The Myth of Human Supremacy

Home > Other > The Myth of Human Supremacy > Page 33
The Myth of Human Supremacy Page 33

by Derrick Jensen


  Let’s look at the evidence. Who has done a better job at managing forests (rivers, oceans) in the past: forests (rivers, oceans), or human supremacists? Obviously forests (rivers, oceans).

  So let’s presume for a second that human supremacists are right, and that there is no intelligence in nature. There is no purpose. There is no function. I don’t believe any of this for a heartbeat, but for the sake of argument let’s grant them this. What, then, does this say about human intelligence that humans do a worse job of “managing” forests (and everything else) than does unintelligent, purposeless, functionless nature? Forests survive and in fact become over time more fecund and resilient on their own. They don’t survive human supremacist “management.” What does that say about what we call our own intelligence? We consistently—every single time—do worse than mindless nature. What does that make us?

  Maybe that’s because wild forests know what they want, and wild rivers know what they want, and wild oceans know what they want, and they all know how to get it, so long as they aren’t being murdered. And part of what they want is to not be enslaved, to not be made to jump through hoops on command.

  Of course, another reason human supremacists keep telling themselves and everyone else they can manage the world as they destroy the world is that they hate wild nature. They hate and want to destroy all they cannot control, in part because through this destruction of what they cannot control they show, in their own minds, that they are superior to those they are destroying: were I not superior I could not destroy you. And they hate and want to destroy all they cannot control, because what they cannot control reminds them that they are not in fact superior to these others.

  The point is theft and murder—the point is violation—and the point is to declare oneself superior for doing so.

  Nature doesn’t exist, and insofar as it does, we will destroy it. This is the point of human supremacist management. This is why we can’t acknowledge that human supremacist management always fails: because, in fact, it doesn’t: it achieves what it set out to achieve: the destruction of the biosphere.

  •••

  All of this is why and how Emma Marris and others like her can say there is no wild nature anymore, and this is how and why so many members of this culture can say there are no costs to agriculture.

  •••

  Another bison story, another story of the failure of management. A few decades ago an Indian nation in Montana wanted to conduct a traditional bison hunt. They were mandated to consult with federal managers, who came up with a plan: the Indians were to kill the old bulls, those who were past their sexual prime, and as such, useless in terms of passing on genetic material. Everybody wins: the Indians get their food and hides, the bison herd doesn’t lose any necessary genetic materials (because the old bulls were too old to have sex ever again, the bison were, from a strict genetic perspective, already dead bulls walking), the federal managers get to kill some wild nature and file paperwork showing tangible actions leading to increased appropriations possibilities in the next fiscal year, and the human supremacists get to feel superior. Nonetheless, the Indians said that this is not what their teachings suggested. They insisted that the bulls had a role as elders in the bison community. The managers were unswayed by this non-scientific argument. In a fight between “teachings” and the tools of scientific management (backed by the full power of the state) scientific management nearly always wins, and the world generally loses. The only way the Indians could have their traditional hunt is if they killed the animals the managers told them to. So they did.

  That winter the remaining bison starved. Life is way more complex than managers think it is. It is more complex than any of us think it is. It is more complex than we are capable of thinking. Montana winters are cold and the snow can be deep. Bison need to eat. How do they get through the snow to the vegetation beneath? It ends up that the old bulls are the only ones whose necks are strong enough to sweep away the heavy snow. They do this for their whole community.

  As usual, the managers make the decisions, and others pay the consequences.

  •••

  Who would be arrogant enough to believe they can understand all of the relationships in some natural community? Who would be arrogant enough to believe that they know better than bison who is and is not crucial to the survival of their bison community?

  Yet this is what managers do time and again. They presume to know better than rivers whether rivers need salmon, and whether salmon need rivers. They presume to know better than wetlands what and who the wetlands need. Who can predict the effects of the loss of a certain species of beetle, of a certain strain of bacteria, of a certain fern or reptile or small mammal? Recall the relationships between parasites, fish, and the seabirds who eat the infected fish. I have Crohn’s disease. It is a disease of civilization. As countries industrialize, there is a dramatic increase in Crohn’s. One of the theories is that an absence of intestinal parasites leads to this and many other autoimmune disorders (the parasites, for the most part harmless in themselves—I’ve intentionally infected myself with them, and my health has improved because of it—temper our immune system). Who could predict all of these relationships?

  From a human supremacism perspective, it doesn’t really matter that the managers destroy everything they touch, because even when the human supremacists have the evidence that their actions are harmful, they ignore this evidence. This is something we’ve seen once or twice, or maybe every moment of every day. The human supremacists seem to believe that their willful ignorance of these harmful consequences means that there are none.

  Or maybe they just don’t give a shit.

