Behind the Scenes

A roundup of the latest news and some updates on secret projects

Protest sign by Tish O’Dell, as part of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights movement. On display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH. Photo by the author.

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. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free! In return for supporting my activism, paid subscribers receive access to occasional private posts (like this one) containing behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

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What I’ve Been Doing

• On May 5th, Jennifer Murnan and I released episode 100 of The Green Flame podcast. Some special guests joined us to reflect on 5 years of the show. You can watch on YouTube or find the it via whatever podcast app you use at this link.

• The brilliant Renée Gerlich wrote a summary and review of my book, Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.

• In early April, reporting from western Nevada, I published a 12-minute video on energy addiction and mining.

• Tiokasin Ghosthorse invited my onto his show, First Voices Radio, to talk about the piece I published here last month titled “How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bulldozer.”

• In late March, Malcolm Burn had me back on his show, “The Long Way Around,” to talk about Thacker Pass, the degrowth movement, and mining.

• I’m working on an upcoming essay for publication in an environmental magazine about the relationship between organized labor, greenwashed mining/electric vehicles/energy infrastructure, and international neo-colonial economic relations. If anyone has any tips, recommended interviews, or ideas for this story, please let me know.

• The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre just released a report, "People power under pressure: Human rights defenders & business in 2023." It examines attacks against human rights defenders, including the lawsuit filed by Lithium Nevada Corporation against myself, six other land defenders, and the organization Protect Thacker Pass. Here’s a direct link to an index page for the relevant parts.