Garden Variety Environmentalism: The Band-Aid Wing of the Green Growth Economy

- by Michael Don­nel­ly, March 13, 2015, Coun­ter­punch

It was 60+ degrees and sun­ny – had been for weeks – in west­ern  Ore­gon, as I arrived in Eugene for the annu­al Pub­lic Inter­est Envi­ron­men­tal Law Con­fer­ence (PIELC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon Law School – the planet’s old­est such con­fer­ence. The con­fer­ence, attend­ed by over 3000 attor­neys, activists, wonks and gov­ern­ment offi­cials, is put on by law stu­dents at the U of O. Oth­er stu­dents from oth­er top envi­ron­men­tal law schools (Lewis and Clark, Ver­mont Law …) also pitch in orga­niz­ing and mod­er­at­ing pan­el dis­cus­sions. The orga­niz­ers did a remark­able job jug­gling speak­ers, atten­dees and all the lit­tle things necessary.

While suf­fer­ing from a big­ger than usu­al aller­gy attack brought on by many types of trees and flow­er­ing plants bud­ding out at the same time; I, as usu­al, perused the con­fer­ence brochure for pan­els and Keynote address­es that would take on the big eco-threats of the day.

Out of over 200 pan­el pre­sen­ta­tions and twelve Keynote speak­ers, there were  1) three pan­els on cit­i­zen  activism (two at the same time); 2) one pan­el on Con­sump­tion; 3) one pan­el on Pop­u­la­tion; 4) one on the “false solu­tion” of “Green” Energy;…and NONE at all on Biomass/Biofuels! Not at all promising.

The first sign that PIELC was head­ed down the rab­bit hole was the Fund for Wild Nature’s pan­el pre­sent­ing the Grass­roots Activist of the Year Award. A grand total of five peo­ple attend­ed as Arlene Mont­gomery was hon­ored. Us five heard inspir­ing tales of how she and the two oth­er women pan­elists have car­ried on with great suc­cess against all odds and lit­tle money.

I found it quite an irony that the award was pre­sent­ed by Doug Bev­ing­ton, author of the “Rebirth of Envi­ron­men­tal­ism,” in which he wrote that the Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty was the mod­el for grass­roots activism in the 21^st Cen­tu­ry.  No one from the high-bud­get, big green lit­i­ga­tion shop was there at the grass­roots pan­el, though CBD staffers dom­i­nat­ed the con­fer­ence over­all, appear­ing on five times as many pan­els as any oth­er group. CBD has per­fect­ed the suing to get endan­gered species list­ings and gar­ner­ing mil­lions in Attor­neys Fees in the process. Yet, rarely is there any crit­i­cal habi­tat set aside in these list­ing vic­to­ries – ren­der­ing them hol­low, at best.

And, with the abject fail­ure of the Clin­ton Option 9 North­west For­est Plan to save the North­ern Spot­ted Owl, there is deaf­en­ing silence from CBD and the rest of the pro­fes­sion­al Endan­gered Species list­ings camp on an over­due Upgrade Peti­tion for the owls, as Endan­gered, rather than the cur­rent more mild Threat­ened Sta­tus would result in real set asides – like­ly ALL old growth habi­tat remain­ing (8% of orig­i­nal, at best), if not all nation­al for­est lands in owl habi­tat – and the fun­ders and Democ­rats will have none of that. The owls have no chance.

In a way, Bev­ing­ton sad­ly was right. CBD is a new mod­el, not of grass­roots activism by any means; but of how to become an unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, well-com­pen­sat­ed big green out­fit mas­querad­ing as a cit­i­zen mem­ber­ship group quick­er than any predecessors.

Fos­sil Fuel Addicts against Fos­sil Fuels

From there, I went to the Fri­day noon Keynote address. The speak­ers on the agen­da were Bill McK­ibben; writer Gary Nab­han, from some­thing called the W.K. Kel­logg Endowed Chair in Sus­tain­able Food Sys­tems at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona; and Cyril Scott, sus­pend­ed Pres­i­dent of the Rose­bud Lako­ta Sioux Trib­al Coun­cil (Scott, the main speak­er I want­ed to see, was unable to attend giv­en seri­ous intra-trib­al hub­bub after he called the multi­na­tion­al TransCanada’s effort to build the Key­stone XL Pipeline across trib­al lands, “An Act of War.” He was com­ing to ral­ly sup­port… the well-estab­lished way grass­roots vic­to­ries always have come about – orga­nize around the issue; seek allies and find a legal team when necessary.)

