Synopsis
“Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Derrick Jensen and his coauthors argue, has been distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy need to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but with the sanctity of the Earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth―we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly. ‘Tell me how you seek, and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies: It asks the questions most refuse to ask, and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”―Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour
The Good
It left me with a lot of thoughts about:
A. The environment.
B. Capitalism-it is how we assign value to things which is bad in so many ways. We assign value to living things as if that is the only way to care about them. Thus we only care under the mind frame of what benefits humans which more than likely is not equally beneficial to the natural world.
C. Characterization of environmental activism – There is truth and propaganda to how caring about natural world is portrayed. There is a lot of propaganda that is being silently shown to us we do not question because it is so common place.
D. Radicalism – for a bit of this book I wrestled with the idea of being too radical/radicalness that is off-putting especially in environmentalism. Is the radicalism stigma stopping the real work of repairing the environment?
E. Solutions
Is our actions about repairing the situation or is it about making us feel better? Is the proposed solutions just an extension of the system that is causing the problem in the first place? Is our solutions dealing with the root of the problem or after effects?
The authors posed the question: Are we willing to let go of all the luxuries that extract from the earth if it could save the earth?
F. I like that it showed that the destruction of the environment is not a single country issue just like capitalism is not either.
G. Dichotomies:
capitalism vs environment
save planet vs save way of life
feel saving planet vs saving planet
increase technology = decrease nature
H. It is a conundrum looking at books like The Genome Odyssey which is about how technology is literarily saving people lives next to Bright Green Lies, showing the harm of technology.
I. The authors offered solutions- which is good especially in a book that is very much about all the issues going on.
J. The authors had sources to backup everything they were saying.
The Bad
A. Tone- There is a salty (for lack of better word) tone that they had for most of the book that was kind of off-putting. I know the tone is caused by how people are talking about and dealing with the natural world. Nonetheless, the tone I think took away from things at times.
B. Editing?- I think that this could have benefited from more editing in structure. It could have been more concise since it was all over the place in terms of what it was trying to say. At times it was repetitive repeating the same points multiple times. Also, it was very facts on facts which was very overwhelming.
Should it have been more approachable?
Thoughts
Earth could not actually handle everyone living the capitalist dream that our society views as success.
Envisioning futures/worlds: I am interested in folks visions of cities (past/future). Why is our view of the future technology heavy? Why is our view of terrible realities ones without technology? Well, mind you the dystopias are based on the collapse of our world (all our chickens coming to roast) so that may be part of it. What will a economically beneficial not capitalist world & cities look like?
Other Reviews
Kirkus: A dour assessment of the current state of green technology.
publishers weekly
I won this arc from a goodreads giveaway by Monkfish Book Publishing
(the cover image and synopsis is from goodreads)
themollyweather 