Tag Archives: environmentalism

Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works

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Nonviolent action is extremely powerful.

Unfortunately, however, activists do not always understand why
nonviolence is so powerful and they design ‘direct actions’ that are
virtually powerless.

I would like to start by posing two questions. Why is nonviolent action
so powerful? And why is using it strategically so transformative?

When an activist group is working on an issue – such as a national
liberation struggle, war, the climate catastrophe, violence against
women and/or children, nuclear weapons, drone killings, rainforest
destruction, encroachments on indigenous land – they will often plan an
action that is intended to physically halt an activity, such as the
activities of a military base, the loading of a coal ship, the work of a
bulldozer, the building of an oil pipeline. Their plan might also
include using one or more of a variety of techniques such as locking
themselves to a piece of equipment (‘locking-on’) to prevent it from
being used. Separately or in addition, they might use secrecy both in
their planning and execution so that they are able to carry out the
action before police or military personnel prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately, the focus on physical outcomes (including actions such as
‘locking-on’ and its many equivalents), and the secrecy necessary to
carry out their plan, all functionally undermine the power of their
action. Why is this? Let me explain how and why nonviolent action works
so that it is clear why any nonviolent activist who understands the
dynamics of nonviolent action is unconcerned about the immediate
physical outcome of their action (and what is necessary to achieve
that).

If you think of your nonviolent action as a physical act, then you will
tend to focus your attention on securing a physical outcome from your
planned action: to prevent the military from occupying a location, to
stop a bulldozer from knocking down trees, to halt the work at an oil
terminal or nuclear power station, to prevent construction equipment
being moved on site. Of course, it is simple enough to plan a nonviolent
action that will do any of these things for a period of time and there
are many possible actions that might achieve it.

But if you pause to consider how your nonviolent action might have
psychological and political impact that leads to lasting or even
permanent change on the issue in question but also society as a whole,
then your conception of what you might do will be both expanded and
deepened. And you will be starting to think strategically about what it
means to mobilise large numbers of people to think and behave
differently.

After all, whatever the immediate focus of your action, it is only ever
one step in the direction of more profound change. And this profound
change must include a lasting change in prevailing ideas and a lasting
change in ‘normal’ behaviour by substantial (and perhaps even vast)
numbers of people. Or you will be back tomorrow, the day after and so on
until you get tired of doing something without result, as routinely
happens in campaigns that ‘go nowhere’ (as so many do).

So why does nonviolent action work?

Fundamentally, nonviolent action works because of its capacity to create
a favourable political atmosphere (because of, for example, the way in
which activist honesty builds trust), its capacity to create a
non-threatening physical environment (because of the nonviolent
discipline of the activists), and its capacity to alter the human
psychological conditions (both innate and learned) that make people
resist new ideas in the first place. This includes its capacity to
reduce or eliminate fear and its capacity to ‘humanise’ activists in the
eyes of more conservative sections of the community. In essence,
nonviolent activists precipitate change because people are inspired by
the honesty, discipline, integrity, courage and determination of the
activists – despite arrests, beatings or imprisonment – and are thus
inclined to identify with them. Moreover, as an extension of this, they
are inclined to change their behaviour to act in solidarity.

It is for this reason too that a nonviolent action should always make
explicit what behavioural change it is asking of people. Whether
communicated in news conferences or via the various media, painted on
banners or in other ways, a nonviolent action group should clearly
communicate powerful actions that individuals can take. For example, a
climate action group should consistently convey the messages to ‘Save
the Climate: Become a Vegan/Vegetarian’, ‘Save the Climate: Boycott
Cars’ and, like a rainforest action group, ‘Don’t Buy Rainforest
Timber’. A peace group should consistently convey such messages as
‘Don’t Pay Taxes for War’ and ‘Divest from the Weapons Industry’ (among
many other possibilities). Groups resisting the nuclear fuel cycle and
fossil fuel industry in their many manifestations should consistently
convey brief messages that encourage reduced consumption and a shift to
more self-reliant renewable energies. See, for example, ‘The Flame Tree
Project to Save Life on Earth’. Groups struggling to defend or reinstate indigenous sovereignty should convey compelling messages that explain what people can do in their particular context.

