On June 16th, we held a live stream conversation between Justin McAffee of Collapse Curriculum, Margi Prideaux, PhD of Radically Local, and myself. The three of us have been in dialogue about our work for some time now, and although our frameworks overlap, we tend to have different focal points, which means that dialogue and reading each other’s work has been particularly fruitful.

Our live streamed conversation covered a wide range of topics related to ecological collapse and the ongoing fracturing of the support system upon which our economies, governments, and societies rest. In particular, we focused on Margi’s background as a climate and biodiversity negotiator and her transition to small-scale, community-based, and non-commodified food production in rural Australia in response to wildfires and the climate crisis.

Margi shared how she approaches conversations across political differences as a foundation for place-based action. We talked about access to land, commons, and the social and psychological barriers to collaborative action. And we interrogated the parallels between resilience work such as this and serious resistance movements which typically build upon place-based foundations of deeply rooted trust.

Although I followed Margi’s work for years and we’ve exchanged notes previously, this was my first time speaking with her face-to-face (albeit virtually), and I found her to be every bit as insightful and fascinating as her writing is. If you’re not already, I would urge you to subscribe to Margi’s Substack publication, Radically Local.

Thank you Cain Substack, Gary Hoover, Carol Eaves, Roscoe’s out of nowhere, Nikos Giannakis, and many others for tuning into this live stream. We appreciated the comments and questions from viewers. Please leave any additional thoughts you have, as well as questions, in the comments here. We’ll try to address them in a followup in the future.

I’ve left social media to focus my attention on organizing and writing. That means I rely entirely on readers like you to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and with friends. Thank you.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

She is an assistant teacher at her tribes immersion school where she works with kindergardeners to teach them chinuk wawa, the traditional lingua franca of the region, along with songs, culture, and decolonized curriculum and ways of connecting to the world around them.

This weekend, she will begin a protest hike from Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, upstream more than 300 miles to the Hanford nuclear site.

Djuli writes:

“After spending time along the Rogue River this last summer for several cultural events, my ancestors and mother earth let me know what I am to do next. This hike is to bring attention to the nuclear site that is already leaking, along with the nuclear fission site they want to add and an AI plant. Adding these atrocities to the land around the Columbia is destruction that I can not sit and watch happen.”

This walk will take more than 3 weeks, and Djuli could use support along the way. I’ll be joining her for a day or two of walking — as much as I am able at the moment — and she is looking for people who might be able to help us along the way with logistics — housing, food, shuttling supplies, camp sites, and so on. Please get in touch if you want to help.

As Djuli always says, hayu masi (many thanks in chinuk wawa).

From fertilizer shortages to energy disruptions, the systems that feed and fuel the modern world are showing signs of strain. Late last week, myself and Justin McAffee from Collapse Curriculum got together for another live stream discussion. We talked about a range of topics including:

* The closure of the Straight of Hormuz and the impacts this is having on oil and gas as well as other industries. Why global supply chains are more fragile than we’ve been led to believe, and how industrial agriculture depends on unstable inputs. What these shortages reveal about the limits of a growth-based economy, and why this is an ecological issue.

* A flood of “dark money” that’s flowing into the Oregon county where Justin and I both live to oppose a grassroots initiative to recognize the rights of water and watersheds.

* Resistance to planned BLM logging of old-growth forests in this region.

* We discuss greenwashing in an op-ed piece, and it’s failed market approach to addressing ecological issues.

* Oregon’s offshore wind plan, greenwashing, and impacts to the ocean and wildlife.

* A planned prayer walk along the Columbia River early this summer.

* We chat about record low Arctic sea ice extents as shared by Prof. Eliot Jacobson.

Also mentioned and discussed:

* Michael Seebeck on Utilitarian Arguments for Biodiversity Protection

* Edge Notes - The Byproducts Problem

* Collapse Curriculum - Women are the Heroes of Earth Day

* Biocentric - The Closure of Hormuz as (Unintentional) Climate Action

Thank you Liz Reitzig, Brooke, Lynn L, Nikos Giannakis, Regi Teasley, and many others for tuning in.

THURSDAY: What Revolution? Systemic Racism, Sexism, and Genocide from America’s Beginning

I’ll be hosting a live streaming discussion with two brilliant woman, Keala Kelly and Dina Gilio-Whitaker, focused on the racism and indigenous genocide built into the founding of the United States, on Thursday at 1pm Pacific Time. My friend Ben Price will also be joining. Details here.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content. I encourage you to digest this material deeply. Take notes. go for a walk, or discuss with a friend. I’m not on social media, so I rely on readers to share.

