Dark Green Religion and
Radical Environmentalism
Some of the following slides both reference specific
individuals and aspects of radical environmentalism that
were discussed in Dark Green Religion.
Others provide images that illustrate, somewhat
impressionistically, the political, ethical, and spiritual
bricolage that characterizes the movement .
William C. Rogers,
aka Avalon
Vail Colorado Ski Resort Building, set on fire in 1998
by Avalon & others in the Earth Liberation Front
Bioregional Deep Ecology and
Radical Environmentalism
• Spiritual Biocentrism ~ The earth and its life
processes are sacred - but Western religion &
philosophy foster anthropocentrism that leads to an. . .
• Extinction Crisis fueled by
the greed of corporations and . . .
• Corrupt Governments which
refuse or otherwise fail to arrest
these extinctions
Binary Associations in Radical
Environmentalism and Deep Ecology
Good
Bad
Foraging (small-scale organic
horticultural) societies
Pastoral and Agricultural Societies
Animistic, Pantheistic, GoddessMatriarchal, or Eastern Religions
Biocentrism/Ecocentrism
(promotes conservation)
Intuition
Monotheistic, Sky-God,
Patriarchal, Western Religions
Anthropocentrism
(promotes destruction)
Reason (especially instrumental)
More Binary Associations
Good
Bad
Holistic Worldviews
Mechanistic & Dualistic Worldviews
Decentralism
Centralization
Primitive Technology
Modern Technology
Regional Self-Sufficiency
Globalization and International Trade
Anarchism/Participatory
Democracy
Statism, Corruption,
Authoritarianism
Radicalism
Pragmatism
Grief and anger
over the destruction
of nature fuels
movement passions.
Social criticism,
history, ecology,
and myth fuse in a
radical worldview
which shapes
political priorities,
and justifies
lawbreaking
Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
poetry, and music
• e.g., “Time Bomb,” “Ghost of a Chance,” “Disorder,” and “End of the
World.” (see sound section for downloadable music)
We who can still hear
the jaguar scream
We dream of a day
when all things wild
will again be free…
It is a dream we will
fight for until the day
we die
Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
poetry, and music
• e.g., “Time Bomb,” “Ghost of a Chance,” “Disorder,” and “End of the
World.”
The Myth of the Fall
from a Foraging Paradise
• Agricultures destroy or force the conversion of
indigenous peoples living in harmony with nature
• Agricultures replace foraging societies and their
place-based gods and nature spirits and ethics of
kinship toward all life forms, with sky-gods.
To re-harmonize humans in
nature we must re-sacralize
our perceptions of the earth.
Resacralize earth by
promoting animistic and pantheistic
perception through . . .
• The Arts
– poetry, prose, music, dance, visual art
can evoke proper spiritual perception
• Ritualizing
– recovering and re-inventing green
religion
• Ethical Action
– defending the earthen spiritualities of
surviving indigenous nations
Roadshows as Wilderness Revival
Meetings
The Council of All Beings
. . . ritualizing toward a kinship ethic with
non-human nature
Advanced Ritual Workshops
. . . deepening proper spiritual perception
Direct action
. . . binding people with each other and the
natural world
Radical Environmentalism and
Bioregional Deep Ecology
~
A “bricolage” of spirituality,
ecology, and radical political
ideology
Songs like “I am an Animal” (Dana Lyons)
express the kinship ethic and antianthropocentrism of the movement.
(see favorites/sound)
Radical Greens v. Bioregionalists ~
Differing Strategic Priorities
Radical
Environmentalists:
Engage the Destroyers –
Resist!!!
Bioregionalists:
Promote sustainable
lifeways
Dave Foreman –
Prophet of Radical
Gary Snyder –
Environmentalism
Architect of
Monkeywrenching or
Bioregional Social
“ecotage” is “a form
Philosophy
of worship toward the
earth. It’s really a
“The closer you get to
very spiritual thing to
real matter, rock air
go out and do . . .
firewood, boy, the
You are a religious
more spiritual the
warrior for the
world is”
Earth.”