It is important that these messages require powerful personal action,
not token responses. And it is important that these actions should not
be directed at elites or lobbying elites. Elites will fall into line
when we have mobilized enough people so that they are compelled to do as
we wish. And not before. At the end of the Salt March in 1930 Gandhi
picked up a handful of salt on the beach at Dandi. This was the signal
for Indians everywhere to start collecting their own salt in violation
of British law. In subsequent campaigns Gandhi called for Indians to
boycott British cloth and make their own khadi (handwoven cloth). These
actions were strategically focused because they undermined the
profitability of British colonialism in India and nurtured Indian
self-reliance.

A key reason why Mohandas K. Gandhi was that rarest of combinations – a
master nonviolent strategist and a master nonviolent tactician – was
because he understood the psychology of nonviolence and how to make it
have political impact. Let me illustrate this point by using the
nonviolent raid on the Dharasana salt works, the nonviolent action he
planned as a sequel to the more famous Salt March in 1930.

On 4 May 1930 Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, advising his
intention to lead a party of nonviolent activists to raid the Dharasana
Salt Works to collect salt and thus intervene against the law
prohibiting Indians from collecting their own salt. Gandhi was
immediately arrested, as were many other prominent nationalist leaders
such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel.

Nevertheless, having planned for this contingency, under a succession of
leaders (who were also progressively arrested) the raid went ahead as
planned with hundreds of Indian satyagrahis (nonviolent activists)
attempting to nonviolently invade the salt works. However, despite
repeated attempts by these activists to walk into the salt works during
a three week period, not one activist got a pinch of salt! Moreover,
hundreds of satyagrahis were injured, many receiving fractured skulls or
shoulders, and two were killed.

But an account of the activists’ nonviolent discipline, commitment and
courage – under the steel-tipped lathi (baton) blows of the police – was
reported in 1,350 newspapers around the world. As a result, this
nonviolent action – which ‘failed’ to achieve the stated physical
objective of seizing salt – functionally undermined support for British
imperialism in India. For an account of the salt raids at Dharasana, see
Thomas Weber. ‘”The Marchers Simply Walked Forward Until Struck Down”:
Nonviolent Suffering and Conversion’

If the activists had been preoccupied with the physical seizure of salt
and, perhaps, resorted to the use of secrecy to get it, there would have
been no chance to demonstrate their honesty, integrity, courage and
determination – and to thus inspire empathy for their cause – although
they might have got some salt! (Of course, if salt had been removed
secretly, the British government could, if they had chosen, ignored it:
after all, who would have known or cared? However, they could not afford
to let the satyagrahis take salt openly because salt removal was illegal
and failure to react would have shown the salt law – a law that
represented the antithesis of Indian independence – to be ineffective.)

In summary, nonviolent activists who think strategically understand that
strategic effectiveness is unrelated to whether or not the action is
physically successful (provided it is strategically selected,
well-designed so that it elicits one or other of the intended responses,
and sincerely attempted). Psychological, and hence political, impact is
gained by demonstrating qualities that inspire others and move them to
act personally too. For this reason, among several others, secrecy (and
the fear that drives it) is counterproductive if strategic impact is
your intention.

If you are interested in planning effective nonviolent actions, a
related article also explains the vital distinction between ‘The
Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And if you are concerned about violent military or police responses,
have a look at ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent
Repression’.

For those of you who are interested in planning and acting strategically
in your nonviolent struggle, whatever its focus, you might be interested
in one or the other of these two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

And if you are interested in being part of the worldwide movement to end
all violence, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s
Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Struggles for peace, justice, sustainability and liberation often fail.
Almost invariably, this is due to the failure to understand the
psychology, politics and strategy of nonviolence. It is not complicated
but it requires a little time to learn.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.netand his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

The Courage to Speak Truth to Power

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By Zoe Blunt

Source: DGR News Service

The more we challenge the status quo, the more those with power attack us. Fortunately, social change is not a popularity contest.

Activism is a path to healing from trauma. It’s taking back our power to protect ourselves and our future.

From a spoken-word presentation in Victoria BC, 2009

Thank you for the opportunity to launch my speaking career. Some of you may know me as a writer and an advocate for social and environmental justice. Others may know me as a cat-sitter, odd-jobber, and temp slave. (Laughter)

I knew when I started out as an activist that I would never be a millionaire and I was right. But I have a certain freedom and flexibility that your average millionaire might envy.

