February 25, 2013 |
This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.
With
runaway global warming threatening to annihilate climate stability and
perhaps life on Earth as we know it, there's no bigger issue on
humanity's crowded docket and no better time to catch up on the history
of the environmental movement. So let's give thanks that writer,
producer and director Mark Kitchell's A Fierce Green Fire has
arrived to exhaustively school us all. Especially since the Obama
administration has gone long on rhetoric but short on activism, and
practically begged to be pushed into action by the American people.
"The main lesson of
A Fierce Green Fire is
the importance of bottom-up movements to force political action and
change at the top," Kitchell, director of the Oscar-nominated
Berkeley in the Sixties, told me. "Although the environmental movement put on the largest demonstration ever on the original
Earth Day
in 1970, it was never all that big on taking to the streets. So I’m
pleased that the Sierra Club is endorsing getting arrested, and
environmental organizations are forming an alliance against the
Keystone XL pipeline. The time has come for nonviolent civil disobedience. This is what we need, and we need more of it."
And
sooner rather than later, given the popular disconnect that still
hovers over the issue, which still suffers from a visibility and
comprehension disorder of befuddling proportions given its existential
horror. As powerful as the recent Keystone XL protests at the White
House proved, they're still paltry compared to the popular momentum
needed to get the Obama administration off its ass.
"No,
we’re not getting the level of protest we need," Kitchell added. "But
part of that is lacking the urgency that a war in Vietnam engenders.
Climate change really is the impossible issue, and it’s taking a lot of
time and work to get people really focused on protesting it."
Viewers of A Fierce Green Fire --
theatrically released by First Run Features and opening March 1 in New
York before going wide across the United States -- likely will feel more
galvanized into activism than they were before screening the epic
five-act documentary, which is narrated by Robert Redford, Meryl Streep,
Isabel Allende, Ashley Judd and Van Jones. Ranging from the turbulent
formation and fights of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace to the toxic
madness of Love Canal and costly Amazon sacrifice of Chico Mendes, and
of course culminating in the mind-wiping dystopia of apocalyptic climate
change, A Fierce Green Fire frontloads more than a century's
worth of environmental madness and mobilization into a documentary
demanding even more activism and answers. It's very hard to walk away
from it wanting to go back to business-as-usual.
"We
were trying to bring together all the strands of environmentalism,
create a grand synthesis and capture the arc of the movement," Kitchell
explained. "What struck me was the evolution from local, specific issues
to global resource crises. It’s not just climate change, but forests,
water, soils, oceans, salinization, agriculture, equity and justice --
and the really big ones like loss of biodiversity and how to put our
civilization
on a sustainable path to
balance with nature. It has been hard for the environmental movement to
deal with problems so huge and beyond our ability to solve. Bill McKibbentalks
about this in Act Five:
'Climate change is too big an issue for the
environmental movement to take on.' Of course, he proceeds to start an
organization, 350.org,
to do just that. Maybe that’s what those who consider themselves
environmentalists should pass along to younger generations: An
appreciation of how big the battle has become, as well as a sense of
possibility and hope that comes from succeeding against all odds on
earlier issues."
Despite
those odds, mammoth progress has been made, said Kitchell. There are a
multitude of solutions and changes that have been accomplished during
the environmental movement's extensive history of hell-raising. It
doesn't take more than a cursory glance around our warming Earth to find
citizens engaged in beating back the ravages of environmental
devastation.
"I could point to all sorts of
signs that things are changing," he said. "Forty years after
photovoltaics first emerged, they're finally showing up in big arrays
around California. I love what is happening in Germany, which is not
only getting off of fossil and nuclear fuels, but doing distributed
generation -- quite literally, power to the people. California and lots
of other places are moving toward zero waste. There’s a long list of
chemicals and synthetic substances that have been banned one after
another."
That said, we're still in a race against
time, added Kitchell. Global warming is an exponential, existential
nightmare, and it's quickly outpacing our comparatively sluggish efforts
at righting the many wrongs of our unsustainable production and
consumption, which have seemingly proceeded at light-speed since the
Industrial Revolution. If we don't get our earthly priorities straight
by the middle of this century, all of our significant advances might not
make the slightest bit of difference in the final analysis.
"The
smart people I know who are really thinking about this think that 2050
or so is the nadir, when things get really bad," Kitchell told me. "By
2100, they think we are turning the corner. Depending on how bad it gets
-- climate, resource depletion, economic and social collapse and
instability -- population and carrying capacity may drop, perhaps
drastically. We don’t know and we won’t be around to find out. Hell of a
way to run a planet, and a movement. This is new territory."
