We're Fucked, Let's Escalate
On the path to ecological revolution
Hi everyone,
For many years, myself and many other writers, thinkers, and organizers have been describing how liberal greenwashing, corporate kowtowing, and obstructionism of any real change has paved the way for latent fascistic tendencies in the American body politic to become ascendant.
It sucks to be right.
There has only been a thin veneer of decency, civic engagement, and democratic norms papered on top of the brutal violence, sadistic racism, and cold imperial force that typifies the United States in recent decades. That veneer, a velvet glove over the iron fist of capitalism, is rapidly being stripped away, and yet still many liberals continue to believe in institutions which never actually delivered on their promises.
It’s now been over 20 years since these patterns became apparent to me, and four years since I launched this newsletter, Biocentric (if you’re new here, you can subscribe for free; paid subs support my ability to focus on this work and other activism).
For those who don’t know the history, I launched Biocentric in the fall of 2021 as, due to a $49,890.13 fine levied against myself and my friend Will by the Federal Government, ostensibly for building latrines so that native elders could use the restroom while visiting their sacred site, we were forced to dismantle the initial protest camp we had established in January of that year at Thacker Pass. We’re still fighting that fine.
As winter set in, I found myself camping on the site of planned lithium mine solo, knowing the future of that land looked bleak and sitting with those emotions, but also freed for the first time in nearly a year from intense daily organizing, politicking, interviews, and orientations of protest camp life to spend a lot of time on the land — hiking, photography, and writing to challenge the intensive propaganda campaign around so-called “green energy” and “green technologies” which has even infiltrated our own movements.
It was also during this period, under the Biden administration, that social media platforms expanded their censorship and repression of activist voices in an escalation of the propaganda and thought-control that is made possible by the digital age. Building on the rise of mass surveillance, the current administration is now using state agencies and cooperative mega-surveillance corporations (commonly known as tech companies) to escalate from censorship and surveillance to active targeting and destruction of internal dissidents in the offline realm: a new McCarthyism.
Four years later, Thacker Pass is being bulldozed as we speak. Our resistance failed. We knew it probably would. This is a truth that is rarely spoken in the environmental movement: our strategies and tactics are almost never effective. The entire environmental movement has been a running retreat for my entire lifetime — and in truth, for far longer.
Sure, we've had a few victories — wilderness protections, industrial projects cancelled, stronger protections enacted — but we’ve had far more defeats. I’ve personally been part of three successful campaigns, and at least six which have failed. And all of our victories have been defensive, only slowing or stalling the destruction globally, not halting it or reversing it. Even wilderness areas in the most remote regions of the planet are being poisoned by airborne pollution and gradually losing their integrity, diversity, and stability due to global warming.
Overall, the planet is in far worse shape than when I was born. Thousands of species have been driven extinct. Almost all others have seen their populations decline precipitously. Carbon levels in the atmosphere have increased from 350ppm to nearly 430ppm. Millions of acres of old-growth and mature forest have been cut, and millions of acres paved or plowed or “developed.” Coral reefs have essentially been lost. Chemical production and fossil fuel use has skyrocketed.
We’re losing. Despite all the best efforts of millions of environmentalists and tens of thousands of organizations, the planet is fucked.
Most people will take this as evidence that we should do the same things, only try harder. Vote in more progressives, get stronger regulations passed, lobby and rally and donate and engage in direct action. And sure, those things might be useful. But remember: these are the defensive tactics that got us here. When you only play defense, you can only ever lose more and more. These tactics won’t turn things around.
So what would an offensive environmental movement look like? Most people’s answer to that is something vague about “education” and “cultural transformation” and “paradigm shifts” — basically the strategic equivalent of wishing upon a star. I want something more concrete, which is why I’ve long been an advocate for strategic eco-sabotage.
I wasn’t joking all those times when I talked about the need for revolutionary change. Our tactics aren’t working. We need to escalate. And I believe a key element of that strategic escalation — not the only one, but an important one — must be eco-sabotage. That is what I’m going to focus on here at Biocentric in 2026. I’m planning to write about strategy, tactics, book and film reviews, case studies, and more. I’ll write about other topics, too. But the constant thread will be escalation.
For now, it’s not illegal to advocate eco-sabotage in the United States (as long as you don’t stray into the realm of incitement). That doesn’t mean I won’t be targeted. But better it be me than the people who are out there taking action and putting their lives on the line for a better world. If you haven’t considered it already, know that readers may be targeted too. This is a subversive publication, and reading it means you’re likely already on some government lists.
If you haven’t already, consider shifting your Biocentric subscription to a secure encrypted email provider that’s not linked to your real identity. Use a fake name for your comments. Start using a trusted VPN or even TOR browser for researching resistance strategy. Take this fucking seriously. I’m already on lots of government lists and have been harassed by the FBI, and things are going to get worse in the future.
But despite the risks, I’m simply not content to watch the future go up in flames.
If you’re not either, stick with me for 2026.
I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you.
Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.
Unsurprisingly, this post led to the biggest drop in subscribers I've seen yet on this platform. However, the number of those who left was still small in comparison to those of you who have remained. I look forward to the dialogue on these topics.
I went to law school (UC Berkeley) in the early '70s after i left the engineering "profession" (just another form of white collar wage slavery) and thought i could translate my tech background and legal training into becoming an environmental law. I soon got politically (and culturally!) radicalized, and came to see that while environmental law projects can prevent outright disasters in some cases, they overall legitimate the entire system, providing the facade of "regulation" and mitigating the worst symptoms.
Meanwhile, the beast rages with little real control. In fact, this helps the monster smooth out its operations and gobble up the planet, making the small "islands" of ecological preserves increasingly unsustainable as the ecosystem collapses around them. Real change will not come due to new laws and regulations, but from social revolution, out of eliminating the global industrial capitalist system.