  * * *

  130 It’s interesting, the word processing program Word contains in its dictionary the term Anthropocene and at the same time marks as grammatically incorrect the use of the word who when applied to nonhumans. The human supremacism is everywhere.

  131 Jim Robbins, “Building an Ark for the Anthropocene,” New York Times, September 27, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/sunday-review/building-an-ark-for-the-anthropocene.html (accessed October 11, 2014).

  132 These are all real articles in The New York Times.

  133 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 3, The Modern Library (New York: Random House, no date given), 665.

  134 Ibid., 657.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Earth-Hating Madness

  Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics—one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. . . . Genocide is a form of political utopia.

  MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

  I just read interviews with members of the family owning SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation), Tesla (electric) Motors, and SolarCity, this latter the largest solar power manufacturing company in the United States. The interviews fit well together, like imperialism and genocide, like the industrial economy and the murder of the planet.

  The first is entitled, “Q&A With SolarCity’s Chief: There Is No Cost to Solar Energy, Only Savings: How long will the world and the U.S. continue to tolerate being able to pollute for free?”

  The article presents two interesting exchanges. In the first, the interviewer asks, “What’s your feeling about where the clean energy movement is right now?” and the “Chief” answers, “It’s absolutely getting bigger. How long will the world and the U.S. continue to tolerate being able to pollute for free? Every fossil fuel company should have to admit, ‘We are allowed to pollute for free.’ That pollution is putting a tremendous amount of cost on all these other externalities. That pollution should be included in the cost of the product. People are going to realize that.”

  I completely agree that “fossil fuel” companies should include pollution in the price of their product, and would extend that to
every action done by this culture. This culture is based on “polluting for free.” That’s how people in this culture can say that agriculture is not inherently destructive. That’s how people in this culture can pretend you can have infinite growth on a finite planet. That’s how people in this culture can always bring every atrocity committed by this culture back to that most important question: How does my committing this atrocity affect me? If you can pollute for free, baby, the only thing that matters is that you yourself don’t have to smell it (or die of cancer from it).

  Which brings us to the second quote from this interview.

  Question: “Is the upfront cost of solar still the big burden, the big hurdle for most US homeowners?”

  Answer: “The biggest burden, quite frankly, is still education. People still associate solar as having a cost. But there is no cost. There’s just savings. In all of our products . . . there’s essentially no cost to the homeowner. They just save money from day one. . . . Although they’re buying the system, and the system may cost $30,000, they’re getting a loan for $30,000, and then they’re paying back the loan based on the production of the solar system.”135

  Ah, so I see how it works. When someone else devastates the natural world, they’re being allowed to “pollute for free” and that pollution should be included in the cost of the product; but when I devastate the natural world, we only talk about how there’s no cost to homeowners. Suddenly the pollution shouldn’t be included in the cost to the consumers. I guess that’s how we can say there’s no evidence agriculture is inherently destructive. That’s how we can talk about sustainable development.

  Unfortunately for the real world, there are costs associated with solar photovoltaics. Solar panels, no matter how groovy, require mines. In addition to copper and other metals, the panels require rare earths minerals (used also in cell phones, batteries, wind turbines, and a host of other high-tech devices). Nearly all of these rare earths are mined in China. Nearly half of all rare earths in China are mined near the city of Baotou (the name means, sadly, “the place of deer,” but I guess it was named a long time ago), and most of this is from one open pit mine more than a half mile deep and covering (or rather uncovering, or rather killing) more than eighteen square miles. The costs don’t stop there. Rare earths are found in extremely low concentrations, and must be separated from the rest of the ore. The separation processes require the use of sulfates, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid, and produce 2,000 tons of toxic waste for every ton of rare earths. The mines and smelters and factories of Baotou alone produce ten million tons of wastewater per year. This “water” is pumped into tailings ponds, including one that covers almost four square miles and about which The Guardian has written, “From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it.” The Guardian also wrote, “The foul waters of the tailings pond contain all sorts of toxic chemicals, but also radioactive elements such as thorium which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukemia. ‘Before the factories were built, there were just fields here as far as the eye can see. In the place of this radioactive sludge, there were watermelons, aubergines and tomatoes,’ says Li Guirong with a sigh.” The soil and water are so polluted that the local residents can no longer grow vegetables there. Many have fled. Many have been forcibly relocated. Many have died, and those who remain are suffering a host of diseases caused by this mining.136

  I’m glad there are no costs, only benefits.

  And did I mention the slave labor? As Max Wilbert states, “A substantial portion of the Chinese workforce, especially for the dirty jobs like this that are likely to result in cancer, lung disease, or asthma, comes from Tibet, where communities are forcibly disbanded by the Chinese military and sent hundreds of miles from their homes and traditions to work in the coal, uranium, and rare earth mines. A full fifth of Tibet’s population has been killed since China’s occupation began, with a substantial portion of those worked to death in forced labor camps. At this point that’s one point two million people and counting.”137

  There are plenty of other consequences (by all means we should never call them costs), but let’s mention only two.

