In the Name of Red Herrings: The Green, Slow, and Whitewashing Ménage à Trois

You can’t really judge a mosaic if you don’t look at it from a distance. If you really get close to it you get lost in detail. You get away from one detail only to get caught in another. Perhaps, Zazu, what you have been seeing until now was not the sand, but grains of sand.

— Conversation in Zazu Dreams[1]

 

I concluded last week’s contribution with a clarion call for friction—a profoundly lived integration of diverse intersectionalities. Yet, industrial citizens have been deluded into thinking that friction is the cause of our contemporary inferno. In fact, the problem is lack of friction, diversity, contradictory perspectives and experiences; it is our addiction to homogeneity through compliance-as-habituated obedience that continues to fuel the flames. In order to decipher the intricacies of our hyper-inflamed state, we must map constellations that both unintended consequences and radical diversions produce—“externalities” that fortify the root of anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism.[2] Radical (Latin, radixradic for “root”) diversion refers to the systematic erasure of the underlying roots of our entangled crises. As activist-educators, we must scrutinize extractive-capitalist interrelationships among slowwashing[3] (including stress reduction technology that actually increases cortisol production), greenwashing (including fraudulent “corporate social responsibility” – CSR) and whitewashing “a coordinated attempt to hide unpleasant facts, especially in a political context”[4] —(this includes extracting labor/ human capital). Such an investigation is critical in the context of recent unprecedented fires raging across the Western United States and Canada.

“Fire-smart forest management” embodies slow, green, and whitewashing proclivities. “Fire-smart forest management” justifies, and even valorizes, clear cutting in the name of fire mitigation. However, as Dr. Suzanne Simard, called “the Rachel Carson of our time,” decries: “old trees are already fire resistant!”[5] Simard warns us: in the name of “protecting” “our” forests, fire-smart management clear-cuts old growth and plants new trees. When harvesting companies eliminate the presence of elders in the forest through rapacious clear-cutting, biodiversity irrevocably recedes, creating hazardous conditions for the forest—flammable new young trees lead to out-of-control wildfires and massive release of carbon.

When my 88-year old aunt takes her daily walk near the main public library in Boulder, Colorado and questions why they cut down the enormous trees that have been growing alongside the creek for generations, the landscapers (landscrapers!) dismiss her: “Yup, we cut the old trees down, so we can plant new ones that will be easier to maintain.” Industrialized humans who create agricultural fields, vineyards, suburban home developments, and highways are in the path of natural fires. Rather than practicing moderation and acknowledging our accountability, we blame fires and floods for destroying our communities. We create a “disaster,” and then create technologies and entire industries to protect ourselves from that “disaster.”

Underlying profit-driven motivation dictates the guidelines for “protection.” In the name of protecting the environment:

  • we displace hundreds of unhoused peoples replacing their homes with urban tree-planting projects.[6]
  • we institutionalize recycling—now a known international scam.[7]
  • we falsely position green consumer culture as an alternative to fossil-fuel economies.
  • we mislead citizen-consumers to believe that “renewable” energies (such as solar and wind) are “renewable”—even on an industrial scale.[8]

I repeat: In the name of fire mitigation, “fire-smart forest management” advocates clear-cutting old growth forests.

In the name of protecting U.S. forests in the fight against climate change, The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental organization, facilitates Big Banks (and Walt Disney Co.) in fraudulent carbon offsetting.[9]

In the name of land conservation, The Nature Conservancy closely aligns itself with major corporate conglomerates to buy inhabited land and then expels local populations—displacing these “conservation refugees”[10] into resettlement camps.[11] In the name of animal rights and anti-poaching, the World Wildlife Fund has been accused of violent practices (including torture, sexual assault, and murder) to prevent local indigenous people from Asia and Africa from hunting on their land.[12]