The market demand for social justice advocates is huge right now. It’s a growth industry. And the job security is fantastic – there is no shortage of urgent issues demanding our attention. Experience is not necessary, people come to activism at every age and stage in their lives. It’s that easy!

OK, it’s not actually that easy. (Laughter) But it is a fascinating time to be a “radical.”

There is a great tradition of courage and action here on Vancouver Island. There is potential for even greater future action, so we are doing everything we can to nurture that potential. Building community, linking up networks, teaching, learning, coming together, healing – this is all part of the movement.

For most of my adult life, I suffered from social phobia. I was afraid of authority, filled with self-doubt, paralyzed by anxiety. Getting interviewed live on national TV doesn’t make that go away. But hiding under the covers doesn’t cure it either. So my insecurities and I just have to get out there and do our best.

What compels me is the knowledge that we’re rewriting the script – the one that says, “You don’t make a difference. It is what it is, you can’t fight city hall, the big guys always win.” We can remember that we are not powerless. And when we choose to stand up, it is a huge adrenaline rush – bigger than national TV or swinging from a tree top. That’s the reward – that flood of excitement that comes from taking back our power and using it effectively, for the collective good.

It helps to get love letters from friends and strangers who want to thank me for standing up for what’s important, and who get inspired to take action themselves.

But it’s not all warm fuzzies and celebratory toasts. We face backlash and punishment and threats to our lives and safety.

I led a workshop for new activists this year, and I asked them, “Who are your heroes?”

They named a dozen. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Tommy Douglas. Rosa Parks. These folks led amazing, heroic movements, but our discussion focused on the ferocious backlash they faced. British media reports on Gandhi when he was challenging the monarchy had the same tone as white Southerners responding to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. It was vicious. “Uppity and no-good” were some of the polite terms. They were targeted with hate speech and death threats. We hear the same now about whistleblowers. And feminists and environmentalists. It can be terrifying.

The more we challenge the status quo, the more the entrenched powers attack us. The more effective we are, the more they attack us. As Gandhi said: “First the ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

The fight for justice and liberation won’t be won by popularity contests.

Every campaigner finds their own way of dealing with the counter-attacks. Some laugh it off. Some pray, some cry on their friends’ shoulders. Some go on the counter-offensive, some compose songs, some write long academic papers deconstructing their opponents’ logic. The important thing is, they deal with it, and they don’t give up.

We take care of each other as a community. Because we are all so fragile. Because there is so much trauma and despair everywhere and it affects everyone. But inside that despair, in all of us, there is a solid core of love for the earth and the knowledge that we can act in self-defense. That’s where we find strength.

It’s humbling to note that the economic downturn has done more to preserve habitat and stop climate change than all of our conservation efforts of the past years combined. We take responsibility for recycling and turning down the thermostat, but who is responsible for the scale of destruction from the Tar Sands? That project is the equivalent of burning all of Vancouver Island to the ground. It negates everything we could hope to do as individuals to fight climate change.

How do we deal with that horrible reality? I couldn’t, for the first year of the campaign. I didn’t want to look at the pictures and hear the news stories about the water and air pollution and the rates of illness among the Lubicon Cree people. The scale and the horror of it were too great.

I’ve worked on toxics campaigns and I dread them. Old-growth campaigns are inspiring, because where the action is, the forest is still standing – it’s beautiful and magical and we’re defending nature’s cathedral from the bulldozers and chainsaws. The good earth is here, and the evil destructive forces are over there. It’s clearcut, so to speak. But when a toxics campaign is underway, the damage has been done. The landscape is poisoned and people have cancer and spontaneous abortions, and the birds, the fish, the animals, are dead and dying. It is a scene of despair.

If it sounds traumatizing, it is. And we are all traumatized.

Look at this landscape – concrete, pavement, bricks and mortar, toxic chemicals, but underneath, the earth is still there. We have whole ecosystems slashed and burned without so much as a by-your-leave. We’ve lost whole communities of spruce, marmots, murrelets, arbutus, sea otters, and geoducks. These are terrible losses.

And we humans suffer on every level. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know someone who’s had cancer? Who hasn’t seen the damage caused by diseases of civilization? Who here hasn’t been forced to do without for lack of money? Are there any women here who have never been sexually harassed or raped or assaulted?

