17 Behind-The-Scenes Updates
Thoughts, recommended reading, and projects
Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It and co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass.
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Thoughts, Reads, and Projects
’s recent series on the famous Milgram experiments. Renée is a brilliant writer who often manages to think in strikingly original ways that truly make me think. Part 1 and Part 2 are both worth your time.
“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority,” Stanley Milgram notes. But “The effects of peer rebellion are very impressive in undercutting [obedience to authority figures asking people to do things which are morally wrong].”
How the most unpopular US president got reelected by
is a critical overview of exactly how the Democratic Party has betrayed any lingering vestige of solidarity with the left and set the stage for the far-right to rise to power. Good cop, bad cop.- is a good followup here. Hedges’ book Death of the Liberal Class essentially predicted the rise of Trumpism long ago; it’s obvious to those who have tracked politics beyond red and blue.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) writing about the racialization of Native American people as part of a settler-colonial strategy of assimilation and attacks on tribal sovereignty in this segment of her forthcoming book: Indigeneity, Nationhood, Racialization, and the U.S. Settler State: Why Political Status Matters to Native ‘Identity’ Formation.
- continues his excellent work with Nature as Process, Not Just Place. I’m fascinated by his forthcoming book, which focuses on how the latest ecological science upends some of basic concepts, like invasive species, which have been taught for decades.
- continues his relentless songwriting and advocacy. Two recent pieces that stood out: Will the Real Wobbly Please Stand Up (excerpt below) and Why the Resistance Needs Music.
“Anyone who knows me at all, or knows my work, music, writing, life history, etc., knows I'm deeply opposed to fascism, or any other form of authoritarianism. All the more reason to talk to fascists! Is this not obvious? I hope, dear reader, it is obvious that if we disagree with people, we need to convince them that there is a better way, and show them what it is -- not attack or exclude them and hope they go away. This orientation is not working, if the rise of the right here and in other countries where similar dynamics are at play is any indication.” — David Rovics
On Christas, a new interview with me was released on Climate Justice Forum, a radio show produced by Wild Rockies Rising Tide.
My friend Chung, a grassroots community organizer and environmentalist in the Philippine archipelago, wrote a piece called The New Wave of Mining Industries: Extracting Minerals for the so-called “Green Technology” Economy and Renewable Energy for their Patreon page. Please support if you can. These people are seriously brave. As Chung reminds us:
“The Philippines has consistently ranked as the worst place in Asia for land and environmental defenders, with 281 people killed and counting since 2012. Of these, a third were linked to defenders speaking out against company operations linked to the mining sector.
Speaking of mining in the global south, the group Survival International released a new report late last year looking at Indonesian nickel mines to supply electric car battery production which are encroaching on the territory of uncontacted indigenous tribes on the island of Halmahera. This nickel is used widely in the EV industry. Read the report here.
“The Hongana Manyawa – whose name means ‘People of the Forest’ in their own language – are one of the last nomadic hunter gatherer peoples in Indonesia. Out of a total population of some 3,500 people, around 500 of them are uncontacted and refuse interactions with outsiders. The rainforest is the Hongana Manyawa’s home, from birth to death. It is the source of everything they need to survive and thrive; and it holds profound social and spiritual significance, revered as the source of life, Manga Wowango. Hongana Manyawa children are born in rivers; and their family plant a tree in gratitude and bury the umbilical cord beneath it. After a life dependent on the rainforest for food and shelter, their bodies are placed in the trees in a sacred area of the rainforest that is reserved for spirits. All of this - their home, their means of survival, and their sacred spaces - are now being put at risk by the mining companies that are already starting to tear up their land.
The Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and police are all using cell phone location data without warrants to track the location and movement patterns of anyone they have an interest in.
Tahlequah, the southern resident Orca whale who carried her dead baby for 17 days in a show of grief that brought an incredible outpouring of emotion from the public, gave birth to another calf in December which subsequently died. She carried this baby for 11 days. The story was covered much more sparingly, but
wrote about her here. Southern resident orca whales are starving due to shortages of Chinook salmon, their main food source.In other Orca and salmon-related news, a local power utility in the San Juan Islands is proposing placing four jumbo-jet sized underwater turbines off the east shore of Blakely Island to generate electricity. Protect the Coast PNW, the group that I am part of, contributed to a lengthy critique of the proposal that was sent to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission and published here.
The Declaration of Yajxonox, published in October by a coalition of indigenous peoples and land defenders gathering in southern Mexico, is worth reading. I can’t find it online anywhere, but here is a PDF:
Myanmar, one of the world’s worst and least known dictatorships, is the subject of this piece from my friend the former Buddhist Monk Alan Clements.
“China shields Myanmar’s dictatorship to expand its power. At the heart of this alliance — and central to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative — are China’s billion-dollar infrastructure projects, including oil and gas pipelines from the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan, and a deep-sea port for China’s navy in Myanmar.”
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