  One is that the production of solar panels is a leading source of the potent greenhouse gases hexafluoroethane, nitrogen triflouride, and sulfur hexafluoride; with hexaflouroethane being 12,000 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and lasting 10,000 years in the atmosphere (and it does not exist in nature, which I guess means humans really are superior since they made this pollutant); nitrogen trifluoride being 17,000 times stronger than CO2 (with concentrations rising in the atmosphere at more than 10 percent per year); and sulfur hexafluoride being 25,000 times more powerful than CO2.138

  The other certainly-not-a-cost I want to mention is discussed in a report by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: “As the solar industry expands, little attention is being paid to the potential environmental and health costs of that rapid expansion. The most widely used solar PV panels have the potential to create a huge new source of electronic waste at the end of their useful lives, which is estimated to be 20 to 25 years. New solar PV technologies are increasing efficiency and lowering costs, but many of these use extremely toxic materials or materials with unknown health and environmental risks (including new nano materials and processes).”139

  The second interview was with SolarCity’s Chairman, and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk. Musk is a big deal these days. He has won scads of awards, and in 2010 was listed by Time as one of the 100 people who are most affecting the world. Esquire named him one of the seventy-five most influential people of the twenty-first century (rather prematurely, I’d think, since we’re less than 20 percent of the way through). In 2013 Fortune named him businessperson of the year. In 2008 the National Wildlife [sic] Federation gave him their National Conservation Achievement award for his work with Tesla Motors and SolarCity.

  Keep that National Conservation Achievement Award in mind140 as you read the beginning of the interview.

  It starts, “‘Fuck Earth!’ Elon Musk said to me, laughing. ‘Who cares about Earth?’”

  Well, I do—and I think so does everyone on the planet who isn’t a human supremacist—but his question was rhetorical.

  The interviewer was quick to clarify that Musk was kidding, that in fact Musk cares a great deal about the earth. How does the interviewer let us know this? He must love the earth, because, “When he is not here at SpaceX, he is running an electric car company.” Ah, I see, when someone else pollutes, they’re polluting for free, but when I pollute there is no cost, and when I run a car company that puts the word electric in front of it, it means I love the earth, even when I don’t.

  SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, is a “space transport services company” that Musk founded with the goal of colonizing Mars. He’s not some lone lunatic. He has an entire culture for company. Recall the awards he has won, including one from an organization—National Wildlife Federation—that raises almost 90 million dollars per year supposedly to protect the earth (Fuck Earth, right?).

  SpaceX is a privately held corporation that has 4,000 employees and has as its largest customer NASA (i.e., US taxpayers).

  The interview states, and as you read this try to think about how unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of any culture, “‘I think there is a strong humanitarian [sic] argument for making life multi-planetary’ [by which he means making human life multi-planetary while this culture kills this planet], ‘in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen [like perhaps the murder of the planet by human supremacists?] in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant, because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, “Good news, the problems of poverty
and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.”’

  “Musk has been pushing this line—Mars colonisation as extinction insurance—for more than a decade now, but not without pushback. ‘It’s funny,’ he told me. ‘Not everyone loves humanity. Either explicitly or implicitly, some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earth’s surface. They say things like, “Nature is so wonderful; things are always better in the countryside where there are no people [sic] around.” They imply that humanity and civilisation [and please note his conflation of humanity and civilization] are less good than their absence. But I’m not in that school,’ he said. ‘I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness [sic], to make sure it continues into the future.’”

  Fuck Earth indeed.

  I, on the other hand, think humans don’t have a monopoly on the “light of consciousness,” and that we, like everyone else on the planet, have a duty to leave the planet in a better condition than that into which we were born.

  The article states, and as you read this you might find yourself unaccountably adopting a tone of awe-filled narcissistic reverence, “Unlike light, whose photons permeate the entire cosmos, human-grade consciousness appears to be rare in our Universe. It appears to be something akin to a single candle flame, flickering weakly in a vast and drafty void.”

  Of course human supremacists believe “human-grade consciousness” is rare, or better, unique. We only see what we want to see. That’s how we know agriculture isn’t inherently destructive, and that’s how we know there are no costs to solar photovoltaics. And that’s how we know only humans are intelligent.

  The article: “Musk told me he often thinks about the mysterious absence of intelligent life in the observable Universe.”

  It’s not mysterious at all; he doesn’t perceive intelligent life in the observable Universe for the same reason, once again, that there is no cost to solar photovoltaics. He defines human intelligence as the only intelligence, then wonders why only humans manifest intelligence.

 

‹ Prev