The Anti-globalization Movement and the War Against Nature
by Don Ogden/Climate Action NOW!

The most violent and widespread war in human history has been taking place for more than 5,000 years, perhaps even going back to the advent of cultivation. This war has been waged in more places than any other yet the majority of its atrocities goes unreported. Some deny this war even exists. Sadly, the international peace and justice movement historically has given it little attention even though many human conflicts have so-called resource issues at their base. Western lifestyles contribute to this war in various degrees and it may be that our complicity creates a measure of denial. This war is, of course, against the Earth; against Nature.

However, with the recent rise in protest over the corporatization of life on the planet, ALL life on the planet, we have been witness to encouraging multi-issue alliances being formed and developing into events such as the WTO demonstrations in Seattle and IMF/World Bank actions in DC, Prague, and around the world. Yet, since the "Turtles & Teamsters" unity of Seattle (with a few exceptions), this critical aspect of our growing movement has suffered some setbacks. As the action moved from Seattle to DC to the summer's political conventions here in the US, environmental issues have been progressively slipping from the radar screen. Human-centered concerns such as economic exploitation, prison issues, racism, sexism (to name just a few) seem to have reasserted themselves on to the top of the agenda, rather than being spokes in a wheel of pressing issues. Why is that? Don't all those other issues require a healthy, functioning planet in order to exist and be improved upon? Part of the reason, naturally, is our inherent anthropocentrism. Yet, like many of our "isims", as awareness advances so too should our self-destructive baggage recede. Many ecologists, philosophers and social observers believe that our present relationships with other life forms and systems on planet Earth will be viewed with disdain and horror by future generations (should human intellectual and spiritual progress continue). It seems eminently sensible that the rapidly evolving movement we see before us should be the vehicle for that change. So, what's with the backsliding? Is it despair in the face of horrendous scientific findings on the state of the biosphere? (see: The World Scientist Warning to Humanity, first released in 1992 by 1500 of the world's senior scientists, which you can read here.) Or is it denial stemming from our own participation in the war upon our Mother Earth?

As humans, many of us indoctrinated in Western materialistic culture and values, we participate on some level to this assault upon the Earth. In his milestone revelation of ecopsychology, "The Voice of the Earth", Theodore Roszak delves into the history of this war, discovering its roots in the first yearnings of what we call civilization. "Here, at the very outset of civilization, were warrior-autocrats who regarded themselves as divine, who sought to change the course of rivers, to raise up monuments that rivaled the mountains...an inordinate desire to control and reshape their investment in violence to the Earth. This distrust born of that bad beginning lingers on in our relations with the environment - a 'war against nature'."

Today's military-industrial complex, said social critic Lewis Mumford decades ago, assumes the war against the Earth as a given. So self-evident is the battle that it is "rarely criticized or challenged - indeed almost never examined - for [it is] completely identified with the new way of life: to conquer nature." He goes on to investigate this conquest and the complicity of early Christian theology: "Now this supposed necessity to conquer nature is not quite so innocent in either its origins or its intentions as it might seem. In part, at least, it applies unscrupulously to nature the more ancient ambitions of military conquest and imperialist exploitation; but in part, unfortunately, it is also due to profound fault in Christian theology, which regarded the earth as man's exclusive property, designed by God solely for his use and enjoyment, and further looked upon all other living creatures as without souls, and so subject to the same treatment as inanimate things."

Feminist writers have exposed the anti-life fundamentals of the conquest of Nature at the heart of patriarchy and the patriarchal church. Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor's book, "The Great Cosmic Mother", states that "under Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and state-communism...the compulsion to control or destroy the flesh of the other has been historically stronger than the stated desire of brotherhood. This perpetual success of war and failure of peace is then said to be 'the human condition' - but it is only the condition of humans under patriarchy." They go on to point out. "Exclusive identification with the father is a way of denying dependence on the mother - who is always ultimately Mother Earth."

Carolyn Merchant's "The Death of Nature" brings to light the influence of anti-life patriarchy during the critical period of the mid-17th Century. Francis Bacon, one of the fathers of modern science, stated that the most noble ambition was to "endeavor to establish and extend power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe. [In this way] the human race [could] recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest."

The history of humanity's war against the Earth, while deeply disturbing in an academic sense, is even more devastating in the actual atrocities taking place right outside our windows. It is barely possible at the turn of the 21st Century to look in any direction without witnessing some degree of environmental destruction. The war is literally at out fingertips when we push a button, turn a key, throw a switch, turn a knob, or pull a chain. For the most part, we are all soldiers in the war. Some of us may be on the front lines mining coal or uranium on Indian land. Some of us may be behind the lines in a support capacity, benefiting from the carnage hundreds of miles away. Some may kill an endangered bird or mammal for sport, spite, spending money, or for dinner. Some may spray pesticide on some ant hill or bee's nest. The battles rage all around us. They take many forms. Some seemingly justified, some certainly not. However, the war cannot be won because it is a war against ourselves. We are not apart from Nature. Thus we commit an act of suicide hundreds of years in the making. Now, the intensity of that war has reached a level which allows for no winners.

Hopeless? I think not (though close enough). Some scientists assert we have about a decade to reverse the rampant destruction. As Lewis Mumford pointed out forty years ago, when Rome was at its technological and political apex its epitaph was already being written by a Christian revolution - ironically, one bearing the seeds of future enemies of the Earth. Today, another revolution is in the making, but it races against time, fear and ignorance.

It is biocentric, not anthropocentric; ancient in spirit, but advanced in thought and action. It includes traditional indigenous peoples, anarchists, mainstream scientists, feminists and ecologists, progressive activists, spiritual seekers, neo-pagans and theologists like Thomas Berry. In his book, "The Dream of the Earth", Berry notes: "Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger dimension of our being. Our human destiny is integral with the destiny of the Earth."

But the clock is running out on us; our footprint upon the planet is so massive, so pervasive, that we spread almost as a cancer. Many feel it can be stopped, put into remission if not reversed all together. But, we seem to have only one shot at that cure and we have to administer the medication NOW. There is, to be sure, no time for backsliding.

Don Ogden is a writer, worker, and activist. He works with Mass Earth First!, Indymedia and WMGAC and has been deeply involved in ecological and social issues over the past thirty years in the Northeast.


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