In the name of protecting migrating birds (“better technology and the metadata of the Information Age have made new insights possible and created the opportunity for effective, targeted solutions to the ills plaguing our migratory birds[13]),” we gloat in techno-euphoria: worshipping technology-as-the-solution to the perils of the Anthropocene. Imperialist digital utopianism creates more problems than it solves.[14]

In the name of scientific study to “advance our knowledge”, originally European colonial governments and now university studies and transnational (primarily US-based) corporations, we “collect” (i.e., kill) unfathomable “specimens” for institutional research. This egocentric/ anthropocentric motivation (academic, professional, and institutional) exponentially contributes to pushing species to the brink of extinction and extinction itself.[15]

In the name of healing human bodies and minds, we exploit non-human bodies and minds.[16] In the name of Research and Development, industry-funded science masquerades as objective truth.[17] Fortunately, top medical journal editors have gone public to expose corruption in ‘the science.’[18] Covid-19 profiteering must be investigated within this context.[19]

In the name of “eco,”[20] eco-friendly products breed hyper-consumption. Greenwashing thrives in our global neoliberal petri-dish.[21]

In the name of ecotourism,[22] “people-of-privilege”[23] spend thousands of dollars and consume massive quantities of “resources”[24] to experience an ecosystems, cultures, and “exotic” wildlife phenomena. The proportion of the astronomical money spent on the “experience” radically outweighs the local communities’ economic and ecological benefits.

In the name of waste solutions, educational and environmental-stewardship organizations host art projects (often supported by waste-management companies). Obscenely, these projects frequently use new petro-plastic products (cups, bags, etc.), rather than using general litter or items found in landfills to make “art.” And, even when trash is found and reused into art-making, the aestheticization of waste misrepresents the ecological crisis. This is a tragic missed teaching opportunity.

In the name of human rights (access to clean water),[25] we donate millions of petro-plastic single use disposable water bottles to contaminated communities.[26]

In the name of protecting our children, we load them with pharmaceuticals.[27]

In the name of health-care, we create hospitals—the bedrock of petro-pharma-culture.[28]

In the name of people and planetary health, surrogate band-aids are deployed that are equal to or worse than what is being replaced including bioplastics, phthalates replacements, and hydrofluorocarbons.[29]

In the name of hygiene, our culture’s obsessive germ-frenzy requires antibacterial hand-sanitizers distributed throughout our public spaces.[30]

In the name of enriching the US economy, our children become collateral damage in the industrial-capitalist machine.[31]

In the name of innovation (growth and progress), we impose smart technologies on our children’s bodies and psyches that drastically inhibits their neurological development.[32]

In the name of efficiency[33] (demonstrated through Jevons paradox)[34] we reduce friction—accelerating our speed-obsessed culture. We maintain economies of scale using more “resources:” we build bigger houses, use more electricity, consume more products made with toxic materials; and, we build cars that reduce the cost of driving and lower barriers to commerce.[35]

In the name of adaptation, we institute mass-consumer reactionism to climate emergency—buying more in order to protect ourselves from the natural world.[36]

In the name of reduced electricity consumption, the United States is responsible for “pollution outsourcing” in China, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.[37] In the name of altruism, people rationalize consuming more: they unload their used possessions on the “poor” as a “moral act,” and then load up on more new purchased products.[38] I call this the Purge-to-Splurge Phenomena.

In the name of civil rights, we claim Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) Committees suffice (regardless of gaslighting, tone-policing, and deflection).[39]

In the name of stress reduction, video games are cloaked as neurological aids.