(Silence)

Something fundamental has been taken from us here. How do we deal with these losses?

I consider myself fortunate because after a lifetime of abuse from my family and male partners, I participated in six months of Trauma Recovery and Empowerment at the Battered Women’s Support Centre in Vancouver.

And I got to know the stages of trauma recovery:
Acknowledge the loss, understand the loss, grieve the loss.

And the stages of grief:
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

These steps are a natural and necessary response to the loss of a loved one, and also to the loss of our humanity and the places we love.

There are people living in national sacrifice zones, people who burn with determination to make change. They are angry, and they have a right to be. I am angry because I’m not dead inside, in spite of all they’ve done to me. Anger is part of the process of grief, and it’s useful. It grabs us by the heart when people are hurting the ones we love.

For me, part of the process is taking action – rejecting helplessness and taking back power. Stopping the bleeding and comforting the wounded.

I fall in love with places and I want to protect them. I fell in love with the Elaho Valley and some of the world’s biggest Douglas Firs in 1997. That forest campaign was a pitched battle, far from the urban centers, against one of the biggest logging companies on the coast at that time.

In the third year of the campaign, I walked into my favourite campsite shaded by majestic cedars. I saw the flagging tape and the clearcut boundaries laid out, and I realized it was all doomed. I could see the end result in my mind’s eye: stumps and slash piles as far as the eye could see, muddy wrecked creeks, a smoldering ruin.

I realized no one was going to come and save this place – not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, no MP’s private member’s bill, or whatever petition or rally was being planned back in the city. It was as good as gone. All we had to do was stand aside and do nothing, and this incredible, irreplaceable forest would be just a sad memory.

But after that realization, and after the despair that followed, I had a profound sense of liberation. If it is all doomed, then anything we do to resist is positive, right? Anything that stops the logging, even for a minute, or slows it down, or costs the company money, or exposes it to public embarrassment and hurts its market share, is positive – it keeps the future alive for that one more minute, one more hour, one more day. It was a revelation.

Acceptance, for me, meant being able to act to defend the place I loved. It meant standing up to the bullies and refusing to let them take anything more from me.

In the third year of the Elaho campaign, it was just a handful of people rebuilding the blockades, defying the court orders and continuing the resistance. We didn’t quit when the police came, or when we were called “terrorists” and “enemies of BC.” We didn’t quit even after 100 loggers came and burned our camp to the ground and put three people in the hospital.

The attack was a horror show. People were in shock. But a crew was back with a new camp five days later. By then, the raid was national news. And our enemies had nothing left to throw at us. The loggers didn’t know what to do next. Short of killing us, what more could they do?

We had called their bluff.

We didn’t know about the negotiations going on behind the scenes. We didn’t realize that we had already cost the loggers more than they could hope to recoup by logging the entire rest of the valley. (They were operating on very slim profit margins.) We found out when the announcement came that the logging would stop. And it never started again. We won. Now the Elaho Valley is protected by the Squamish Nation — and by provincial legislation — as a Wild Spirit Place.

The violence of the mob showed the level of fear and desperation of the losing side. It was their weapon of last resort and it didn’t work. And they lost.

In the fourth year of the stand for SPAET – the campaign to stop the development and protect the caves, the garry oaks, and the wetlands on Skirt Mountain – we faced the same tactics. We were called “terrorists,” and in 2007, the developers sent 100 goons to rough up people at a small rally. And again, most of our comrades are still in shock. There’s only a handful of us still bashing away at the next phase of development.

We are winning. The other side has thrown everything they have at us and they have nothing left.

There are still sacred sites on SPAET. The cave is still there, buried under concrete.

Meanwhile, the developer’s little empire fell apart, either because of our boycott campaign, bad karma, or because it was operating on the slimmest of shady margins. We took the next phase of development to court. Our campaign, and the economic downturn, turned out to be enough to scare off investors and cancel the project, at least for now.

This work is difficult, painful, and traumatic. So the first step to courage is to acknowledge that pain and loss. We need to name what has been taken from us. Then we can cry, and rage, and grieve. We can name the ones who are doing the damage. We can reach down inside and find our core strength and our truth, and use it. That’s where courage comes from.