On Wednesday, myself and Justin McAffee of Collapse Curriculum were joined by Jeff Gibbs, the filmmaker behind the documentary film Planet of the Humans (he writes a newsletter by the same name here on Substack).

Jeff has been an activist for many years, worked as a social worker, and assisted his childhood friend Michael Moore with the films Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) before creating Planet of the Humans, a 10-year project completed on a shoestring budget which has nonetheless been seen at least 25 million times.

Topics we discussed:

* Why “green technology” won’t save us and what actually will.

* Censorship and narrative control including how Planet of the Humans was attacked by critics.

* Pollution kills 22 million people per year, double the toll of the Holocaust.

* Can collapse be slowed or stopped or are we headed for a brick wall?

* Permaculture, relocalization, and overshoot — just how far past a sustainable level are we?

* Discourse, storytelling, and culture change via filmmaking and writing.

* Other topics including CIA assassinations, urban farming, lifestyles for resistance, the secret of powerful filmmaking, the collapse of Mayan civilization, the Fermi Paradox, Jeff’s upcoming projects, and much more.

If you haven’t seen Jeff’s film already, it’s free on YouTube:

Moore said the following about Planet of the Humans:

a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day - that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road - selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America.

This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It’s too little, too late. Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption.

Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end-and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs. This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way-before it’s too late.

In other news

* Last week I ran an interview with Jeff McFadden on the CELDF Substack, focused on his use of donkeys for transportation, and more broadly on eco-collapse and slowing the hell down. Check it out here.

* Christopher Ketcham’s recent piece, “Letters to an Ecosaboteur,” is well worth reading. He should have far more readers here on Substack. Go subscribe.

* With drones increasingly shaping modern warfare, those interested in asymmetrical forms of resistance should begin learning about this technology and how to mitigate the risks it poses. This video is a short, accessible introduction.

* My friends at Communities That Protect and Resist are teaching a course on “Leading Communities of Resistance.” Details here.

* I was interviewed on local radio recently and discussed forest defense and the upcoming rights of nature initiative up for the vote in Lane County, Oregon next month. Here’s that interview:

Thank you Prof. Eliot Jacobson, Emmett Tatter, lights out for migrating birds, Randolph Proksch, Anna P, and all of the many others who tuned into the live stream. I appreciate you watching, and please send any questions, comments, or ideas.

Finally, the whales

If you made it this far, here’s a reward: a video of a pair of Humpback whales, a mother and calf, feeding in the Salish sea, which I recorded last month. They’re doing what’s called “bottom feeding” or “side-rolling feeding,” where they filter feed on small fish, krill, and other creatures living in the shallow water. What a sublime thing to see. Notice the birds coming in to feed on injured fish and other creatures stirred up by the whales. I wasn’t the only one watching; the Bald Eagle, who calls around 3 minutes into the video, was also watching the fracas closely.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content. I encourage you to digest this material deeply. Take notes. go for a walk, or discuss with a friend. I’m not on social media, so I rely on readers to share.

Topics discussed in this video

* Grand strategy. How the idea of United States democracy is a falsehood and corporations have near total control over policy, and a discussion of a revolutionary and evolutionary path forward in the current moment of ecological collapse. This section takes place in the last 20 minutes or so.

* The coming food crisis. Why collapse is actually the most positive possible future and how that collapse can be shaped to maximize positive outcomes and minimize the negative.

* Wildfire as rejuvenation. The mythology of wildfires as destructive to forests and the reality of their ecological importance, as well as how fear of fires is being used by the Forest Service logging companies and the mainstream environmental movement to gain public acceptance for exceptionally destructive logging projects under the guise of “forest thinning” for “wildfire resilience,” and how logging releases FAR more carbon pollution than wildfires.

* Land destruction. Agriculture as the most destructive force on the planet, including a case study of alfalfa production in the southwestern United States, much of which is shipped to the Gulf countries to feed cows in industrial dairies in sand deserts.

* Biocentrism is essential. A discussion of shifting baseline syndrome, the prevalence of greenwashing, and the necessity of a value-system rooted in the land to keep us on track.

* The myth of individual choice. How neoliberalism taught us all to become consumers rather than self-willed decision makers in our communities, including the dramatic difference between industrial food production, even “organic” and “eco-conscious” food, and having direct relationship with land.

* Connecting to source. The complete disconnection of modern people from the source of life, including a discussion of a visit to Unist’ot’en Camp, an indigenous-led pipeline blockade.

* Slow down. The reality that traditional low energy and localized ways of life are not anachronisms from the past. They are the only viable future.

