Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet [Paperback]

Derrick Jensen (Author), Aric McBay (Author), Lierre Keith (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 3, 2011

For years, Derrick Jensen has asked his audiences, "Do you think this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life?" No one ever says yes.
Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can't fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Deep Green Resistance evaluates strategic options for resistance, from nonviolence to guerrilla warfare, and the conditions required for those options to be successful. It provides an exploration of organizational structures, recruitment, security, and target selection for both aboveground and underground action. Deep Green Resistance also discusses a culture of resistance and the crucial support role that it can play.
Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet—and win.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Activist, philosopher, teacher, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, DERRICK JENSEN holds degrees in creative writing and mineral engineering physics. In 2008, he was named one of the Utne Reader’s "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World," and in 2006 he was named Press Action’s Person of the Year for his work on the book Endgame. He lives in California. 

Writer, activist, and small-scale organic farmer ARIC MCBAY works to share information about community sufficiency and off-the-grid skills. He is the author of Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash and creator of "In the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-Progress for Outliving Civilization" (www.inthewake.org).

LIERRE KEITH is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of two novels, as well The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called "the most important ecological book of this generation." She's also been arrested six times. She lives in Humboldt County, CA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; NONE edition (May 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583229299
• ISBN-13: 978-1583229293
• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Anarchism
  • #8 in Books > Science & Math > Environment > Environmentalism
  • #10 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Radicalism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 87 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars finally, a book to meet the scale of our predicament June 7, 2011

By Owen Lloyd

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is hardly the first book to acknowledge the desperation of our current predicament. Many books have addressed the devastation of our planet's oceans, soil, and forests, have pointed out that we are living in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction of unprecedented speed and voracity. It's easy to find books discussing the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples, and the ongoing devastation of their landbases and rivers for the profits of the rich, working under the malicious banner of "progress". We have many books about soil erosion turning farmland to desert, and pesticide effluents killing rivers and leaving dead zones in our oceans. Many books are available that acknowledge we live in a pornographic culture and a rape culture, a culture with little respect for women and children. For decades books have been telling us that toxic chemicals from factories have entered our bodies, that women can no longer even nurse without passing along dioxins to their children, toxins dangerous at even at a few parts per trillion. We have books that recognize that corporations, as persons, are genocidal maniacs who will profit from any atrocity they can possibly get away with, will leave our planet a barren husk so long as we do not stop them. Nor is this even the first book to argue that we must stop them.

What is different about Deep Green Resistance is that it is the first book that offers a solution that is scaled to the size of our predicament. In the past, books have usually suggested answers such as getting involved in your community, making better consumer choices, writing letters to the editor, planting gardens, donating to worthy charities, and spreading awareness of the problems we're facing.... These are good moral decisions to make, but as political tools for change they are not effective, and it becomes an immense problem when these sort of actions become the backbone of our movement for a saner world. Self-improvement and token actions, although they might help us to relieve guilt, are not going to cut it. If we are going to save this sickly planet, we are going to need to organize ourselves squarely against systems of power, and fight them as hard as we can. The authors of this book have clearly thought long and hard about how we need to organize, how we need to strategize, and what sort of pitfalls we need to watch out for. If you love this planet as much as I do, I hope you read this book and take what it has to say to heart. We will need all the heart and courage that we can muster. Read more ›

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book I've read since Zinn's A People's History June 22, 2011

By Maria Allwine

Format:Paperback

Deep Green Resistance is without doubt the most important book I've read since Zinn's A People's History. DGR is the completion of A People's History in that it's three authors, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, give us the tools we need to oppose and resist the injustices of today that Zinn knew well and opposed until his death. This book should be read by every person who understands that the Forces of Greed have captured our government, our institutions and our media and are busy taking away everything that was once good in this country and leaving us with corporatism, militarism, empire and ultimately a failed country and a ruined planet. The premise that 10,000 years of civilization is what dooms us is not only compelling, but I believe it is true. This book gives us not only a history lesson in what did and did not work for past social movements, but lays out in specific detail what we need to do to create a new world for individual human beings based on our common needs and interests. This is the book I did not know I was waiting for and I cannot put it down. I am recommending it to everyone I know, especially committed activists, as essential reading. If you say you despair, but don't know what to do, read Deep Green Resistance. If you know you want to resist, but don't know how, read this book. And then make sure that everyone you know reads it and acts upon the ideas within to resist.

41 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant achievement May 30, 2011

By ivan anderson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

"Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet" is filled with fiercely intelligent strategy on how to take effective action to save the planet. Written by three of the greatest thinkers on environmental justice, it is well worth the lengthy, yet well written read. The book reviews the history of resistance organizations, why some were effective and others were not and how we, people working as a collective can apply this towards successful action in saving the environment.

The book is urgently needed and is the best, and sadly, the only of its kind. Read it, then put it down, go into the world and take action.

