fondness for civilization’s excess.

Also his use of this subject implies the SW reference he makes is ubiquitous. That you may not understand the circles and topics he travels in, but by applying it to pop culture surrogates, you may gain a better understanding of either the humor or the folly of a POV, by completely toying with a ficticious POV already ingrained in the relm of “common knowledge”. This is a fail too – everyone will tune out at the beginning, knowing ewoks would never use stimulants.

The modern left is forces of the status quo’s most potent weapon.

This “let’s blow up shit to advance our cause” won’t convince anyone that we need to save our environment. Even saying we should go to just before the Industrial Revolution, no cars or electricity or modern medicine, won’t work.

There was a reason the population of Earth didn’t hit a billion until the 19th century. A bunch of people died because there was very little food, very little protection against disease and very few people to reproduce with that lived in walking distance. If you say we should save the environment by going backward to some previous point, you basically are condemning at least a billion people to die, mainly in Africa.

The only way that Africa and Asia will industrialize and prosper is continued technology. We’re going to have to make some sacrifices, like no GMOs or organic farming, and we’ll need to find a way to power the earth efficiently and with as little an impact as possible but we can do that, if we can land on the moon and come back, we can do that.

we DO have 7 billion people because of civilization….but there’s no way this planet can sustain 7 billion people on this planet. It’s simply not possible.

@RTRESCO
“Any argument or point he makes fails, because using pop culture shows an unabashed knowledge and slight fondness for civilization’s excess.”

I don’t follow your logic at all. Because he is aware of the existence of Star Wars (and maybe even enjoyed it) nothing he says about civilization can possibly be true?

Unless we want to live in the stone age, people like Jensen must be stopped.

This comment must have leaked over from a parallel universe, where Derrick Jensen has some kind of power, and any hope of ever accomplishing any of his goals.

Here in our universe … “must be stopped,” from what? Speaking at independent bookstores?

“Technology is getting better and better at not being destructive”

how do you figure? (note, just because you don’t see the destruction, doesn’t mean it’s not happening)

also, Jensen never says that all technology is bad. He says that destroying your landbase is bad – and that as long as there is system in place which rewards people for destroying their landbase, they will continue to do so.

Thank you…. thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m also a fellow anarchist, and I’ve got to agree with everything there. Jensen, Zerzan and the other primitivists and anti-civ folks are a scourge. Just because some technology was destructive doesn’t make all technology destructive. We’re supposed to grow and adapt as a species not regress. Feudalism sucked, so we moved to capitalism, capitalism sucks, some experimented with state socialism others trying to bring about an anarchist society. But either way that was growth. Technology is getting better and better at not being destructive, what needs to happen is that the incentive needs to change. Instead of profit being the incentive we need to folks on community and sustainability as the primary motives, and this will only happen with the over throw of capitalism.

You know what they say: One guy with a knife could kill an entire world of pacifists.

Environmentalists? Non-environmentalists?
Is it advocating violence over ineffectual pacifism? Or is it making fun of the fact that our most famous and memorable movies are violent, unrealistic, and black and white?

It seems like it’s mocking everyone involved.

~D. Walker

Jensen promotes a radical environmentalism that advocates the violent overthrow of civilisation itself. Those horrible motives that the right wing likes to claim greens have? They actually apply to Jensen and those of his ilk (Zerzan for example).

I’m an anarchist and often travel in circles with those sympathetic to Jensen. I believe that capitalism, the state, religion, hetero-normativity, and all other forms of unjust hierarchy and domination must be abolished in order to bring about a more just and sustainable society. I believe that we all need to radically restructure our lives, including give up many technological conveniences (cars, large homes, air conditioning, etc) in order to prevent climate catastrophe and mass extension.

However, I stand on the side of organisation against chaos, planning against immediate insurrection, and smart technology against smashing all tech.

Jensen, the primitivists, and the insurrectionists disagree.

Jensen believes that cities are unsustainable because they “require the importation of resources”. This is like saying that organisms are unsustainable because they require the importation of food.

Unless we want to live in the stone age, people like Jensen must be stopped.

You can go about your business.

Move along.