The litany of perverse justifications goes on…

It includes every aspect of our contemporary lives ranging from our daily choices of how we raise our children—what I call petroleum parenting (the Anthropogenic market-driven choices parents make that contribute to both environmental destruction and body-phobic institutional practices)[40] to how we build and live in our homes (including our foundational relationships to “property”/ land, ownership, and entitlement) to how we choose to die (including systemic pharma-medicalized fear, land rights/ the politics of cemeteries, and body phobia in the form of toxic “preservation.” Not to mention race, class, gender, and economic inequities that perpetuate the status quo…

My grandfather would have called these red herrings “false economies.” I call them malfeasant subterfuge—insidious diversion tactics to avoid addressing the roots of the crises. US democracy has become entrenched in such cognitive distortion. In his Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harai reminds us: “One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations” (87). Our misconception of “need” relentlessly drives our technocracy. Compliance and complicity are at its core. “Once certain behaviors become ‘normal,’ the people stop seeing them as wrong.”[41] Rather than being distracted by the onslaught of such band-aids, we must learn how to decipher distraction from action. However, before we unpack how normalization fuels red herring-erasure through “the power to proclaim and promulgate a falsehood,”[42] before we seek refuge at the edge of friction, we must disgorge the social, ecological, and corporeal process of inflammation—inflammatio, meaning to set on fire.

Notes

[1] “The original quote comes from Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes. New York: Vintage International, 1991: 235. Again we revisit another angle of one theme in Zazu Dreams that things are not necessarily what they appear to be” (Footnote 188, Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era. Eifrig Publishing: Berlin, 2017 122).

[2] See my discussion of sacrifice zones in “Equality: Industrial Capitalism’s Trojan Horse Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution,” Urgent Matters: Philosophical responses to the ecological emergency. Lucy Weir, ed. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2021.

[3] Near the end of his contradictory life, Frederick Winslow Taylor embodied a peculiar historical irony of both slowwashing and cultural biomimicry. Taylor (the father of Taylorism, the contemporary dominance of efficiency theory manifested through scientific management systems) withdrew from the public to watch grass grow. He had hoped to mimic grasses’ growing patterns to grow the perfect putting-green grass: https://www.kqed.org/w/collaborations/stopwatch/stopwatch2.html

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2016/09/24/faking-corporate-social-responsibility-does-not-fool-employees/?sh=696a0bd47994

[5] Simard’s MotherTreeProject.org helps educate people about how “elder” Mother Trees cannot be commodified—two among many non-anthropocentric reasons are how Mother Trees are foundational for carbon storage and critical for fire mitigation.

[6] Urban greening-human displacement projects have been rationalized and institutionalized across the globe—ranging from Northern California’s tent cities to many of Israel’s Palestinian communities.

[7] In 1991, I initiated Sarah Lawrence College’s first recycling program that Governor Cuomo used as a prototype for the state of New York. The head of Sarah Lawrence’s Student Affairs was delighted: “Now we can use more!” That comment has haunted me for twenty-five years, and is at the crux of much of my professional and personal life choices. For a detailed exposé of greenwashing and the industrial-capitalist motivation for recycling see Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilber’s Bright Green Lies: How The Environmental Movement Lost It’s Way and What We Can Do About it. Monkfish Press: New York, NY, 2020. Also see their article in Mother Pelican: http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv17n06page5.html. See my video essay on overcoming environmental racism for the international Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference: Disentangling Green Colonialism: Social Permaculture in the Ecozoic Era.

[8] “[Green renewable t]echnology comes from digging, blasting, mining, burning, smelting, refining, and manifold industrial processes. Technology consumes non-renewable resources, and emits toxins and pollution” (Jeff Gibbs, director of Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans, “THERE WILL NEVER BE GREEN TECHNOLOGY ENERGY, https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2020/08/23/jeff-gibbs-there-will-never-be-green-technological-energy/).

[9] See Ben Elgin, “The Trees Are Not What They Seem,” https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-nature-conservancy-carbon-offsets-trees/.

[10] “Lester Brown first used the term ‘environmental refugee’ in 1976. Since then, ‘environmental migrant,’ ‘forced environmental migrant,’ ‘environmentally motivated migrant,’ ‘climate refugee,’ ‘climate change refugee,’ ‘environmentally displaced person (EDP),’ ‘disaster refugee,’ ‘environmental displacee,’ ‘eco-refugee,’ ‘ecologically displaced person’ and ‘environmental-refugee-to-be (ERTB)’ have become part of our language” (Footnote 73, Zazu Dreams 101).