Bill McK­ibben appeared via video, to grum­blings from some in the crowd who want­ed to see him in per­son. Amy Good­man also a came in for the same lame crit­i­cism, while I found their video instead of fly­ing in to the con­fer­ence on Wings of Tar Sands the appro­pri­ate thing to do. McK­ibben, look­ing a tad under the weath­er, riffed on the con­fer­ence slo­gan “Chang­ing Cur­rents” while say­ing lit­tle of sub­stance. He end­ed his short pre­sen­ta­tion with a plea to “buy more solar pan­els” and a flip­pant “See you in jail.”

McK­ibben was fol­lowed by Nab­han who gave a homi­ly to Col­lab­o­ra­tion. He blithe­ly used that false Ein­stein quote on the def­i­n­i­tion of insan­i­ty with­out any irony. He used it as a cud­gel to beat those who would rather Resist than work in part­ner­ship with Gaia-destroy­ing indus­tries. He praised “Col­lab­o­ra­tion” efforts between farm­ers, ranch­ers and con­sumer activists and claimed a great vic­to­ry in get­ting cit­i­zens in the Mid­west to plant milk­weed along­side their toma­toes in their gar­dens! He nev­er once men­tioned why the icon­ic North Amer­i­ca insect, the Monarch But­ter­fly, has seen its milk­weed breed­ing habi­tat dis­ap­pear in the first place. The words “Ethanol” and “Mon­san­to” were nev­er spoken.

Shen­na Fort­ner, a Ver­mont Law School stu­dent who will work this sum­mer as a legal clerk with Rap­pold Law Office, which serves as the lead coun­sel for the Rose­bud Sioux in their efforts to oppose the South Dako­ta per­mit of the Key­stone XL, then came on and explained that Cyril Scott was unable to attend. She gave a recap of the KXL issue and told peo­ple how they can com­ment on the required Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion hear­ing on the pipeline pro­pos­al that is sched­uled for May 5^th. Fort­ner also spoke of the long-stand­ing tipi action camps that have been set up by the grand­moth­ers at the entrance points of the pro­posed pipelines. Send com­ments to: puc@state.sd.us or PUC, 500 E. Capi­tol Ave., Pierre, SD 57501. For more info on how to donate or oth­er­wise help, con­tact: Faith Spot­ted Eagle, Ihank­ton­wan Pro­tect the Sacred: (605)481‑0416 or theIndige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, PO Box 485 Bemid­ji, MN 56619

Rod­ney King Environmentalism

Nab­han, unfor­tu­nate­ly, was not the sole pre­sen­ter who had a “can’t we all get along/say noth­ing bad about the perps/we will clev­er­ly wig­gle our way out of it” world­view. An under­ly­ing “cur­rent” of the con­fer­ence was that “wild” and “Wilder­ness” are no longer viable con­cepts. The future was all about geo-engi­neer­ing schemes – the gar­den milk­weeds were part of a pat­tern. I’ve always been aston­ished that the greens so eager­ly embraced the very term “Col­lab­o­ra­tion” giv­en its (rather recent) sor­did his­to­ry, but it IS the appro­pri­ate idiom.

One major green growth area is cli­mate com­pen­sa­tion legislation/litigation. Two sep­a­rate pan­els were on Who Should Pay for Cli­mate Change?  They were all about demo­niz­ing fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies (“major GHG pol­luters”) and ways to shake loose com­pen­sa­tion from them. To me that is akin to demo­niz­ing the push­er who pro­vides one’s addic­tions, while nev­er once look­ing at one’s own respon­si­bil­i­ty. Per­son­al con­sump­tion dri­ving Cli­mate Change is off the table. McK­ibben has said, “Per­son­al con­sump­tion doesn’t matter.”

At a pre­sen­ta­tion on anoth­er pipeline, a CBD staffer lament­ed the atten­tion paid to the KXL instead of his own project. While his put out moti­va­tion was jeal­ousy, he had a point. While the entire “move­ment” has been dis­tract­ed by the KXL effort, ALL the nec­es­sary pipes and more have been con­struct­ed and it has been very hard to draw atten­tion to oth­er pro­posed pipelines. The com­pe­ti­tion for Foun­da­tion grants is fierce…no can’t‑we-all-get-along on that front. Vast num­bers are paid to work on the KXL, coal exports, land use, nat­ur­al gas exports, oth­er pipelines…these are the growth sec­tors the bud­ding lawyers are steered to. Fol­low the Mon­ey, as usual.

