Green vs. "Green", and exposing the messiness of it all.
A few responded to “Earth needs therapy, not ‘green’ tech nor ‘green’ finance” and asked why the either-or framing. My answer lies in differentiating “green” from green. With the added quotes, “green” referred to specific technologies and the financialization of all parts of Earth propped up as sustainability solutions—when in practice, they have and/or likely will cause more harm than aid in healing.
In other words, I was not saying that no changes needed to be made to the financial system or that no technologies will help. We do need innovations that support restoration, and we do need to re-align the economy with ecology.
But these sorts of changes, in support of regeneration, are necessarily born out of a deepened awareness of and intimacy with every ecoregion—each with differing traits, cultures, and cycles waiting for us to re-embody.
As the Aboriginal scholar and member of the Apalech Clan Tyson Yunkaporta shared with me in “A different kind of growth”:
“The only way it'll work is if we have diversity and each bioregion responding to the unique spirit and entities of place—to build a patterning of relation and an economy, a governance structure, there, and then syndicating that out with all the other bioregions around.
You have to have that syndicated diversity and balance and that constant tension and balance between autonomy and collectivity, which is tricky. But it's doable and scalable. And the only way for it to be scalable is to be syndicated. It's not scalable if it's monolithic, which I think is what most people mean when they say scale, now.”
One-size-fits-all, supremacist visions of sustainability are often upheld by a similar colonial logic that destroyed biocultural diversity in the first place. To really regenerate the diversity that lends itself to collective resilience and climate stabilization, solutions cannot be replicated at scale. They can only be syndicated, though first rooted in a deep knowing of and relation to place.
So we return to my invitation to better understand the roots of our multifaceted crises using a relational lens.
Explore and expose the tension.
The topic of “renewable” energy, as I've come to see, is a contentious one, especially between those who hold the values of deep ecology—who ache at the thought of living landscapes being blown up for lithium mines just as much as the ones destroyed for coal—and those who believe we can create technofixes to allow the opulence of the “developed” world and the top 1% to continue. It's not a clear-cut boundary, of course, with many who recognize the nuance and are willing to ask themselves the difficult questions.
But it's not helpful to suppress discourses on such complexities to pretend that there is already a unity to preserve—when in fact, some people's ideas on what the solutions are actually work against other people's wellbeing and visions of healing. That is a major part of the problem itself.
Everyone is trying to be a “changemaker” in some way, even, or especially, the billionaires, attempting to shape the future of humanity. The idea of what “doing good” or “advancing” society even means is what is being fought over—with certain agendas disproportionately resourced and pushed over the others.
This becomes especially clear when we look at the nonprofit-industrial complex and world of philanthropy—supposedly all about “doing good”. Even across “environmental” organizations, certain nonprofits are funding things that actually aggravate the problems that other nonprofits are working to alleviate.
I remember during a Clubhouse discussion earlier this year, someone asked: “If we had all the money in the world to fund all of the environmental solutions out there, would we be able to address climate change?” My answer was no, because, again, different solutions work against each other, and a lot of the work of healing requires revitalizing the non-monetary, non-representational currencies of life.
For me, it's critical to unpack and expose all of these points of tension. After all, akin to what happens during the major elections, calls for unity are often made by those in greater positions of power and “privilege” to diminish the real concerns of those whose views and interests have been sidelined the most.
What are the common grounds we can connect and work together on? Where are the conflicts, and how might we deconstruct them to arrive at either a resolution or at least a mutual understanding? How do the power dynamics influence which views end up being given more weight? What disagreements might actually be based on false projections, and what misinterpretations are there to set straight?
As I shared in Protect Thacker Pass (a piece on my own awakening to the false promises of “clean” energy), given the challenging place we find ourselves in today, with many trying to balance idealism and practicality, I do not have the answers. But I at least want to know the truth. If that means maintaining an openness to critique what I thought to be the solutions, or unveiling the collateral damage that the most hyped green agendas have caused, then that, I will do.
In my next piece, I will elaborate on what I mean when I say, “No to Big Oil, and no to industrial-scale mining.”
I know. It may sound extreme. But I am intentional with this wording. It is an invitation to shift the dialogue away from the “what” and towards the “who”, the “how”, and as Dr. Yunkaporta mentioned, the “scale”.
To be continued.
Resources to check out:
More on the nonprofit-industrial complex with Alnoor Ladha, or with Konda Mason.
The difficult questions that Protect Thacker Pass raises.
Thought Maybe: an independent library of films “focused on topics challenging modern society, industrial civilisation, globalisation and its dominant culture.”
Community-oriented regeneration: In light of my continued invitation to support place-based community-building, we are continuing to build out our Regenerative Projects Directory to help people locate such initiatives near them. Check it out here! (And, if you know of additional projects to add, you can support the directory by adding more entries.)
Shops for pre-loved, used items:
With the holidays shopping season beginning, here are some of my favorite secondhand shops as a reminder for us to cherish and maximize our love for Earth's gifts!
Backmarket: a marketplace for refurbished, used tech.
BUNZ: a marketplace app that facilitates trade within communities.
Etsy: a marketplace that includes many independent sellers of vintage, handmade, and used items.
Nextdoor: an app connecting people who live within the same region or neighborhood. Oftentimes, people buy and sell used items amongst one another. For cities whose residents mostly have access to smartphones, it is a great way to get to know one's community better.
OfferUp: a marketplace app for place-based used items.
Poshmark: a marketplace app for buying and selling used clothing.
REI used gear: the official used shop of REI, selling pre-loved camping gear, outdoor accessories, activewear, etc.
Reverb: a marketplace for used instruments.
Revivo: a shop selling used VivoBarefoot shoes. (I got a pair of used hiking shoes from ReVivo during the sales weekend. I mostly only wear ‘barefoot’ shoes now to be able to feel the ground most intimately and improve my foot strength. Revivo is the official secondhand shop of VivoBarefoot.)
The Real Real: a shop pre-loved, ‘luxury’ consigned clothing, jewelry, accessories.
thredUP: a shop for pre-loved clothing and accessories.
Other calls-to-action:
Mariann Bassey of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, who I was about to interview for Green Dreamer, is currently going through a serious health crisis requiring surgery. She cannot afford the cost of the medical procedure, so her friend set up a GoFundMe for her. If you have even a dollar or two to contribute, it may support the swift recovery of this movement leader and strong warrior for food sovereignty in Africa.