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of a kind June 1, 2011

By Max W

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book lays out precisely how to build an effective social movement, based in the principles in bio-centrism and deep ecology, with the goal of dismantling industrial civilization. This book is priceless - the information contained within it gives deep insight into historical resistance movements, as well as diving into the significant challenges that our movement will have to face in light of escalating technology and thought control.

Anyone who is serious about justice should buy this book and read it, today. Regardless of your opinion, this movement will be a major force in the leftist community from this point forward.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A messanger with a gun January 12, 2013

By Ashtar Command

Format:Paperback

"Deep Green Resistance" is a disturbing book calling for eco-terrorism on a massive scale as the only way to save the planet (and perhaps ourselves). The authors, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay, are spokespersons for Deep Green Resistance (DGR), a small eco-radical group in the United States. They are backed by the author Derrick Jensen. Some of the material in this book has also been posted at the DGR's website.

DGR blends deep ecology with left-wing politics. The group is feminist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist and (broadly) anarchist. Since "civilization" is seen as inherently oppressive, the only way to secure a non-hierarchic society is to dismantle civilization. Of course, this is also necessary in order to save the planet itself. Judging by context, the authors believe that animals, plants and biota have intrinsic value independent of humans. So far, DGR sounds similar to other groups attempting to amalgamate deep ecology with the politics of the New Left. The term "civilization" refers to all cultures based on advanced technology and (perhaps) also to all forms of agriculture. In effect, DGR believes that only a Palaeolithic lifestyle is in harmony with nature. Even this somewhat extreme position has a previous precedent: the anarcho-primitivists at Fifth Estate and similar publications.

What makes DGR distinctive is their explicit call for "Decisive Ecological Warfare". DGR argues that we can't wait until civilization runs its course and collapses all by itself. By then, it might already be too late to save the planet. (DGR believes that global warming might destroy all life on Earth in a Venus-like scenario.) Industrial civilization must therefore be actively destroyed. But how?... In the film "END CIV", Derrick Jensen says that our culture and most of its members are sociopathic and driven by a death wish to exterminate nature. In "Deep Green Resistance", the inevitable conclusion from this is sharply drawn: no mass movement for social change is possible, certainly not for the abolition of civilization. Therefore, the only way to eradicate the modern world is for a small group of dedicated revolutionaries to attack the most important hubs of the industrial system in a series of massive, coordinated terrorist attacks. Oil rigs, ports, dams, bridges and power stations the world over are prime targets.

I'm not exaggerating. "Deep Green Resistance" actually proposes this. If the authors seriously believe it can be done, is perhaps another matter. In another book, "Endgame", Jensen fantasizes about E-bombs, devices that can neutralize all electricity in a target area, thereby destroying civilization as we know it. The whole scenario sounds like science fiction. The book also contradicts itself when discussing military matters, constantly referring to the French resistance, the Irish independence movement or the ANC. But these movements had broad popular support. Michael Collins taking up arms against the British on the Green Island is a somewhat different proposition than creating a Green al-Qaeda...

Apart from the rather obvious logistical difficulties in carrying out the world's largest string of terrorist attacks, there is an additional problem: the chaos and mayhem that would follow the immediate collapse of civilization would lead to unspeakable suffering, especially for the poor and oppressed the DGR claims to fight for. Imagine the urban slums after a permanent black out and collapse of communications! Ironically, an overnight collapse of civilization would probably also lead to more environmental destruction, not less, as 7 billion people cut down the last remaining forests to get fuel, destroy the land in a desperate attempt at subsistence farming, or hunt most large mammals and birds to extinction to get meat. Eventually, a mass die-off would ensue. DGR has no real answer to this. Sometimes, they suggest that the poor in the Third World would actually be better off if civilization disappeared and the West no longer stole their resources. This may be true for some rural or nomadic communities, but since a non-technological society can't feed or clothe 7 billion people, a mass die-off would be the bottom line anyway. DGR might whine all they like about it, but most of Earth's population live in the Third World. Therefore, most of the people who must die to reach DGR's population optimum of about 200 million live in the nations the DGR considers oppressed by American imperialism.

Ultimately, I suspect that the DGR doesn't really care. After all, they believe that most humans are irredeemable and are driven by a death wish. It's interesting to note that Jensen has a chronic disease and admits that *he* will be the first to die in the event of a collapse. He says he's willing to sacrifice himself. Sounds like a death wish. Is somebody having issues of projection around here? Keith constantly complains about infantilism, calling on people to mature and grow up (especially hippies, new agers and leftists). Projection again? After all, her revolutionary scenario sounds like the dreams of a disturbed, psychotic 14-year old boy...

Of course, none of this means that the ecological crisis is unreal, or that a burgeoning mass movement of red-greens exist to solve it to our satisfaction. But surely there's a difference between pointing out that billions might die due to system failure, and actively *wishing* for such a scenario? People like Kunstler, Greer or Catton are just messengers. It's obviously unwise to shoot the messenger.

But what should we say about a messenger who wants to shoot us? Read more ›