Martin Luther King said, “Justice shall roll down like waters, righteousness like a mighty stream.” But I’m impatient. I want to see that mighty stream now – what’s the hold-up? What’s holding us back, when there’s so much to do?

We’re not heroes, actually – none of us is smart enough, or tough enough, or connected enough, to take this on alone. We don’t have superpowers. We are only human, we struggle and suffer and sometimes, we win.

Some folks assume I have some vision, some over-arching game plan, some magic power that gives me an edge. Nope. Most of the time I am just flailing around on the political landscape, taking potshots when I see an opening. Sometimes it’s intuition, and it pays off. When we are right, it is amazing. When we win, it sets a precedent for the future.

In order for evil to prevail, all that’s required is for good people to do nothing. Don’t be one of those good people.

Activism is part of the healing. It’s taking action to protect ourselves and our future.

Thank you for the opportunity to tell these stories today.

(Applause)

Also read how Zoe Blunt moved from “flailing around on the political landscape” to strategic activism: Deep Green Resistance: Words as tactical weapons

Meet the Indigenous Eco-feminists of the Amazon

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In Ecuador, indigenous Kichwa women are resisting corporate interests that threaten their land.

By Lindsey Weedston

Source: Yes! Magazine

For episode two of A Woman’s Place, Kassidy Brown and Allison Rapson traveled to Ecuador and ventured deep into the Amazon rainforest. There, issues of indigenous rights and the rights of women intersect in many ways. Corporate exploitation of indigenous land directly affects women who rely on natural resources for important aspects of their culture and daily lives.

This is one reason why Brown and Rapson sought out Nina Gualinga, a member of the Ecuadorian Kichwa tribe, internationally known for her indigenous rights activism. “In every episode we tried to address a different angle of feminism and a different way that it could be expressed,” Rapson said. For Brown and Rapson, Gualinga represented the power of eco-feminism, which combines environmentalism with feminist theory.

“We were struck by lots of things, but really it was just understanding her relationship to Mother Earth,” Rapson explained. “It’s a very personal relationship, and fighting for the planet, for them, is like fighting for a really powerful woman who needs their protection.”

The episode explains how, after oil companies began exploiting their land for fossil fuels, the Kichwa people protested, sued the government, and convinced the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to force oil companies out of Kichwa territory. But even though Kichwa women stood up to Big Oil and won, they still have to be vigilant. For Gualinga, and other Ecuadorian women interviewed for this episode, the capitalist system that threatens their land is also a key element of the modern patriarchy.

“It’s the kind of capitalism where big oil is coming in with a very masculine approach,” said Brown. “With the worst form of masculinity—aggressive, not listening to the community leaders, and not hearing what the people want.”

“All people have both feminine and masculine attributes. It’s not that all men are bad and it’s not that all masculine expression is bad,” Rapson said. “It’s that we are living with the remnants of an outdated and antiquated system.”

Gualinga says another obstacle indigenous women face is the stereotype that their communities are “primitive.” So when she brought Brown and Rapson to her village of Sarayaku, Gualinga showed them how Kichwa people have mixed modern technology with ancient traditions. The village uses solar panels for electricity—and Rapson explained that they even have their own “tech center”—while things like traditional teas and beauty products are still made by hand.

“It’s incredible to walk around the forest with Nina. She would pull this flower and tell us about how this oil would clear up your skin,” said Brown. “Then she would pull another thing that I would never recognize out of the rest of the foliage and say ‘This is great for your hair, it will make it longer and stronger.’ They have what they need there.”

This is part of the reason protecting their land is so important to the Kichwa.“It’s kind of like someone coming into your town and saying ‘I’m going to destroy your grocery store and your bank and your beauty salon,’” explained Rapson. “‘I’m going to literally take every aspect of your life—everything involved in how you live every day-to-day moment—and I’m going to get rid of all of that.’” Because when Gualinga and her fellow tribe members talk about protecting their environment, it’s more than just land. It’s protecting their history, their traditions, and their culture.

 

Lindsey Weedston wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Lindsey is a Seattle-based feminist blogger with a creative writing degree that everyone told her would be useless. She spends her time writing about various human rights and social justice issues on her blog Not Sorry Feminism and dabbles in video game reviews and commentary. Find her on Twitter at @NotSorryFem.