For
those new to the expansive territories of environmental activism,
here's a list of 10 stunning things the movement has faced, fought or
said in its substantial history and battles.
1. IRS Stands For Irrational Resource Sellouts
Founded in 1892 by
John Muir, the
Sierra Club, which commands
A Fierce Green Fire'
s
first act, is the oldest, largest and most influential grassroots
environmental organization in history. By the '60s, however, it had
become a pernicious disseminator of "propaganda," according to the IRS,
which revoked the Sierra Club's charitable status as pathetic payback
for a series of popular protests against dams that would flood the Grand
Canyon. It's but one birth pang of many that
A Fierce Green Fire uncovers in the Sierra Club's outstanding history.
"It
has been too conservative or made bad choices at some points," Kitchell
admitted. "But it has survived and thrived. What stands out for me is
the democratic nature of the club: It is membership-driven and
chapter-based. And I’m really pleased to see the Sierra Club’s evolution
under a new generation: Executive director
Michael Brune is showing up at Keystone XL protests and taking a lead in a powerful alliance. I’m really jazzed about
Beyond Coal’s success and its successor campaign,
Beyond Oil. Talk about the main event! I think it’s going to be the most important campaign of the next decade or two."
2. Make Way For Earth National Park (Again)
Much of
A Fierce Green Fire's act on Sierra Club focuses on its controversial former leader
David Brower,
who served as its first executive director from 1952-1969, before being
ousted in a dispute over nuclear power, which he opposed. But despite
many militant opinions, it is perhaps his polarizing conception of
Earth National Park -- in which "all nations...unite against the one real common enemy: rampant technology" -- that may prove most prescient.
"Sure,"
said Kitchell, when asked if Earth National Park's time has finally
come. "I work in a national park, the Presidio. I think the concept has
grown enough that we might be able to make the whole world a national
park. But Brower was obviously using the idea rhetorically or
ontologically, trying to shift consciousness. When I look at where the
movement is heading today, I see a few trends: restoration, adaptation
and amelioration of climate impacts."
He
may be 87, but the pioneering environmentalist, who teamed up with
Brower to fight dam-building, is no fragile flower -- and he doesn't
want the environmental movement to be either. Environmentalists should
"be unreasonable," he argues in A Fierce Green Fire. They
should have "hatred in [their] heart[s]" for polluters and ravagers, and
they should tell a society that befouls the environment to "drop dead."
4. Spaceship Earth, Cleared For Takeoff
Despite
Brower's aforementioned hatred of technology, one of the environmental
movement's most notable evolutionary moments came in the '60s and '70s,
when it embraced science and tools to effect local and global change.
From Stewart Brand's countercultural DIY manual Whole Earth Catalog to the organic pioneer New Alchemy Instituteand beyond, hacking Earth became a hippie ideal that has evolved well into our still-new millennium.
"I like
Bucky Fuller’s idea that we have to guide
Spaceship Earth," Kitchell told me, "as well the idea that we are
Gaia, the animating force that will keep this planet habitable. Remember Stewart Brand’s motto in the
Whole Earth Catalog? 'We are as gods, and might as well get good at it.' Well, in a piece of the
A Fierce Green Fire that was edited out late, Stewart talked about how it has changed to, 'We are as gods -- and
have to get good at it.'"
5. Richard Nixon, Environmental Activist? Mindfuck!
Believe it or not, it is the disgraced Nixon's administration that proposed and formed the Environmental Protection Agency,
and supported a variety of world-changing green laws. But the history
books don't tell the whole story, said Kitchell, whose documentary
nevertheless gives Tricky Dick the time of day. "Nixon was trying to
outflank Edmund Muskie,
a real environmentalist. More important was the bipartisan group of
senators who sponsored and passed the golden era of environmental
legislation. They overrode Nixon’s veto more than once. The Dirty Dozen campaign, launched by the Earth Day folks, unseated some powerful congressmen in 1972, and after that everyone was an environmentalist."
One astounding act of
A Fierce Green Fire is
dedicated to this infamous New York neighborhood built atop an
Occidental Petroleum toxic-waste dump. The entire segment beggars
belief, from its alarming genetic and physical deformities to its naked
corporate corruption. But its most stunning achievement is its
grassroots uprising, led by the legendary
Lois Gibbs,
who galvanized neighbors and the nation alike. But most egregious is
the government's claim that Gibbs' personal investigations, later
correlated by pretty much everyone, was comprised of what she recalled
as "useless housewife data." And that EPA relocation advisory blocked by
Carter? Mindfuck, the Sequel.