Let our Action Be our Prayer . . .
‘cause if you haven’t done
everything imaginable, you haven’t
done shit!
Fortress Wall, Warner Creek Blockade, Oregon (USA): The year long blockade was
eventually successful in blocking a large timber sale 1993
Spiritual Warfare . . .
Voodoo doll to scare loggers,
who are often conservative
Christians.
PAGAN PENTAGRAM ~ some radical environmentalists are self-consciously pagan.
Cove Mallard, Idaho
. . . Earth First! Army Corp
of Engineers . . .
Barricades made
from trees cut for
logging roads,
rearranged to
blockade the loggers
from access to the
large timber sales in
Idaho (USA)
8-10
9-10
Album Cover
. . . note the burning
bulldozer in the
background
2-6
Live Wild or Die
urges a feral
revolution of
desire, anarchist
rebellion, and
inflammatory
tactics.
This is the cover
of its premier
issue (1989)
3-6
Drawing rubric
from European
paganism and the
model from the
most militant EF!
Activists, “Elves” in
the UK form the
Earth Liberation
Front (1992)
4-6
The swiftness of deer
The vision of eagle
The strength of bear
The sureness of cougar
The stealth of snake
The wildness of wolf
Guide these steps of mine
My hand as it releases
These flames of life’s hope
Toward that which would
destroy us all.
“Destroy what destroys you!”
Bioregionalism
Consecrating
Home, and
Venerating
Earth,
through
sustainable
living
Bioregionalism’s focus. . .
• Premise: those who live in a place can
better learn its and nature spirits and
sustainable lifeways than people far away
• Goal: Redraw political boundaries to
cohere with those of different ecosystem
types
• Hope: overturning nation-states in favor of
decentralized, regional, community selfrule.
Bioregional Strategy:
Promote sustainable lifeways
• Promote regional identity and
activism through:
– bioregional congresses and local groups
– Permaculture and Organic Agriculture
– pagan ritualizing
– Bioregionally-oriented wildlands
advocacy
Relative optimism or
Apocalypticism shapes the
strategic choices:
• Could catastrophe be averted through human
action?
• Can governments play a positive role?
• Does hope lie only after the collapse of
industrial civilization and the destruction of
modern technology?
Bioregionalists are slightly more
hopeful than radical environmentalists
– They generally expect that
industrial society will collapse, but
are less sure this will occur
dramatically and with great
suffering
– They retain some hope we can
learn our way toward
sustainability, rather than have it
forced upon us by ecological
collapse.
Yet,
Apocalypticism
reigns among
virtually all
radical
environmental
activists and
most
bioregionalists.
Is there an international
‘Radical Environmentalism’
and ‘deep ecology’
movement?
Colin Campbell’s theory of
the ‘cultic milieu’ is
illuminating in this regard.
Campbell: The West as ‘breeding
ground’ for a ‘Cultic Milieu’ . . .
• . . . the “the cultural underground” of Western
Civilization including “all deviant belief-systems
and their associated practices including heretical
religion and deviant medicine and science.”
• Cultic groups are generally tolerant and receptive
to each other’s beliefs >> syncretism . . .
• they share a mystical tradition emphasizing that
“unity with the divine can be attained by a
diversity of paths”
Expanding on Campbell’s theory,
Radical Environmentalism and
Deep Ecology movements can be
viewed as a bricolage of spiritual
epistemologies and traditions, as
well as of countercultural political
ideologies and movements
Re. Spiritual epistemologies. . .
‘earthen spirituality borrows widely:
Mountain epiphanies
• Muir and all of Deep Ecology’s developers and
earliest proponents, were mountain climbers.
• Naess, estranged from people, found solace and
connection in nature, and felt “love” from the
mountains with which he identified.
• Deep ecology intellectuals are often drawn to
Spinoza and pantheism.
Arne Naess, and other deep ecologists and
radical greens urge us to re-discover the
animistic perceptions of our childhoods,
claiming they are still present among tribal
peoples. Naess states the epistemological
premise so common in the movement:
“To do this we must spend time in
mountains, or where ‘free nature,’ can
stimulate a sense of oneness,
wholeness, and identification with
nature.”