The under­ly­ing caus­es are ignored or giv­en lit­tle atten­tion. After all, how could you have such con­fer­ences w/o mas­sive car­bon use? – Jet fuel is the num­ber one end use of the Tar Sands, but you’ll nev­er hear that at such an event.

PIELC does get cred­it for try­ing to lim­it its foot­print – in addi­tion to hav­ing more video pre­sen­ta­tions, you won’t see a raft of used paper cof­fee cups over­flow­ing trash bins – they are banned. And, while I ques­tion the effi­ca­cy, one can make a Car­bon Off­set dona­tion to the great group Friends of Trees, who have plant­ed close to a mil­lion urban trees in Ore­gon. Speak­ing of uses of trees, a glance at the school bookstore’s Law School annex dis­play table showed ten books being pro­mot­ed. Five were indis­tin­guish­able books on Cli­mate; each had “For­ward by Bill McK­ibben” on the cover.

When what­ev­er it is hits the fan, it is not redis­trib­uted evenly

The best thing about PIELC is its com­mit­ment to Indige­nous peo­ples. Native lands have paid an inor­di­nate price for our ener­gy addic­tion – in addi­tion to the pipelines, there are ura­ni­um mines, coal mines, coal plants, Bio­mass schemes, etc. all across Indi­an Coun­try. Ore­gon just approved Tax Cred­its (of course) for Bio­mass schemes on all the state’s nine fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized tribes’ lands.

The most talked about Keynote this year was deliv­ered by Xiuhtez­catl Roske-Mar­tinez, a 14-year-old activist from Boul­der CO. He is the Youth Direc­tor of Earth Guardians, a musi­cian with his broth­er Itzcuahtli, a speak­er at the RIo+20 Unit­ed Nations Sum­mit… and he has been con­cerned and active over Cli­mate Change since he was six. The guy is a powerhouse.

I took a break and went down by the riv­er to enjoy some sun – Eugene has a won­der­ful green­way along the riv­er with bike paths on either side that run for miles. On the way back, the path runs under a rail­road over­pass. Sit­ting on the tracks was train loaded with dozens of cars full of wood chips and tankers full of Bakken shale oil – head­ed for the export docks. (Here was a direct action oppor­tu­ni­ty right out­side the con­fer­ence!) A few con­fer­ence pan­els were on the oil and gas exports, yet none on the ground-up-for­est ones.

I was get­ting more and more depressed. The grum­bling from grass­roots activists was get­ting loud. My mood changed when I ran into my good bud­dy Calvin Hecoc­ta. Calvin is a Kla­math elder and spir­i­tu­al leader. He was our North­west chair of the Amer­i­can Indi­an Move­ment (AIM) back in the day. And, he was instru­men­tal in the sav­ing of the Opal Creek and Bre­it­en­bush Ancient Forests. I could go on and on singing prais­es to Calvin; suf­fice to say, he is one of the great ones.

Fri­day night is the annu­al Indige­nous Peo­ples Recep­tion at the Many Nations Long­house. The Law School is unique in that is has a beau­ti­ful stu­dent Long­house out back and has a long-stand­ing work­ing rela­tion­ship with the Long­house and the tribes. Pan­el dis­cus­sions on Native issues are held at the Long­house dur­ing this and oth­er conferences.

The din­ner of salmon, fry bread and oth­er foods pre­pared by Native cooks was over­flow­ing and a won­der­ful time. My mood got better.

Danc­ing on the Ruins

PIELC also is the occa­sion of the annu­al Earth First! Out­LAW Bash. In a scene out of Mad Max, about 500 by-and-large younger, non- attor­ney activists gath­ered in a dilap­i­dat­ed indus­tri­al zone of old ware­hous­es, kilns, yards of indus­tri­al debris – old log trucks, firetrucks, logs, rust­ing beams, cracked cement every­where… music and kegs and the always enter­tain­ing effi­gy of some indus­tri­al insult to be burned are the high­lights. This year it was a mock-up of the huge fracked Nat­ur­al Gas export plant planned for Coos Bay, Oregon…with atten­dant thou­sands of miles of new pipelines. (I learned a les­son – nev­er stand in a tight crowd behind any­one in a pow­er wheel­chair, espe­cial­ly if there is a big fire with fire­works shoot­ing off randomly!)