On the Slow Kill of the World’s Oceans

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By Aaron Dames

Originally posted at Divided Core on November 1, 2013

It is probable that every major ecological pillar however tenuously stabilizing the structure of the oceans is crumbling. Although some endangered fish populations and coral reef systems are being protected and restored, the seas overall are in deep shit. Overfishing and pollution are reducing biodiversity by killing-off large swaths of ocean life. The destruction of vast marine habitats will have catastrophic repercussions for humanity. [According to some earth scientists, oceanic ecocide poses a greater threat to the existence of humanity than climate change. Higher global temperature averages which melt icecaps and glaciers will lead to higher sea levels and the inundation of a plethora of coastal industries, cities, and urban centers that are responsible for contributing to environmental destruction and the mass production of excessive, heat-trapping, carbon-dioxide emissions. As in times of major economic depressions or financial stagnation, the inundation of coastal megalopolises will result in a decrease of industrial activity which may subsequently benefit nature as a whole (until industrial activity is resumed), but would have horrible consequences for humanity, especially for those hundreds of millions of impoverished coastal inhabitants who already live in deprivation, and who would become environmental refugees in the event of a significant increase in sea levels. (Click here to view an interactive map from National Geographic which depicts how coastlines would change if all glaciers and icecaps on Earth were to melt.)]

Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but human beings have caused a lot of trouble for life in the world’s oceans. The process in which the destruction of sea life occurs is largely two-fold. Large-scale destructive events like oil spills (Deepwater Horizon) and nuclear power plant disasters (Fukushima) can cause serious damage to the affected aquatic areas. Damage from such disasters is often immediately evident, such as the deformed and eyeless fish and shrimp that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, or the dying sea lions pups and seals with bleeding lesions that have washed up on beaches in California and Alaska the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown. Yet as grave and harmful as they are, explosive, headline-making disasters are less deleterious to life in the seas than the cumulative, synergistic effects of routine human activities such as oceanic commerce, commercial fishing, and pollution. For example, a 2002 study by the National Academy of the Sciences found that the 85 percent of the 29 million gallons of marine oil pollution originating from North America derives from runoff from cars and oil-based machines and accessories (like lawnmowers and household robots) – and the sum of these tiny releases of oil, carried into the ocean by streams and storm drains, is equivalent to an Exxon Valdez oil spill every eight months. [As additional food for thought: there are apparently 90,000 cargo ships in the world. (Incidentally, there are also roughly 760 million vehicles and 30,000 commercial airplanes.) Many of these vessels run off of “bunker fuel,” a byproduct of the oil refining process. The burning of bunker fuels in cargo ships may be responsible for 3.5 – 4% of all carbon-dioxide emissions; and particulate pollution (such as sulphur-dioxide fumes) from cargo ships may contribute to as many as 60,000 human deaths a year. These chemical emission-related figures exclude the effects of pollution produced by navy vessels, cruise ships, and fishing fleets. Also, often overlooked are the human costs involved in the process of shipbreaking, where wretched working conditions plague extremely low-paid laborers, mainly on the Indian subcontinent. For a glimpse into their lives, check out the film Ironeaters.]

Daily activities which contribute to ocean pollution and the depletion of fish stocks are decimating underwater habitats, driving down biodiversity, and have the potential to reduce the populations of certain marine species to irrecoverable extents or down to zero. The elimination of any species from an ecological network could have devastating and unforeseen impacts on the rest of the planet. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, “Overfishing may be the single biggest threat to ocean ecosystems. Today, 85 percent of the world’s fisheries are either fully exploited, overexploited or have collapsed. The global fishing fleet is operating at 2.5 times the sustainable level – there are simply too many boats chasing a dwindling number of fish.” Commercial, illegal, and game fishing operations are wiping-out the populations of major fish species, such as bluefin tuna and blue and white marlin; both of which species are likely to be overfished to extinction within the century. Dolphins and small whales are facing extinction off the coast of Japan, where over a million such creatures have been hunted and killed over the past seventy years. 100 million sharks are estimated to be killed by humans every year. (Click here to view a picture that was taken earlier this year and shows thousands of shark fins drying on a rooftop in Hong Kong.) It is unlikely that the current rate of exploitation and depletion can be sufficiently curbed in order to allow time for the dwindling populations of many fish species to recover. For those more interested in the subject of overfishing, I highly recommend watching the film End of the Line.

