the dharma blog

“I want to see the environmental movement taken over by nature lovers again.”

“We need to stand up and say, ‘I get chills down my back when I hear that lynx are breeding in northern Minnesota.’”

Dave Foreman, so much more than the founder of Earth First!, presents a strange blend of doom ‘n’ gloom and a progressive plan to save America’s wilderness. It’s perhaps best seen in his newest endeavor, which is, from my understanding, to create a network of “wildlands” in North America that would allow large mammals the unbroken spaces they need to survive. It’s ambitious, to say the least. A project that would certainly take some time to effect. The idea of successfully creating such a trajectory to “rewild” parts of our devastated landscape is to make even the most pragmatic of wilderness advocates smile a little, to think that maybe if we stop compromising, stop settling, maybe not all will be lost. But, no sooner does one become affectionate for the idea than Foreman mentions the key structural element: that these wildland networks would be oriented north-south, so as to facilitate the massive northward migration of species that he forsees will be necessary as the climate change crisis accelerates.

“They say that by the year 2050, the Earth’s population will have reached nine or 10 billion. I don’t think we’re going to make it to nine or 10 billion.”

“We are beyond the carrying capacity of Earth. We are now degrading the planet’s potential carrying capacity.”

When I was in elementary school 20 or so years ago, I learned about the greenhouse effect. It seemed like a pretty logical concept, even to me at seven years old. Today, the existence of global warming seems undeniable and the dangers it poses seem a whole lot more real than I ever thought they would. Hurricanes. Rapidly dwindling moose populations in northern Minnesota. Snow-less winters. Greenland’s glaciers and the Arctic Ocean melting. Perhaps there is some cyclical climate change that is also having an impact, but the simple fact is that our civilization is greatly contributing to the problem, and that we are in big, big trouble.

“A recent study in England found that if you add the methane in the atmosphere to the CO2, you get 425 parts per million. That is over the tipping point. The Everglades will be under water in 50 years.”

Foreman sees the bleak outlook for conservation and wilderness preservation as based on three pillars: the mass extinction of species around the globe, including the restarting of commercial whaling by Norway and Japan and massive logging efforts in Canada and South America; the current administration of the United States, the “sworn enemy of wilderness,” seeming to have the defined goal of overturning Teddy Roosevelt’s administration, the weak Democratic opposition, and similar problems in other nations; and the conservation movement itself. This is where Foreman most spoke to my own perspective. As he said, the leaders of national, and even regional, conservation groups have bought into the idea that we shouldn’t be emotional, that we shouldn’t talk about extinction and endangered species because “it might turn some people off.” That we no longer talk about the value of wilderness, but just about its economic benefit. Foreman said we need to express our solidarity with other species, that they don’t have to present some benefit to humans to have real value. That we must express that we love nature not just for our own enjoyment but simply because we love that the lynx is doing what lynx do.

I left the talk confused, that was for sure. Foreman at once said that we must adopt new tactics to make gigantic changes in how we protect wilderness and wildlife, but he presented such a gloomy picture of the next few decades that I couldn’t help thinking, “what’s the point?” I don’t want to work on behalf of conservation just so I feel better about myself but have my efforts be ultimately useless as global warming and goodness knows what else inevitably destroys the lands and life that I love.

Having founded Earth First!, been arrested in the name of conservation, and having authored books such as Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, Foreman has a certain reputation as a radical, even one who might go so far as to use destructive practices to protect what he feels badly needs protection. When asked about Earth First! today, a group that he excused himself from over 15 years ago, he said he didn’t think the organization really existed anymore and that whoever was doing things in its name were more anarchists than environmentalists, and that a lot of what they and groups like the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts is useless and unproductive. He also said that the recent arrests of some young environmental vandals was sad and that he didn’t doubt they had FBI agents encouraging them to do some of the things they did. He also mentioned in an off-hand way that committing arson automatically adds ten years to your sentence if caught committing such crimes.

“The FBI has someone sitting here tonight. I’m sure they’re quite bored. If they have my phone tapped, they’re also really bored. And, at my age, if they have a bug in my bedroom, they’re really bored with that!”