* Prepare. The ways in which self-reliance, prepping, and gaining independence from industrial supply chains and capitalism enables and facilitates more effective forms of resistance to undermine and destroy this system.

* Take action. The necessity of action, the risks of relying on single charismatic leaders, horizontal organizing strategies, and how to get started. The necessity of direct intervention to halt the flow of fossil fuels, as well as the mining, logging, and other extractive industries, and to build alternatives.

Thank you to everyone who attended the live stream. Justin and I are considering making this into a regularly scheduled program, but in order to increase the quality and professionalism of this show, we could use some support. If you’re interested in being part of a production or editorial team for a weekly live broadcast of this sort, please contact me. We may be able to pay a nominal fee.

In other news:

* If you know nothing about Iran, it’s worth learning more about the culture. There are many ways to do so. Here’s one video from a mainstream perspective:

* A friend of mine created a website with online actions anyone can easily take to pressure companies that have contracts with ICE. As far as this friend knows, this is the only website that documents all known ICE contracts. Any feedback is welcome, and you can contact the site creator via their Substack page. This type of virtual action is no replacement for physical confrontation, but pressure campaign can be a potent supplementary tactic provided people engage in them en masse.

* Small actions can trigger major ripple effects. In the introduction to this podcast, my colleague Tish O’Dell and I discuss this, with me sharing the example of how a small conversation between me and a friend helped, in a small way, to spark the 2020 Fairy Creek blockade, which became the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history and protected significant stands of old growth forest, and Tish relating how a prior podcast we recorded with a conservation biologist in Virginia led to a vibrant grassroots movement working to protect forests and Terrapin nesting habitat.

* A wonderful Biocentric reader commented on my essay from last week, arguing that the phrase “Epstein Class” is less descriptive, precise, and politically useful than using the term “ruling class.” I largely agree, but as the feminist movement helped to teach us all, “the personal is political.” Patriarchy is, I believe, even more deeply embedded than capitalism, and underlies many of the problems we face today. With this in mind, it’s well worth watching this documentary summarizing what is known about Jeffrey Epstein and his links to the most powerful people on the planet:

* I conducted an interview recently with Tom Grotewohl, and organizer with “Protect the Porkies” working to defend the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from a massive “toxic waste mine,” as Tom insists that it be called — since the vast majority of what is produces would be toxic waste.

* I was interviewed by Bernie Stephen for his new show, Eco-Logic. Thank you Bernie! Apologies for the bad audio quality here.

* Some friends asked me to share their latest effort in collaboration with Roger Hallam. It’s called “4 Billion Dead,” and is meant to be a new action network regarding the climate catastrophe. I’ve interviewed Roger previously and respect him greatly, despite some strategic differences between us. This project is worth following.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends.

Last week, I published a piece on Iran’s closure of the Straight of Hormuz and Iran’s largely unknown eco-feminist movement. Yesterday morning, I discussed that article during a live streaming video. Here’s the recording of that live stream.

I especially focused on the topic of economic collapse: its disproportionate impacts on the poor, its ecological benefits, its inevitability, and how we should think about it and respond to it as biocentric people.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

This morning I was joined by my friend Justin McAffee of Collapse Curriculum to discuss the IOF-US attack on Iran. We covered:

* The blatant lies being peddled by the Trump Regime as “justifications” for this illegal war of aggression, women’s and human rights, and parallels with the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). As Spain’s Irene Montero said:

“No woman has ever been freed by American bombs or illegal aggression. Not in Syria. Not in Iraq. Not in Lebanon. Not in Afghanistan. And it will not happen in Iran either. They hide behind women’s rights to justify their colonial wars.”

* The human and ecological costs of war, and the US military as the largest polluter on the planet.

* Sanctions as a weapon of economic warfare (neocolonialism) which has been responsible for 38 million deaths since 1970.

* US and IOF goals: preservation of the petrodollar, decapitation strategy, arming of insurgent groups, and analogues to Libya and Syria.

* The US and Israel as rogue theocratic oligarchies, including the influence of AIPAC on US politics and the desire to bring about a holy war, Armageddon, and the rapture.

* Asymmetric warfare strategy and the goals of the Iranian Regime.

* Military censorship in Israel and across the GCC covering up the extent of the damage inflicted by Iranian retaliation via drone strikes and missiles.

* Speculation about the extent of that damage: five F-15 fighter jets, dozens of drones, several radar arrays, and various military, CIA, and Mossad sites hit. As Trita Parsi writes:

“The pattern of the Trump administration's conduct - hapless efforts to justify the war, ever-shifting war objectives, exaggerated gestures to signal control - all suggest that, only a few days into the war, Trump has already lost control.”