[11] The history of national parks and international game reserves is founded on and replete with such abuses. Thomas Neuburger, “When Big Green Meets Big Money: The Nature Conservancy Caught Greenwashing Corporate Pollution,” https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/05/when-big-green-meets-big-money-the-nature-conservancy-caught-greenwashing-corporate-pollution.html).

Jeremy Hance, “Conservation’s Peoples Problem,” https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/186480/ James Reinl, “African Tribes Losing Ground to Conservation,” https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2013/5/23/african-tribes-losing-ground-to-conservation

[12] See Chris D’Angelo’s “House Panel Investigates Whether U.S. Funds Anti-Poaching Efforts Linked To Rights Abuses,” HuffPost. 6/6/2019, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-committee-investigation_n_5cf98505e4b06af8b505b2ed.

[13] Christian Cooper’s New York Times Book Review of A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migrating Birds. Scott Weidensaul, Norton & Co, 2021, Sunday, April 25th, 2021, 11. When Ursula K. Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters award, she blasted our “fear stricken society and its obsessive technologies.”

[14] An HR recruiter at NYC Google’s office who I interviewed on this subject failed to recognize the hazardous environmental and health impacts, ineffective educational strategies, and neocolonizing effects of depositing computers throughout the Global South—another example of humanitarian imperialism as the foundation for US ‘democracy.’

[15] Conversation with Rob Mies, wildlife ecologist.

[16] For example, “Numerous species of macaques are used extensively in neuroscience research laboratories studying visual perception and other animal testing including toxicology tests, research on AIDS, hepatitis, neurology, behavior and cognition, reproduction, genetics, and xenotransplantation. The macaque species diverged from humans over 15 million years ago. Our fundamental differences limit macaques utility in preclinical studies, yet cruelly, they are still primary medical specimens” (RC Kennedy, MH Shearer, W. Hildebrand, “Nonhuman Primate Models to Evaluate Vaccine Safety and Immunogenicity,” Vaccine. June 15, 1997, (8): 903-8). See footnote 116 in Zazu Dreams for a discussion of ibn Sina, the Persian Jewish pharmacist/ physician, who explicitly stated that only the human body should be used for medical experimentations.

[17] Open Science Collaboration (OSC) has exposed the fabrication of numerous scientific experiment results—falsity published as fact in the most prestigious science journals (William A. Wilson, “Scientific Regress,” First Things. May 2016 (Footnote 19, Zazu Dreams88).

[18] Richard Horton, the chief editor of The Lancet stated: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness” (www.journal-neo.org/2015/06/18/ shocking-report-from-medical-insiders/: New Eastern Outlook. June 18, 2015). (I do not condone the racialized language, but Horton’s point is clear). Dr. Marcia Angell, physician and Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ) for twenty-years decries: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines” (Ibid.). F. William Engdahl, science investigative researcher claims: “Corruption of the medical industry worldwide is a huge issue, perhaps more dangerous than the threat of all wars combined” (Ibid.).

[19] See my 2021 article in Socioscapes: International Journal of Societies, Politics, and Cultures; Gender and Sexualities Studies in Difficult Times: Uncertain Presents, Coalitional Futures, “Queering the Apocalypse: Climate Chaos and The Obscene,” S.IJSPC vol. 1 Issue 1, pp. 143-154, ISSN 2734-0940.

[20] Advertisers and “the Market” seem to have forgotten that the words “ecology” and “economics” derive from the Greek word oikos, meaning home.

[21] For an analysis of how neoliberalism keeps us safe within the comfortable confines of the familiar, see my unpublished “The Accidental Catalyst: Occupying the Intermedial.”