Pollution is another major force contributing to the demise of life in the oceans. Over the last century immense volumes of trash and industrial chemicals have contaminated whole cross-sections of the oceans. Toxins that enter the oceans are spread throughout food chains, and varying degrees of visible and microscopic waste accumulate in the water and on shores. One diabolical clusterfuck that highlights the deleterious effects of pollution on the marine environment is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Like other ocean regions, the North Pacific Ocean has immense gyre-like convergence zones which are formed by wind and rotating currents. The Pacific convergence zones currently contain astronomical quantities of accumulated rubbish, much of which has been or is being broken down into tiny particles of microplastic. Subsisting in the gyres and consuming the plastic are around 260 species of fish, sea turtles, birds, and other sea creatures. These animals often die from the consumption of plastic, which may also end-up in the bodies of the predators that feed off them, or, as in the case of the Laysan albatross, in their young. On the Midway Atoll, where twenty tons of plastic wash up every year, as many as one-third of all albatross chicks die due to eating plastic inadvertently fed to them by their parents.

In addition to plastic, a broad range of manufactured organic and toxic chemicals have made their way into the oceans. Many of these contaminants lodge themselves in the tissues of fish and bioaccumulate as the fish are ingested up the food chain. Studies have found high levels of mercury and industrial chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in dolphin and whale meat. What the hell are PCBs? Allow Cathy Britt to explain:

PCBs are manufactured organic chemicals that were primarily used as insulating liquids, such as coolants and lubricants in electrical equipment, but were also used in other common materials such as paints, cement, adhesives, and even the flame retardants used in some children’s clothing…Though production of PCBs was banned in the 1970s because of its harmful effects to the environment, the chemical still presents a significant environmental threat today.

Orcas have accumulated such high concentrations of PCBs that when female orcas breast feed their young, the firstborn calf usually dies as a result of receiving a toxic overdose of PCBs contained in its mother’s fatty-rich breast milk. PCBs and other toxins are also known to cause health problems in other large Artic animals, like polar bears and seals. Although PCBs, some pesticides, and other persistent organic pollutants have been phased out and banned, many industrial chemicals (such as brominated flame-retardants) are still widely used and find their way into the oceans. Humans are not immune to this process of bioaccumulation, and toxins are accruing in the bodies of people as a result of eating fish. But perhaps the real blow will come later, when there are no more fish to eat.

Human beings are carrying out a slow kill of the world’s seas, as well as on much of the planet’s other ecosystems. Modern man finds himself in living in a paradox where he knows more than ever about how the natural world functions, and nevertheless the natural world is in its worst shape yet due to how modern man mistreats it. How is that we can care so much about ourselves and our friends and family, but so little about others and the natural systems that we depend on to survive? The Earth revolves through day and night, and it seems that billions of people are clocking-in and out of shifts to partake in the wholesale destruction of the world on their side of the planet. If the day arrives when the seas have become polluted dead zones void of great shoals of fish – assuming there will be humans to witness it, they’ll look out across the grey and desolate tides toward the bleak horizon and ask, “How did we let this happen?” And this is the answer: We let it happen through stupidity, laziness, arrogance, apathy, and greed. We couldn’t stop gorging ourselves, we couldn’t control our insatiable appetite, and we didn’t think to heed the warnings we were given (though we saw them); we didn’t think to step back, to slow down, and to stop ourselves and each other. It was a free for all, and we didn’t care enough about our world and Mother Nature to make a difference and to save her oceans from death. We are like addicts, and we only take; we always take, and we never give back. And in her darkest hour, when nature desperately needed a hand – when her battered reefs became bleached and white like bones, when her bays became choked with smog and clogged with oil, when the whales and dolphins were beaching themselves in mass die-offs along the shores, when the nets that we cast came back with less and less until there was nothing – when she needed us most, we refused to reach out and instead we looked the other way in betrayal. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can leave this planet in better shape than you found it. You can try to make a difference and stand up for those creatures on this planet that can’t stand up for themselves; even if it doesn’t work, they’ll appreciate that you tried. And you’ll also feel a lot better about yourself that you did.