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Mining is one of the most viscerally destructive and horrific ways in which the dominant culture—industrial civilization—enacts its violence on the living world. As entirely and unequivocally destructive as this society is, few other industrial activities are as horrifically confronting as mining. Whole landscapes are cleared of life as communities—most often indigenous or poor—are forced from their homes. Mountains level to piles of barren rubble which leach countless poisons, scouring life from whole watersheds. Pits of unimaginable size are carved from the bones of the earth, leaving moonscapes in their wake. Besides the immediate damage to the land at the site of operations, the destruction extends through the uses its products are put to. In this way, mining is crucial to the continued function of industrial civilization, supplying many of the raw materials that form the material fabric of industrial society. Steel, aluminum, copper, coal, tar sands bitumen, cement; the materials extracted through mining are central components of industrial civilization in an immediate and physical way. They are the building blocks of this society. Fortunately, as is the way of things, where there is atrocity and brutalization, there is resistance. There has been a lot of militant anti-mining action happening recently; in the last few months alone there have been several inspiring incidents of people taking direct militant action against mining projects and infrastructure.

There are, at present, many myths about green energy and its efficiency to address the demands and needs of our burgeoning industrial civilization, the least of which is that a switch to “renewable” energy will significantly reduce our dependency on, and consumption of, fossil fuels. The opposite is true. If we study the actual productive processes required for current “renewable” energies (solar, wind, biofuel, etc.) we see that fossil fuels and their infrastructure are not only crucial but are also wholly fundamental to their development. To continue to use the words “renewable” and “clean” to describe such energy processes does a great disservice for generating the type of informed and rational decision-making required at our current junction. To take one example – the production of turbines and the allocation of land necessary for the development, processing, distribution and storage of “renewable” wind energy. From the mining of rare metals, to the production of the turbines, to the transportation of various parts (weighing thousands of tons) to a central location, all the way up to the continued maintenance of the structure after its completion – wind energy requires industrial infrastructure (i.e. fossil fuels) in every step of the process. If the conception of wind energy only involves the pristine image of wind turbines spinning, ever so wonderfully, along a beautiful coast or grassland, it’s not too hard to understand why so many of us hold green energy so highly as an alternative to fossil fuels. Noticeably absent in this conception, though, are the images of everything it took to get to that endpoint (which aren’t beautiful images to see at all and is largely the reason why wind energy isn’t marketed that way). Because of the rapid growth and expansion of industrial civilization in the last two centuries, we are long past the days of easy accessible resources. If you take a look at the type of mining operations and drilling operations currently sustaining our way of life you will readily see degradation and devastation on unconscionable scales. This is our reality and these processes will not change no matter what our ends are – these processes are the degree with which “basic” extraction of all of the fundamental metals, minerals, and resources we are familiar with currently take place. In much the same way that the absurdities of tar sands extraction, mountaintop removal, and hydraulic fracturing are plainly obvious, so too are the continued mining operations and refining processes of copper, silver, aluminum, zinc, etc. (all essential to the development of solar panels and wind turbines).

By Alex Rose / Deep Green Resistance Redwood Coast By now we should all be familiar with what’s at stake. The horrific statistics—200 species driven extinct daily, every child born with hundreds of toxic chemicals already in their bodies, every living system on the planet in decline—haunt us as we go about our work in a world that refuses to hear, listen, or act on them. After decades of traditional organizing and activist work, we’re beginning to come to terms with the need for a dramatic shift in strategy and tactics, and indeed in how we conceptualize the task before us. It is not enough any longer (if it ever was) to build a reformist social movement, one more faction among many attempting to fix the failings within our society. With industrial civilization literally tearing apart the biosphere and skinning the planet alive, we can afford no other goal than to build a resistance movement capable of—and determined to succeed in—bringing down industrial civilization, by any means necessary. We know this will require decisive underground action to be successful, and starting all but from scratch, this begins with promoting the need for militant resistance; trying to garner acceptance and normalization of the fact that without militant resistance—including sabotage and direct attacks on key nodes of industrial infrastructure—there is little, if any, hope that earth will survive much longer. However, the pervasive ideology of the dominant culture leaves most of its members unwilling to even consider dialogue on the topic of militant resistance, much less adopting it as a strategy. One manifestation of this is the all-too-widely held belief that nonviolent resistance is always more effective than violent resistance.