[22] I acknowledge that the range of ecotourism’s implications is vast. However, the majority of ecotourist industries institute extraordinarily damaging infrastructure (roads, fuel, cement, electricity, “amenities”). This form of greenwashing often include five-star resorts, and results in cultural appropriation that ends up perpetuating the racism as (perhaps) an unintended consequence. See my “Ecotourism Is The Real Ecoterrorism.” See also John Berger’s “The Question of Zoos” for an exploration of human-non-human imperialist justifications.

[23] For an analysis of the precarious concepts of “privilege” and “equality,” see my “Disentangling Green Colonialism: Greenwashing and Environmental Racism in the Renewables Revolution,” in Shifting Climate – Shifting People, Miguel De La Torre, ed., Pilgrim Press: Cleveland, OH, 2021.

[24] Vandana Shiva, as so many indigenous activists, reminds us that the concept of “resources” itself is rooted in capitalist, industrial-colonialist histories: “Resource implied an ancient idea about the relationship between humans and nature – that the earth bestows gifts on humans who, in turn, are well advised to show diligence in order not to suffocate her generosity. …’Resource’ therefore suggested reciprocity along with regeneration. With the advent of industrialism and colonialism…‘[n]atural resources’ became those parts of nature which were required as inputs for industrial production and colonial trade” (“Resources,” in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power, Wolfgang Sachs, ed., London: Zed, 1991, 206).

[25] “In 2000 at the World Water Forum, Nestlé. successfully lobbied to stop water from being declared a universal human right. Nestlé. maneuvers both clandestine operations and overtly bullies communities and governments around the world into giving up control of their public water sources. It steals the water, resells it to citizens in toxic petroleum plastic bottles (who pay an increase of up to 2,000% more and gains billions of dollars in profits. Access to clean, drinkable water is a public civil right, not a privilege for only the wealthy. Multinational corporations such as Nestlé drain local aquifers for profit—ravaging the public watersheds. Water tables are drastically reduced, degrading local wells, when water is pumped at such a high volume (Annie Leonard’s collaborative educational project, The Story of Stuff) . Consumers must confront privatization and bottling of a shared resource by choosing tap water instead of Nestlé products.” (Excerpted Footntote 97, Zazu Dreams 104).

[26] In the early 1990s, the White Earth Reservation’s water supply became severely contaminated. Rather than addressing the roots of the crisis—why the water had become toxic in the first place, the response was to spend thousands of dollars supplying the native community with bottled water in petro-plastic water bottles. Twenty years later, in 2015 Flint, Michigan when it became public that the city water was laden with lead, the government’s immediate response was to donate truck-loads of bottled water. Media messaging targeted upper and middle-class consumers.

[27] We cannot ignore the irony of instituting security-measures for parents to “protect” our children (whether on the internet, playground, or media-onslaught) given current pharmaceutical tyrannies that dictate how a parent can or cannot care for her child’s body. How can we accept the staggering hypocrisy of parents being concerned about the “safety” of their children when they voluntarily inject them with a litany of known, researched toxins—including the usual arsenal of antimicrobial chemicals? When we tolerate a society that bans the right of parents to make informed choices about their children’s bodies (including medications, vaccinations, breastfeeding, nudity, standardized education), we support the foundation of consumer-waste culture. Applying principles of ecopharmacovigilance, the science that analyzes the adverse effects of pharmaceuticals on ecosystems—both of the earth and of the human body, we can begin to decode the labyrinthine webs that bind and sustain multiple oppressive systems. The integration of ecopharmacovigilance is integral to ecoliteracy and educating our children about climate change. See also my “Decolonizing Our Wombs: Gender Justice and PetroPharma Culture,” Women, Violence and Resistance, Hager Ben Driss, ed. University of Tunis, Tunisia, 2016.