As a naked pyra­mid and dancers appeared around the fire with a big moon in the clear sky, I couldn’t help but hear Casey Neill’s “Danc­ing on the Ruins” in my head. This is the eyes-open com­mu­ni­ty that always has been and always will be on the front lines – the activists who show up, paid only by a clear Gaian con­science and great cama­raderie. While Der­rick Jensen wrote and three dif­fer­ent PIELC  speak­ers I heard para­phrase “When hope dies; action begins;” I have to note that it is through col­lec­tive action that there is any hope of hope.

The Ele­phant in the Boil­er Room

I didn’t stay up too late as I want­ed to attend the sole pan­el on Con­sump­tion that was held at the ear­ly hour of 9am. It was put on by the wonky folks from the Pol­i­cy­In­ter­ac­tive Research group that has inter­viewed thou­sands of peo­ple world­wide on envi­ron­men­tal val­ues. A case study of 16 low-car­bon lifestyle peo­ple in the Eugene area was pre­sent­ed – the why and how they live such lives. A larg­er study was pre­sent­ed on just why pro-envi­ron­men­tal val­ues do NOT trans­late into pro-envi­ron­ment behavior.

It was very infor­ma­tive and telling. 88% of us claim pro-envi­ron­ment val­ues, but few live them. (The aver­age annu­al Amer­i­can Car­bon Out­put is 19.7 tons – what is opti­misti­cal­ly pro­ject­ed to be “sus­tain­able” world­wide is 4.5 tons per capi­ta.) Why don’t we walk our talk? The research shows that the dis­con­nect is the result of a com­bi­na­tion of:

Denial – No prob­lem, it doesn’t exist; noth­ing real­ly mat­ters, we are unim­por­tant, love for the moment; the prob­lem is beyond our abil­i­ty to solve; I’m already doing my part (like­ly with­out much effect) – “I bought the Prius, what more do you want me to do? -; and, I’m work­ing on some­thing more important.

We heard of a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who wrote a book on Cli­mate Change con­clud­ing that “the prob­lem is beyond our abil­i­ty to solve.” And we heard of anoth­er UofO pro­fes­sor – a Cli­mate Change pro­fes­sor – who com­mutes from Port­land, over 100 miles away – in a high-end Ger­man auto!

A friend recent­ly post­ed on Face­book about feel­ing guilty about her car­bon use and asked if oth­ers felt the same. The respons­es were 90%, “No way. I deserve it” or some oth­er vari­ance of the blind, New Agey “abun­dance” rationale.

Robin Quirke of Pol­i­cy­In­ter­ac­tive not­ed, if we don’t walk our talk, how can we expect to con­vince gov­ern­ments and soci­ety at large to change behav­iors and poli­cies? What I call “Al Gore Syndrome.”

Her col­league Tom Bow­er­man not­ed that he and part­ner live in a 700 square foot house and have a month­ly elec­tric bill of around $10. They have a car they dri­ve 3000 miles a year and do not fly. His per­son­al foot­print was around the 4.5 tons and he felt he could and would low­er it with­out and real sac­ri­fice. Tom talked about fly­ing and its huge car­bon cost. Basi­cal­ly, fly­ing some­where on a full plane spews the same amount of car­bon per capi­ta as one per­son dri­ving an SUV the same dis­tance. He called the back-and-forth fly­ing far-flung First World fam­i­ly mem­bers do as a mat­ter of course, “Love Miles.”

The sole oth­er pan­el that looked at con­sump­tion and pop­u­la­tion was put on by CBD’s Pop­u­la­tion and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty wing. CBD, in addi­tion to dis­trib­ut­ing mil­lions of free con­doms with pack­ag­ing tying it to species loss, seeks to break the taboo on talk­ing about pop­u­la­tion in green cir­cles. 7.3 bil­lion Clever Apes con­sum­ing a finite plan­et is any­thing but “Sus­tain­able” – by far THE most com­mon word found in Pan­el titles.

