The Spawning of Climate Change Resistance Movements

February 8, 2015 – In the late Michael Crichton novel, State of Fear, he questions climate change science and weaves a story about a green guerilla resistance movement focused on tearing down modern civilization.

When I read this novel a number of years ago I was certain that he had been contracted by the fossil fuel industry to write it. It just seemed so much a anti-science statement with an appendix loaded with cherry-picked climate data to cast aspersions on global warming. Why would he, with a background in science and medicine, become such a climate change sceptic? Call it politicized science if not paid for opinion writing.

From the pages of the Heartland Institute, the Koch Brothers’ bastion of sanctimonious propaganda regarding climate change science, comes the following in praise of Crichton’s novel:

“Was Crichton right? In an extensive analysis of State of Fear the president of The Heartland Institute…catalogues all of Crichton’s scientific claims, checks them against peer-reviewed literature, and finds Crichton’s science was as strong as his narrative skills. Crichton was right, and thanks to his popularity as a novelist, millions of people around the world now know that global warming is not a crisis.”

But since his death in 2008 Crichton’s selective data has been challenged and shown to be anything but proof that global warming is a hoax.  Instead, it is Crichton’s imaginary guerilla army taking on the modern industrial world that is becoming a reality.

From the pages of Crichton’s novel to today’s reality – meet the Deep Green Resistance (DGR). Describing itself as an “analysis,  a strategy, and the only organization of its kind,”  DGR’s goal is to deprive the rich and powerful from stealing from the poor and destroying the planet.

And like the Environmental Liberation Front, the green guerillas Crichton writes about in State of Fear, DGR has a declared manifesto which you may find somewhat alarming. Here are its tenets:

• Industrial civilization is killing all life on our planet, driving to extinction 200 species per day, and it won’t stop voluntarily.
• Global warming is happening now, at an astounding speed. The only honest solution is to stop industrial civilization from burning fossil fuels.
• Most consumption is based on violence against people (human and non-human) and on degrading landbases across the planet.
• Life on Earth is more important than this insane, temporary culture based on hyper-exploitation of finite resources. This culture needs to be destroyed before it consumes all life on this planet.
• Humanity is not the same as civilization. Humans have developed many sane and sustainable cultures, themselves at risk from civilization.
• Most people know this culture is insane and needs radical change, but don’t see any way to bring the change about.
• Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, Deep Green Resistance questions the existence and necessity of civilization itself. DGR asks “What if we do away with civilization altogether?”
• Unlike most environmental and social justice organizations, DGR asks “What must we do to be effective?”, not “What will those in power allow us to do?”
• DGR offers organized, reliable ways to promote sane ways of living and surviving the ongoing crisis.
• DGR has a realistic plan to stop the insanity, Decisive Ecological Warfare (DEW).

I learned about DGR only today after reading an article in the Sunday Toronto Star that described how American FBI agents are visiting Keystone XL pipeline protesters, some of who purportedly are DGR members. Apparently the agents are just in learning mode trying to understand the goals of DGR and other anti-pipeline protest groups that have coalesced around Keystone XL.

DGR in describing DEW quotes Nelson Mandela who while on trial in South Africa in 1964, stated “I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not do this in a spirit of recklessness. I planned it as a result of a long and sober assessment of the political situation after many years of oppression….”

DEW is invested in building a culture of resistance to the current state of humanity. It initially plans to launch low-level acts of sabotage focused on highly visible industry targets. Its ultimate goal – ecological succession with humanity’s return to a pre-industrial state of living.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that extremists such as DGR have emerged in the fight to preserve the planet. We have seen this picture before – extremism based on misguided ideologies. In the last century eugenics, a pseudoscience, spawned the rise of Nazism and other race-based hate movements. The end result – global warfare and the murder of tens of millions.

Those in DGR may see justification in their cause. But for the rest of humanity solutions to dealing with global warming must come from leadership not wearing a balaclava.