[28] Although they are clearly critical to help treat physical trauma and emergencies, hospitals represent one of the most egregious threats to our corporeal and environmental ecology. Ultra-sterile hospital environments breed many of the most virulent contagions. Gary Cohen, a 2015 MacArthur Foundation recipient and founder of Health Care Without Harm, labels hospitals as “cathedrals of chronic disease” (Gary Cohen, “MacArthur ‘Genius’ Cleans Up Polluting Health Sector,” an interview by Steve Curwood, in Living on Earth, Public Radio International’s Environmental News Magazine, October 9, 2015, accessed April 6, 2015, http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00041&segmentID=2). Additionally, iatrogenics (hospital-induced/ healthcare-induced infections) are the third leading cause of death in the US. (Ronald Grisanti, “Iatrogenic Disease: The 3rd Most Fatal Disease in the USA,” accessed April 9, 2015, http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/335.cfm).

[29] 1.Compostable disposables, also known as bioplastics, are most frequently produced from GMO-corn monoculture and “composted” in highly restricted environments that are inaccessible to the general public. Due to corn-crop monoculture practices that are dependent on agribusiness’s heavy use of pesticides and herbicides (for example, Monsanto’s Round-Up/glyphosate), compostable plastics are not a clean solution. Their chemical compounds cause extreme damage to water, soil, and wildlife. They cause heavy acidification when they get into the water and eutrophication (lack of oxygen) when they leach nitrogen into the soil. 2.The trend to replace Bisphenol A (BPA) led to even more debilitating phthalates in products. 3.We now know that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), “ozone-friendly” replacements, are equally environmentally destructive as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

[30] In 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that “there appears to be little or no evidence that antibacterial soaps and household products help prevent us from being exposed to germs, and they may even pose significant health risks.” (Melanie Haiken, “Antibacterial Soaps May Pose Health Risks, FDA Says; Should They Be Banned?,” Forbes, December 16, 2013, accessed April 6, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2013/12/16/antibacterial-soaps-may-pose-health-risk-fda-says/#364a3dab20d4). Statistics during our Covid-19 fiasco have exponentially increased. See my “Queering the Apocalypse.” Although the American Medical Association stated that many antibacterial soaps are creating superbugs, it is still used in hospitals, which in turn sparks the consumer market. In 2012, Kline & Company antibacterial soaps comprised almost half of the $900 million liquid-soap market. Big Pharma has capitalized on germ-phobia – conveniently selling products that disable our natural immunity. (Alexandra Zissu, “Harmful Ingredient Found In Anti-Bacterial Soaps,” Huffington Post, September 3, 2013, accessed April 8, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/harmful-ingredient-found-in-hand-sanitizer-from-alexandra-zissu-from-marlo-thomas-mondays-with-marlo_n_3837011.html). The high-volume chemical compounds triclosan and triclocarban (found in hand sanitizers, mouthwashes, toothpastes, deodorants, bedding, washcloths, towels, kitchen utensils, toys) are known carcinogens. Even leading up to COVID-19, in daycares throughout the US, children are required to ‘clean’ their hands before snack time—essentially eating triclosan. Like flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), its effects include impaired skeletal growth and muscle function that has led to cardiac arrest, lung damage, and risk of allergies and immune-system-dysfunction in children. The reality is we must shift our focus from bacteria-phobia to environmental toxicities. These “sanitary ideologies” (Paul Virillio) are making the most susceptible among us increasingly vulnerable to COVID-19 by breaking-down our immune systems while they are instilling conformist laws of conduct that continually replenish the toxic soup in which we all live. See also James Hamblin’s “Hygiene is Overrated,” The Atlantic Monthly. July/August, 2020, 21-23. See also Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality. Heyday Books: Berkeley, CA, 1973.