* The “double tap” US air strike on “Shajareh Tayyebeh” (The Good Tree) school in the city of Minab in southern Iran, which killed 165 schoolgirls and staff, and the likelihood that AI chose the target.

* The ecological and economic impacts of the closure of the Straight of Hormuz and Iranian attacks on oil infrastructure and transportation across the GCC, as well as skyrocketing oil prices.

* The mainstream media’s thirst for war, parroting of government talking points, and alternative news sources worth following in times of war.

* Cosplay resistance from Democrats in Washington D.C. who, as they should have, forced a war powers resolution vote they knew would likely fail, yet many Democrats plan to vote in favor of $50 billion in war funding for the Pentagon.

Thank you Natalie Brite | DoGoodBiz, Jeanne Elbe, Nikos Giannakis, William E Rees, Trav London, and many others for tuning into this live video.

It’s not a democracy, it’s an inverted totalitarian state in which a guise of representative government is used as cover for an oligarchy — rule by the wealthy.

It’s no surprise, then, that the United States is, along with its genocidal partner Israel, bombing Iran in an aggressive, illegal, and unprovoked war. That’s what this country does. Over and over and over again.

Hundreds of times.

This country was built by military conquest and either destruction or forced resettlement of indigenous people. The modern American lifestyle is maintained, as Thomas Friedman writes, by the “hidden fist” of the military:

“McDonalds cannot flourish without [arms manufacturer] McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”

The same is true of the theocratic genocide state, Israel. It and its partner, the United States, are the largest purveyors of terrorism in the world.

They do this for a simple reason: power. In 1948, George Kennan, then the Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department, wrote in Memo PPS23 that “[The United States has] about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity...”

I share this quote over and over again, because it reveals nakedly, in their own words, the policy priorities of the United States government.

In the 70 years since Kennan wrote that memo, that “pattern of relationships” has been successfully devised and maintained. The US military is the largest in the world, with $1 trillion in annual funding and more than 2 million personnel (including reservists). And it wages war, openly and in the shadows, on all those who stand in the way of US hegemony.

The costs of this are incalculable. They range from the ecocidal, genocidal destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia to the horrors of Gulf War Syndrome to the toxic remnants of weapons manufactories in cities across the country to the legacy of depleted uranium rounds and birth defects in Fallujah. In Guatemala and El Salvador, the legacy of US-sponsored right-wing terrorism still echoes through shattered societies. In Nevada, Washington State, New Mexico, and across Oceania, indigenous lands remain irradiated from decades of weapons testing and nuclear waste which continues to seep into soils and groundwater which will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. The US military is the single largest polluter in the world, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity.

Bullying psychopaths use violence because it is brutally effective in achieving their goals, and the people and the land are collateral damage. Missiles rain down on Iran. Thousands of civilians are dead. In modern war, 90% or more of casualties are innocent non-combatants: grandmothers and grandfathers, schoolchildren, shop owners, students, laborers. The mythology of precision bombs is a lie.

Wars always unleash unintended consequences. The overthrow of Iran’s prior socialist government by western powers led to the Khamenei taking power (with assistance from the US) in the Islamic Revolution. US weapons and funds bankrolled the mujaheddin and Osama Bin-Laden in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and led directly to 9/11. The invasion of Afghanistan created conditions for opium poppy cultivation to explode and led to the opioid epidemic on American streets. The fall of Saddam Hussein created the vacuum that was soon filled by ISIS. A million civilians died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The toppling of Gaddafi led to the breakup of Libya and the rise of an open slave trade in North Africa. The fall of Assad in Syria led former ISIS-affiliated militants into The People’s Palace. And the endless covert special operations spawned by the Global War on Terror fueled the rise of a black rifle worshipping patriarchal cult in the United States which has destabilized internal politics and driven a wave of violent white supremacism, domestic terrorism, ICE repression, authoritarian surveillance and policing, and fascist consolidation of power.

The ruling class doesn’t care. They care about maintaining and expanding their economic and military hegemony. They care about the great game. People are just pawns. So the bombs must fall. What will happen to Iran’s 93 million people and the rich ecology of the region isn’t important to them compared to the geopolitical value of removing a powerful adversary, consolidating US control over global oil supplies, and opening the way for expanded Israeli domination of the Middle East.

