What Does Community Resistance and Resilience Look Like? Planet:Critical Interview

Last week I joined Rachel Donald to discuss rights of nature as a strategy for direct action, the fall of empire, violence, and more

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, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass, and organizer with the Community Legal Environmental Defense Fund.

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Last week, my friend

Rachel Donald

interviewed me for her show,

Planet: Critical

. Here’s the description she wrote:

Max Wilbert is a long-time activist who spent the past few years defending Thacker Pass, and recently joined CELDF to as part of their new strategy to build out community resilience. I first interviewed Max on why techno-optimism won’t save the day. As with many compatriots around the world, the answer he’s landed on as to what will is local action.

In this winding and weaving conversation we discuss the new bill on the floor of the New York State Senate which would give rights of nature to all water in the state before examining legal strategies more broadly under the umbrella of climate activism. We then examine Empire’s death throes and how it is violently grasping at power to maintain itself. We discuss violence and defence, patriarchy and permaculture, showing how resilience is an act of resistance in a system which has spent the past 500 years ripping apart our communal social fabric. This is a conversation about how to reweave a tapestry that had been lost to us, and why doing is of vital importance to survive what’s coming.

You can watch or listen to the interview here:

Resilience is Resistance | Max Wilbert

As a brief side note: contrary to the title of this interview, which Rachel chose, I don’t believe that all resilience is a form of resistance. For more, see this essay:

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This conversation is, in many ways, building on our first interview back in 2022. That conversation focused more on the necessity for resistance and resistance strategy. Rachel described that show as follows:

Max joins me to reveal these bright green lies—how mainstream environmentalism is merely a proponent for green growth and business as usual. Max says this comfortable form of environmentalism, which sees people trade in their cars for electric vehicles and go meatless only on Mondays, is a damaging distraction to the real work which has to be done: Systemic change.

We also discuss his years protesting resource extraction, the role of technology, and the trauma of the West’s colonialism.

You can listen to or watch this first interview here:

Bright Green Lies | Max Wilbert