7. "Apartheid American Style!"
Lost
in the toxic soup of environmental and corporate pollution are the
disproportionate numbers of people of color condemned to sickness and
death. That is, until the conscientious pioneer
Robert Bullard arrived in the '80s to ignite the environmental justice movement as we know it. But the author of
Dumping in Dixie and
Toxic Waste and Race understands that true environmentalism is both colorful
and colorblind. “There’s no Hispanic air," he argues in
A Fierce Green Fire.
"There’s no African-American air. There’s air! If you breathe air --
and most people I know do breathe air -- then I would consider you an
environmentalist.”
8. The Coming of Environmental Terrorism?
With
global resource wars already well underway, enviroterrorism seems like
it's going to become, as the popular slang goes, a thing. But it has
proven polarizing on either side of the environmental movement. On one
side you have insurgents like Greenpeace influential and Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society founder
Paul Watson, who as
A Fierce Green Fire graphically
illustrates isn't shy about getting physical for his environmental
beliefs. This philosophy is corroborated somewhat in the documentary by
Greenpeace co-founder
Bob "Mind Bombs" Hunter,
who notes that "we're insane" for killing sperm whales for their
lubricant, which we use to make better inter-continental ballistic
missiles to kill each other. But despite the fact that Watson, currently
fighting extradition notices from Costa Rica and Japan, has been
battling whalers worldwide, Kitchell seems confident that the
enviroterrorism label won't stick to him.
"Not a chance," he said. "Every time they go after Paul Watson, he just gets bigger."
But Kitchell stops short of endorsing more radical environmentalists, whose records speak for themselves.
"I
had to stop using terms like radical ecology or deep ecology, in favor
of alternative ecology movements," he added. "Radicals means
Earth First, and much as I love and respect them, look how much they accomplished."
One moving act of
A Fierce Green Fire
is dedicated to this indefatigable grassroots environmentalist, whose
leadership of Brazilian rubbertappers seeking to save the
Amazon rainforest
from rapacious development cost him his life. It is one of the
documentary's most bittersweet moments, given that the Amazon -- which
comprises over half of Earth's remaining rainforests and
stores 10 billion tons of carbon,
more than annual global emissions from fossil fuel combustion -- is in
danger of losing its total cover by 2100. Be afraid, very afraid.
"
Thomas Lovejoy,
who has studied the Amazon and how it unravels the most closely and the
longest, talks about global forestry compacts and deals, and regulating
carbon and nitrogen. He's saying, it’s a new day. And who knows? It
might even make us get along! There have been and will be parts of the
Amazon that are lost. The rain machine will stutter and maybe halt. But a
third of the Amazon is under formal protection. That’s impressive and
amazing, better than we’ve done in America."
"So it
will be a world of islands, biologically and otherwise," Kitchell
concluded. "Find a good place to take refuge, go local, consume less,
dematerialize and cyberneticize. And restore the land."
10. Global Warming Is Truly Bipartisan
One thing above all becomes crystal clear while watching A Fierce Green Fire:
When it comes to climate change, it is both Democrats and Republicans
who have screwed us all. The documentary's final act on the greatest
environmental threat facing any generation of American history has
nothing good to say about either party, from Nixon to Carter to Reagan
to Clinton to Bush to Obama.
Which is why it's more
important than ever for citizens of any political persuasion to take up
the charge and force the American government to get it in gear before
global warming turns into a full-fledged apocalypse rendering the Earth
uninhabitable. And the Keystone XL pipeline -- whose cargo means
game over for climate stability, as NASA atmospheric physicist
James Hansen so incisively argued last year -- is the flashpoint for that fight, which needs to heat up, not cool down.
"It
is a protest against the Obama administration, meant very deliberately
to put pressure on them to do the right thing," Kitchell said. "And it
seems to be working. I don’t hear much talk of an 'all-of-the-above'
energy policy now. But part of the problem with the environmental
movement is it doesn’t have the power to swing elections and instill
fear and discipline in politicians. You could say that of most mass
movements, though."
"I’ve been trying in this
film, and the process of making it, to look at the bigger picture of
where environmentalism is going and what it means," he added. "I think
it’s about civilizational transformation, an idea I got from
Paul Hawken.
It’s the next big transition after the Industrial Revolution, and it’s
about reinventing the way we make and do everything to bring our
industrial society into
sustainable balance with the natural world on which we depend for survival. That’s why the subtitle of the film is The Battle For a Living Planet.”
Scott Thill runs the online mag
Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
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