Return of the Clan Mothers

The high­light of the con­fer­ence for me was the “can­celed” pan­el on Indige­nous Resis­tance to the KXL. With Pres­i­dent Scott unable to attend, it was called off. But, over 70 peo­ple showed up any­way and it turned into a cir­cle dis­cus­sion (not the usu­al school lec­ture mod­el by any means) on those per­verse impacts on Native lands due to our ener­gy addic­tion and con­sumer lifestyle.  Shen­na Fort­ner chaired it and start­ed things off with a sum­ma­ry of the Rose­bud Resis­tance to the Key­stone XL and how one can plug in and help.

Cedar Gillette, anoth­er Ver­mont Law stu­dent and trib­al mem­ber from North Dako­ta, gave a pow­er­ful pre­sen­ta­tion on the human costs of the “man camps” asso­ci­at­ed with the frack­ing boom in the Bakken shale oil for­ma­tions that under­lie her nation. A stag­ger­ing litany of domes­tic abuse, alco­hol-fueled ram­pages brought some of the human costs asso­ci­at­ed with our ener­gy addic­tion into focus.

Good Shield spoke of the Buf­fa­lo Field Cam­paign – the longest con­tin­u­ous non-vio­lent civ­il dis­obe­di­ence encamp­ment in the nation. The BFC seeks to end the hor­rif­ic slaugh­ter of hun­dreds of Yel­low­stone Bison that is car­ried out annu­al­ly at the behest of the cat­tle industry.

And, Calvin Hecoc­ta spoke from the heart about what has been lost. He (and oth­ers) talked about the days of the Clan Moth­ers. The high­ly-respect­ed elder women of each clan would set about cor­rect­ing anyone’s behav­iors that worked against the com­mon good. And telling­ly, they also chose the lead­ers of the men’s coun­cils. Calvin was cho­sen by the Clan Moth­ers at a young age to speak for the land, the birds, the mam­mals, the trees…and he does it well. He spoke to how all this degra­da­tion has occurred on men’s watch and it is time again to look to the grand­moth­ers for leadership.

With all the “log­i­cal” think­ing and pre­sen­ta­tions going on all around, Calvin and oth­ers’ per­spec­tive was a breath of fresh air. There were few dry eyes in the room – from Native women elders to young, white students…all were deeply touched. While the spon­tane­ity was a big part of it, I’d still sug­gest that such a gath­er­ing be an inte­gral part of ANY green gathering.

The Bio­mas­sacre

While the many efforts against bad for­est log­ging prac­tices, GMO foods, frack­ing, pipelines, water, plas­tics, Indige­nous sur­vival, etc. are all well and good and nec­es­sary, lit­tle analy­sis can be found on the effi­ca­cy of already tried solu­tions, much less pro­posed ones.  And, thus, the biggest ele­phant is the Renew­able Ener­gy Port­fo­lios which require that a cer­tain per­cent­age (usu­al­ly 25%) of the retail elec­tric­i­ty in a state’s grid come from “renew­ables” by 2025.

Just as Nab­han stu­dious­ly avoid­ed the real rea­son for the Mon­archs’ decline (First Worlders burn­ing corn in their SUVs), the entire “green” move­ment elides the oth­er fail­ures of “renew­able” ener­gy. McK­ibben et al. can pimp all the solar pan­els they want, but that does noth­ing to stop Cli­mate chaos while Bio­fu­els (monarch, et al.) and Bio­mass (forests) add to it. (Not to men­tion, solar pan­els – like wind tow­ers – are carbon-based.)

After hun­dreds of mil­lions in sub­si­dies (and blight­ed land­scapes, roast­ed birds, etc.) the last eight years, wind and solar com­bined feed less than 5% into the grid (and there is evi­dence that even that 5% is not use­able ener­gy – use­less with­out con­cur­rent steam-gen­er­at­ed Base­load pow­er sta­bi­liz­ing the grid) we’re left with laws requir­ing 25% by ten years from now.

And the major way the 25% will be met is with Bio­mass – the burn­ing of forests for ener­gy – the old­est (and dirt­i­est – 1.5x as pol­lut­ing as burn­ing coal) ener­gy source of humankind. While some pan­els dealt with the across-the-board pro­posed increas­es in log­ging on pub­lic lands, the end game of Bio­mass is rarely men­tioned. While Sen. Ron Wyden (D‑OR though he lives in NY!) pro­pos­es “thin­ning” 9 mil­lion acres of east­ern Ore­gon pub­lic forests, he and Oregon’s for­mer gov­er­nor helped arrange bil­lions in loans for new Bio­mass plants to con­sume the “thin­ning.” Ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber even sold of 1500 acres of a state for­est to a Bio­mass com­pa­ny! Kitzhaber was ulti­mate­ly brought down by the sor­did crony capitalism/influence ped­dling side of the “Green” Growth Econ­o­my. Pacif­ic Gas and Electric’s (PGE) Board­man Coal Plant is Oregon’s biggest car­bon pol­luter and it is on sched­ule to be con­vert­ed from coal to Bio­mass by 2020.

