Lappe’s Eco-Mind & Jensen et al’s Deep Green Resistance: the matter & anti-matter of environmentalism

Reading Deep Green Resistance followed by Eco-Mind over the course of a few days is a great way to get vertigo.

They’re both written by well-respected, well-known environmentalists and authors.

They rely on many of the same facts: 90% of fish gone, global warming inevitable, hundreds of millions of human deaths to follow, screwy notions of “democracy” in the western world, and so on.

Yet you could not find two more different books resulting from such similar premises.

Deep Green Resistance: Western industrial civilization will never undertake a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life, so it is up to people who see what is going on to organize, make some explosives, and start blowing things up.

Eco-Mind: Western industrial civilization has not largely undertaken a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life, but look at Costa Rica! They are doing some interesting things. And Denmark! Let’s all be like Costa Rica and Denmark. There, all fixed.

Deep Green Resistance: Indigenous cultures have a lot to teach us about how to live with and in nature. Most of them will tell you that “listening to nature” is not a metaphor, but something serious, and if you do, nature will tell you what it wants you to do to protect it. When I listen to nature, it tells me to organize, make some explosives, and start blowing things up.

Eco-Mind: Indigenous cultures have a lot to teach us about how to live with and in nature. Indigenous peoples all over the world have loving and respectful relationships with their immediate environments. We should emulate that. There, all fixed.

Deep Green Resistance: Green technologies are promoted by hacks and sell-outs who want western industrial civlization to continue, and therefore, they are all nature-haters who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Especially wind and solar energy. Ugh. You know, wind turbines and solar panels are produced in industrial processes with pollution and effluents and crap. No, it’s definitely time to organize, make some explosives, and start blowing things up.

Eco-Mind: Green technologies are a fabulous way to maintain our current way of life while reducing our carbon footprint. Look at Denmark! They produce all kinds of green electricity, and they’re not barbarians living in caves in the woods, either. We need lots and lots of wind and solar energy. Turbines and solar panels are produced by angels whose only industrial wastes are a few discordant notes from their heavenly choir. If we all produced as much green electricity as Denmark and Germany do, that might take us a whole quarter of the way towards solving the global climate change crisis. I mean, challenge. What about the other 3/4? Umm, look, angels! There, all fixed.

Deep Green Resistance: Five billion people are going to die at least and the sooner we get started, the fewer people who will die, not to mention all of the other species we’re driving to extinction, and they count too, you know. Nothing good for the environment ever came out of western industrial civilization, so the whole thing has just got to be destroyed. Who’s with me? Let’s organize, make some explosives and start blowing stuff up!

Eco-Mind: OK so people are dying and species are going extinct and deserts are growing and we’re not sure our grandchildren will be able to breathe whatever atmosphere we’re creating for them, but that’s no reason not to think positively! Only our thoughts and perceptions of the environmental crises are holding us back. OK so we’ve created a few little problems here in western industrial civilization but I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t fix with some optimism and determination. Look at Denmark! And there was some guy in India who started growing crops differently, too. Eh? There, all fixed.

Conclusion 1: If two intelligent and well-informed people can take the same set of facts, more or less, and construct such entirely different narratives with recommendations in such different universes, then whatever is going on here has precious little to do with rational argument and full consideration of the facts. (I would however like to point out that neither one of them is saying, “Ocean collapse? What ocean collapse?”)

Conclusion 2: I’d like to take Jensen and Lappe and lock them in a room together, not letting them out until they collaborate on a book. Now that–if they survived it–would be something to read.

Jensen et al don’t account for anything good or any progress whatsoever (ozone layer, reforestation in some parts of the first world–yes, I do realize that’s because we’ve exported our deforestation to poor countries–and so on), yet Lappe never analyzes whether these bits and pieces of progress could ever add up to a liveable world for ourselves and our children. Their blind spots are so complementary it’s frightening.

If you’d like to get the same effect without shelling out for the books, they both have websites:  Deep Green Resistance and Eco-Mind.

Here is what I would like, in my ideal LappeJensen Frankenstein book:

Lappe’s analysis of our destructive and incorrect assumptions about human nature, how they’re harming us, and what to replace them with.

Jensen et al’s analysis of the scope and extent of our environmental crises and exactly how much trouble we’re in.

Lappe’s summary and analysis of the good that people are doing about it, worldwide.

A Jensen analysis of how much those solutions will actually solve, and what problems will remain when they’re done.

Some Lappe ideas about what might bridge the gap.

And some Jensen proposals for how to hurry this thing along using stronger activist approaches than “write to your politicians, sit in the square and be arrested” left-wing thing that’s been doing us so much good so far.

In other words, I’d like the truth, solutions that match the scale of the problem, and enough optimism to keep working at it.

If you read both books, once you’ve recovered from the migraine induced by having two authors use the same facts and ideas to pull your brain in opposite directions like a piece of silly putty, you might have some sense of where that is. Or you might not. You might just have a desperate need for painkillers and a nap.