Politics

"Giving Up Faith": The EPA, Dispersants, and the Commons in Chains

By Steve Horn

EPA Administrator Lisa JacksonThe great environmental activist Derrick Jensen, in an article titled "Beyond Hope," published in the May/June 2006 issue of Orion Magazine, lamented,

Most ... environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have -- or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective -- to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals....[N]o matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We?re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don?t care. Frankly, I don?t have much hope. But I think that?s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.

He concludes, "A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn?t kill you. It didn?t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems?you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself?and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself."

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Full post as published by PR Watch on July 21, 2010 (boomark / email).