Just this week, The Ore­gon­ian report­ed that ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber’s for­est advis­er was the pri­vate own­er of a tim­ber con­sult­ing firm that ben­e­fit­ed from Bio­mass deals Kitzhaber was sell­ing State Forests and pro­vid­ing the Tax Cred­its to feed…plans the advis­er was paid $400,000 by the State to devel­op! To her cred­it, new Gov­er­nor Kate Brown imme­di­ate­ly end­ed the con­tract with the adviser.

Forests in the Ama­zon, the US South­east and British Colum­bia are being turned into chips/pellets and export­ed to Europe where they are burned for elec­trons and the coun­tries burn­ing them pre­pos­ter­ous­ly get Car­bon Cred­its for it which are then used to off-set the emis­sions from coal plants! Every day, one sees false memes over­selling Ger­man solar ener­gy; yet, nev­er a men­tion of Germany’s Bio­mass ener­gy use (expect­ed to com­prise  2/3rds of Germany’s “renew­able” ener­gy by 2020) and increased coal use.

CBD is one of the many “green” groups that pro­mote Bio­mass under the dis­proven rubric of thin­ning the for­est to make them more fire-proof! CBD has helped plan the largest tim­ber sale in South­west his­to­ry. They are hard­ly alone – Ore­gon Mild, errr, Wild signed on to Wyden’s plan and staffers appeared in a wide­ly-dis­sem­i­nat­ed pho­to with the sen­a­tor  and tim­ber execs announc­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion. One Ore­gon Wild staffer wrote a tor­tured defense of it (that has since been scrubbed from their web­site). McK­ibben is also a top pro­mot­er of his Mid­dle­bury Ver­mont college’s bio­mass plant.

I’ll go so far as to say that Bio­mass is a greater threat to plan­e­tary life than Cli­mate Change! Already we have copi­ous evi­dence of entire civ­i­liza­tions going under due to defor­esta­tion. What could pos­si­bly go wrong at plan­e­tary scale this time?

Ulti­mate­ly PIELC is a Job Fair for eco-law stu­dents. It is not the more activist enti­ty is start­ed out as. In those days, grass­roots activists, like Cyril Scott and allies, iden­ti­fied an issue and set up resis­tance to it. When need­ed, legal teams were assem­bled to car­ry out the paper­work resis­tance. Now, it is invert­ed with high-paid pro-Demo­c­rat foun­da­tion agents dic­tat­ing eco-pol­i­cy and even what issues are on the radar and fund­able. It has devolved into a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lars per year growth indus­try run by big foun­da­tions (whose wealth came/comes most­ly from ener­gy pro­duc­tion), lawyers and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty fac­to­tums. Many “green” groups have annu­al bud­gets in the tens of mil­lions – The Nature Con­ser­van­cy alone (one of the pro­po­nents of Bio­mass) has over $20 bil­lion in assets while dogged grass­roots activists show up whether paid or not, often get­ting under­mined (or their efforts fund-raised upon) by the big greens.

The prob­lem with hav­ing a “move­ment” lead by a pro­fes­sion­al class who col­lec­tive­ly are a com­bi­na­tion of Gen­er­al McClel­lans and Mar­shal Petains is that you get either hubris-rid­den inept­ness (paid to pull punch­es) or proud col­lab­o­ra­tors call­ing the shots and dri­ving off the activists nec­es­sary to car­ry any issue to true vic­to­ry. This top down mind­set ulti­mate­ly ends with: pro­mot­ing, rather than oppos­ing Biomass/Biofuel schemes; elid­ing con­sump­tion and pop­u­la­tion; fail­ure to walk the talk… and plant­i­ng milk­weeds-in-a-gar­den being the only “vic­to­ries.”

Dur­ing the course of the job fair, some 800 species went extinct. The pro­fes­sion­al Green Growth indus­try is a dead end.  It’s way past time to walk the talk. There are NO Law Jobs on a Dead Planet.