1-2
Such episteme, and the general radical
environmental myth, fuel the impulse to
borrow from Native American cultures and
spiritual practices, as well as eastern
religions, which are viewed as superior to
western societies.
Taoism and esp. Buddhism influence the West’s
spiritual countercultures, perhaps nowhere as
significantly as in bioregionalism and radical
environmentalism.
~ e.g., Gary Snyder, Joanna Macy, John Seed, Dolores LaChappelle,
Michael Soule, Reed Noss, to name a few.
‘Earthen Spirituality’ is contested in
multiple ways, and criticisms of such
appropriation have altered practices in
the radical environmental movements.
• Sacred objects sometimes removed
• Sweat Lodges become “sacred saunas”
• Activists turning to own heritages, as much as
possible.
• Yet shared ritual is common, as with prayer
and purification during litigation.
Other ways ‘Earthen Spirituality’ is
contested:
• Battles between Indian and Non-Indian
activists and Christians opposing their
‘paganism.’
• Activists, sometimes clumsily, try to
express solidarity with Native Americans
(at least ones they believe are still
connected to the land and its spirits).
These slides are from the
campaign to prevent
telescopes from being
constructed on Mt.
Graham in Southeastern
Arizona (1993).
Environmentalists and
Native Americans in their
own ways believed the
project would desecrate a
sacred place.
The Vatican
Observatory
was
involved in
the project
which
intensified
the religious
dimensions
of the
conflict
Despite some
criticism,
Native American
images and
practices remain
important in
dark green
spirituality.
North America as Turtle Island
Turtle Island
&
totem salmon
in a mandala inspired
by
religions of the
far east
Desert epiphanies (Edward Abbey)
The desert's austerity “distinguishes it, in spiritual appeal,
from other forms of landscape,” and is more effective
than mountains at overturning human arrogance.
Abbey called himself an “earth-ist” and was a pantheist
who “saw the spirit in all things” (Loeffler) . . .
And resonated with Daoism, considering it ancient
nature-based spirituality, calling “the Tao te’ Ching is
the best goddamned book ever written.”
Hallucinogens (or ‘Entheogens’)
• “Decisive” or important impetus for some
involved in dark green religion.
• Peyote “sets one up spiritually to understand the
sacred quality of this planet . . . It puts one in
direct contact with another wave-length with the
universe and one immediately intuits that the
entire planet is the living organism in which we
are members” (Jack Loefler, “Ed Abbey’s best
friend”)
• Only extended, solo camping provided equally
powerful spiritual perceptiveness, according to
many radical environmentalists.
An “Ecotopian
Holy Trinity”
song, sung by
the late Judi Bari
and her comrads,
lauded the
spiritual
teachings of
marijuana,
magic
mushrooms, and
“big old trees.”
(Neo) Paganism . . .
• Critically and increasingly
influential,
~ practitioners spread its ritual resources
widely in green circles.
~ Drawing on putatively European sources, it
is seen as less problematic than forms
drawing on indigenous societies.
Deep Ecology Ritual goes international ~ this graphic is from a tabloid
announcing a 1994 “Workshop for All Beings” in Poland.
Time for an Entmoot . . .
From Entmoot,
the title of
Washington
EF!’s
Newsletter,
1994
Here is another
example of the
ecelectic
bricolage of
dark green
religion, and
also, of the
influence of the
arts in inspiring
it.
… Wicca & Spiritual Ecofeminism
Wicca is often in co-production with neopaganism, and incorporated into dark
green spirituality
~ E.g., the Spiral Dance ritual spreads the
metaphysics of interdependence.
~ Songs and art challenge patriarchy within and
outside of green subcultures.
Political Tributaries
• From the ‘old and new left’, and antinuclear and anti-war movements . . .
• To themes of “freedom” prevalent in the
Western world
• To individualist, libertarian forms common
in many Western states. . .