Talking about collapse can prove to be quite alienating. Most people quickly denounce those of us who start these dialogues as “alarmists” in an attempt to nullify all arguments and keep us safe from all evil and depressing thoughts. An obvious reason to dismiss talk of collapse is that there are far too many examples of groups who come along and yell about the end of the world only for their “insight” to turn out rather dubious. But I don’t choose to speak out about collapse for the sake of “the end of the world” or to preach my morals – I bring it up because there are real, tangible limits to a globalized industrial civilization and this intrinsically implies there will be a peak and subsequent fall. This is inevitable and we cannot escape it no matter how long we choose to not talk about it. No one can say absolutely when collapse will occur but we can say with a degree of certainty, based on current levels of complexity, diminishing marginal returns, and the latest climate science, that we are much more likely to experience collapse in the near-term rather than in the far and distant future. This is not meant to scare anyone into submission, religious folly, or isolating despair – it is simply meant to allow us to start seriously discussing our situation, its implications, and how to move forward. How can we manage to proceed through this process in any meaningful capacity if we keep ignoring and denying its possibility?

I almost never watch MSM news, but the other day a preview of a show with Dan Rather about the die-off of bees caught my attention. People were horrified that their business would be hurt, profits would be eviscerated, livelihoods would be irreparably damaged. It’s all about the humans and their economy, not the ecological balance of the planet or what humans have done to push all these non-human species into extinction, in turn threatening homo sapiens’ existence. Mother Nature thinks the same thing of us: “The Earth is being forever defiled by these arrogant, self-centered bastards and all they can think about is their profit margin.” Guess what. The Earth doesn’t care about human wants or needs. A misused and abused Earth does not consider the inconveniences to the human economy posed by climate chaos and environmental collapse. The other creatures inhabiting this planet are being silently driven off the face of the Earth to make way for humankind’s insatiable appetite for domination and control. A creature which sees itself as a force of nature to be reckoned with, separate and superior to the planet that spawned it, will soon be brought down by such conceit. I hope we can handle being the only thing left on the planet. We can pollinate our own crops like the Chinese, and bring back extinct species at will to be placed in zoos for our amusement. We can geoengineer the Earth ‘s atmosphere to fix what we’ve destroyed in a vain effort to maintain this colossal edifice of industrial civilization. We can genetically modify crops so as to try to adapt to the drastically altered environment we’re handing down to future generations, human and non-human. Better yet, we can genetically modify ourselves to survive within this toxic world we’ve created. There is no fucking end to our God Complex.

To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. Chris Hedges

Methane is bubbling from lakes all over the warming Arctic. Here ecologist Katey Walter Anthony (at right) ignites a large bubble that was trapped by the fall freeze, then freed by an ice pick. Over a 20 year time period, methane has global warming potential that is about 72 times stronger than carbon dioxide. As the Arctic sea ice and permafrost continue to melt at accelerating rates, we face the potential of releasing thousands of gigatons of this methane into the atmosphere, reaching a point of runaway climate change with catastrophic consequences that cannot be stopped.

What: Deep Green Resistance NYC Meeting (open attendence) When: Thursday, March 14th at 6pm Where: Columbia University Campus at Brownie’s Cafe (basement floor of Avery Hall) What is the Meeting about?: Tyler will present a brief presentation on an essential topic: Security Culture. Following the brief discussion on Security Culture, an extended, more lively discussion on: why neither the former nor the latter words in “industrial capitalism” are sustainable. Lastly: Logistics. ...

What: Deep Green Resistance NYC Meeting (open attendance) When: Wednesday, March 6th, 2013, 7:15 p.m. Where: Oxford Cafe. 375 5th Ave.( between 35th and 36th) (Closest subway stations: 34th St – Herald Sq. [B, D,F, M] and 33rd st [6]) What is the Meeting About?: Introductions will be followed by a lively discussion on The Gandhi Myth (a critical analysis of various strategies and tactics of resistance). Report backs and logistics will conclude the meeting as we begin to plan our upcoming busy Spring/Summer. ...

What: Deep Green Resistance NYC Meeting (open attendance) When: Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 7:30 p.m. Where: The second floor of M2M. 2935 Broadway (between 114th and 115th) (Closest Metro subway station: 116th St - Columbia University 1 train) What is the Meeting About?: This is our first official DGR meeting, so we will spend a decent amount of time introducing ourselves and getting acquainted. Introduction will be followed by a lively discussion on a passage from the “Liberal vs. Radical” section of Deep Green Resistance. We hope to see you there!