[31] Branding and advertising recognize the potency of early indoctrination. Lucy Hughes, Vice President for Initiative Media and co-creator of The Nag Factor, proudly declares that Initiative spends $12 billion of media time to encourage children to “nag” their parents into buying products, home videos, fast food and attending movies, theme parks, and “places like Chuck E Cheese.” Initiative Media is the “biggest buyer of advertising time and space in the US and in the world.” She goes on: “You can manipulate consumers into wanting and therefore buying your products—it’s a game…[today’s children are] tomorrow’s adult consumer so start talking with them now, build that relationship with them when they’re younger and you’ve got them as an adult” (Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan’s 2003 documentary film, “The Corporation,” cited in the Guide on how to read Zazu Dreams 7).

[32] See my extensive investigation of the deleterious effects of multiple digital technologies in “Decolonizing Our Wombs: Gender Justice and PetroPharma Culture.” See Franklin Foer’s discussion of monopolies in the context of alliances between business and government in “Beware the Digital Culture,” The Atlantic Monthly. July/August 2020, 25-27. See my unpublished Op-Ed to The Atlantic Monthly critiquing Jean M. Twenge’s article “Has The Smartphone Destroyed A Generation?” in The Atlantic’s September 2017 issue.

[33] See Max Wilbert’s distinction between efficiency and diversity in Bright Green Lies.

[34] In 1865 (at the age of 29) William Stanley Jevons wrote The Coal Question in which he stated: “It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” See “The Jevons Paradox and the Green New Deal,” in the Foundation for Economic Education: https://fee.org/articles/the-jevons-paradox-and-the-green-new-deal/. See my discussion of Jevons paradox in the context of sustainability: Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene. Pennsylvania State University Press, PA: 2014.

[35] “This makes the technology accessible to more people, accelerating the cycle of production and consumption” (Bright Green Lies, 210). See also The Traffic Power Structure. Planka.nu, Translated by Gabriel Kuhn, PM Press: Oakland, CA, 2016.

[36] See my video lecture with Nurete Brenner’s Lake Eerie Institute and Sacred Ecological Judaism: “Sacred Attunement: Shmita as Cultural Biomimicry.”

[37] See “China, People’s Republic of : Electricity and Heat for 2004,” International Energy Agency, “Countries and Regions,” Office of the United States Trade Representative, Karl Lester M. Yap, “Southeast Asia Burns up the ranks of global polluters,” Bloomberg, January 13, 2016, and “World carbon dioxide emissions from 2009 to 2019, by region (in million metric tons of carbon dioxide), Statista Research & Analysis, 2020.

[38] Amanda Mull describes the historical shift from accumulation to consumption from the 1880s to 1920s. She compares recycling to second-hand stores that give people an excuse to buy more; their guilt assuaged through a moral rationale. See “Triumph of the Slob,” The Atlantic Monthly. July/August 2020, 20.

[39] In their deeply vulnerable and provocative “Truth at Work” presentations, Beatriz Garcia and Marisa Urrutia Gedney call out many DEI tactics in which both tokenism and white fragility shape our work environments. Consistently, institutional placation dictates lack of accountability. See White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun; www.dismantlingracism.org. Garcia and Gedney articulate the ironies of how we measure our success is framed within the paradigm of white dominant norms and white supremacy at work: “We live in a distortion by design.” Also see my Viscous Expectations for a similar intersectional analysis of the underpinnings of “equality.”

[40] “Petroleum parenting” includes how we give birth, how, or whether or not we vaccinate our babies and children, how we negotiate circumcision-decisions, breastfeeding, transportation, sleeping, bathing, screen-technology-as-surrogate-parent, and how we choose to feed, diaper, entertain, and educate our infants, toddlers, and children. These perhaps seemingly benign behaviors, in fact, maintain and inscribe the borders of our totalizing, reductive, fear-based, designer-birth culture. See my unpublished “Embodied Ecoliteracy: Uprooting Petroleum Parenting and Industrial-Waste-Consumer Capitalism (how our kids can help us decolonize our economy)”

[41] Anne Applebaum, “Collaborators: On the Nature of Complicity,” The Atlantic Monthly. July/August 2020, 54.

[42] Ibid.

 

Previously Published on Mother Pelican

 

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