Political Tributaries (cont.)
• increasingly, anarchism, which . . .
• best fits the myth that a centralizing,
totalitarian agriculture is destroying nature
and everything spiritual.
• Legitimizes priority on local politics
• De-legitimizes centralized governments
reinforcing Direct Action rationale
Radical Affinities
• Almost any radical perceived to be green
and an opponent of a globalizing
industrial civilization is honored.
– Mumia abu Jamal, and Move, are looked to as an
outbreaking of nature religion among Americans of
African heritage.
– AIM activists
– Traditional Indians resisting development or
displacement (e.g., the Hopi traditionalists)
– Wangari Mathai and the Kenyan Greenbelt
movement, and . . .
The
antiglobalization
movement has
many affinities
with dark green
religion and many
of its supporters
are radical greens.
This photograph
is from the
protests against
the World Trade
Organization in
1999, which
catapulted the
movement into
public
consciousness.
Hoping for the Collapse of Industrial
Civilization as the only path to
egalitarian, ecologically sustainable,
societies (sometimes aided by
anarchist revolution and even
terrorism)
… but some
want to
accelerate the
process
2-6
If you can BAKE A
CAKE . . .
. . . you can MAKE A
BOMB
3-6
One anarchist
version of radical
environmentalism.
4-6
Glen Canyon
Dam, 4963 AD,
after the
collapse of
industrial
civilization,
wildness is
returning . . .
… hopeful
apocalypticism
1-6
Quietly passed around during the 1997 National Earth First! Rendezvous in Northern Wisconsin
5-6
The preceding slide is from a flyer passed out at a
radical environmental gathering in the mid 1990s.
The opposite side proclaimed:
Return to Wild Nature
and had these words:
"Joan of Arc and the 19th century abolitionist John Brown employed
violence and gave their lives in struggle. These visionaries were
considered demented by their contemporaries, but are now revered. It
may be that the Unabomber will be looked upon similarly, as a kind of
warrior-prophet who, as Arleen Davila wrote, `tried to save us.' To unlearn our illusions is to begin to save ourselves . . . Return to Wild
Nature - Destroy the Worldwide Industrial System - FREE TED
KACZYNSKI."
6-6
What are we to make of all of this? .
• What are the impacts of such
countercultural spirituality and
politics?
• There have been many specific
successes we could point to that
have been won by these movements.
• But their greatest influence may be
just beginning, for . . .
As argued in Dark Green Religion,
Nature spirituality is not just for
radicals anymore.
It is altering the political and ecological
landscape around the world
.and entering the culture’s main
streams.
Increasingly found in survey
research are
• intrinsic value of nonhuman
nature
• ‘organicism/animism’
• ‘natural rights’
• to a lesser extent ‘pantheism’
Organizations are proliferating that are grounded
in and promoting of such spirituality
• Native Plant Societies (wild ones)
• Butterfly gardeners
• Biodiversity defense and
restoration groups
• Seed Saving , community
supported agriculture, sacred
agriculture movements (to name
just a few)
Even the U.S. Forest Service’s
Leaders
. . . increasingly articulate biocentric values
and discuss positively the important
“spiritual” value that nature has for
Americans when defending new, forest
protection policies
For example, introducing a book on
ecosystem management by his
employees, USFS Chief Jack Ward
wrote . . .
“Nature-based spiritual beliefs are
generic to all [forest] users, whether
holders or nonholders of sectarian
religious beliefs . . . diverse types of
nature-based spirit-renewing
benefits . . . are common across all
types of users, whether a timber
cutter, a hunter, a member of an
environmental organization, a hiker,
or a Native American.
Dark Green Religion does have a
radical branch and increasing
impacts around the world.
The question remains, what will the
extent and timing of its future
influences?
Ecological Analysis fuels the ubiquitous
Apocalypticism, found in movement literature,
poetry, and music
• e.g., “Time Bomb,” “Ghost of a Chance,” “Disorder,” and “End of the
World.”
Time bomb (Dana Lyons)
sorder (Casey Neil)