My activism began with opposition to war, back in the early 2000’s as the United States invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq. It was in this time that the political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, speaking from death row, recorded the audio I shared at the beginning of this post:

This war in Iraq isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of wars to come all around the world at the whim of the neo-cons in the White House.

This is the Bush Doctrine come to life; war, war and more war. War brought to you by the big corporate-masters who run the show.

This isn’t just a war on Iraqis or Afghanis or Arabs, or even Muslims. It is ultimately a war on us all. That’s because the billions and billions that are being spent on this war — the cost of tanks, rocketry, bullets and yes, even salaries for the 125,000 plus troops, is money that will never be spent on education, on healthcare, on the reconstruction of crumbling public housing, or to train and place the millions of workers who have lost manufacturing jobs in the past three years alone.

The war in Iraq is in reality a war against the nations’ workers and the poor, who are getting less and less, while the big defense industries are making a killing - literally.

What’s next? Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela? We’ve already seen the corporate media play megaphone to the White House, to build and promote a war based on lies.

War is utilized by the imperialists first and foremost, to crush internal enemies. We’re seeing the truth of this insight when we see the sad state of American education; the rush of seniors to buy affordable medications from the Canadians because American drugs are just too expensive; the threat of privatization of Social Security; and the wave of repression that comes with an increasing militarized Police.

This is a war on all of us. And the struggle against war is really a struggle for a better life for the millions of folks who are in need here in this country. To fight against the war is really to fight for your own interests, not the false interests of the defense Industry or the corporate media or the White House.

Down with wars for empire.

We must stop the empire. All empires. This is our work in these times. And it won’t be easy. Join me in coming weeks to discuss how this can be done.

This is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

On the afternoon of February 24th, we met for the first in what may become a series of live streams to discuss our recent writing and the political crisis. We talked about the BLM logging plan threatening millions of acres of western Oregon forests, strategies and tactics for fighting back against fascism, eco-sabotage, non-violent movement strategy, and much more.

Other topics we discussed:

* ICE fascism in Minnesota and across the US

* Power, oligarchy, and democracy

* The global war of terror as a driver of American collapse

* Trumpism as an intensification of ongoing processes of empire-building

* Genocide and the markers of fascism

* The contradiction of the climate crisis and the pressure cooker this fuels

* Offensive approaches, and the example of sabotage in World War II

* Domestic policy, the black box of public commenting, the administrative state, and regulations as a tool of inverted totalitarianism

* Power, the wealthy, and the links between Epstein, the CIA, Mossad, Steve Bannon, and rise of the far right

* The internet as driver of social decline

* Revolution in the age of surveillance and social isolation

It was a rich conversation, and we’re just getting started. Thank you Katharine Beckett Winship, Lyle Lewis, Jan Andrew Bloxham, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with Justin McAffee! Hopefully the first of many.

Let me know what you think of this new format, since this is my first time exploring the use of live video.

This is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts.

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

Now, the “biggest threat to the west coast rainforest this century” is here: Bill S.2554, which would permanently privatize 115,200 acres, including 80,000 acres of old-growth rainforest, into the hands of privately owned logging corporations — all behind a veil of “justice” for indigenous people. All this is happening at the same time that the roadless rule itself is under threat.

This conversation with Tlingit elder and forest defender Wanda Culp and filmmaker and activist Joshua Wright — who helped launch the Fairy Creek blockade — dives into “indigi-washing,” one of the divide and conquer strategies being used defeat public opposition to the destruction of the land.

Wanda and Joshua have requested your help:

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION:

Please contact the Natural Resources Committee TODAY to oppose S.2554 and urge them to protect our public lands instead of handing them over for private exploitation! If you are reading this after February 12, please email the Senate regardless, please also reach out to your local congressional representative to tell them that you oppose the bill.

Sample letter: https://tinyurl.com/protectTNF

fortherecord@energy.senate.gov

202-224-3121

Links and Resources

* Background on ANCSA, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971)

Note: This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth. For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.

CELDF has its own Substack, which I help produce. It’s called Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it — so please subscribe there as well.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

I’m no longer on social media, so I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago, sat down for a conversation with my friend Tom Grotewohl. Tom is the founder of Protect the Porkies, a community-based organization founded to oppose a copper mine project planned for the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Tom and I originally connected in the wake of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign when he reached out in support of the work we were doing and seeking advice and alliance for their newly-launching land defense effort.

Our conversation here focuses on the ongoing efforts to oppose the Copperwood Mine, which Tom calls a “toxic waste mine” rather than a copper mine, because it will produce far, far more of the former than the latter. As their campaign website states:

98.55% of all material produced at Copperwood will be waste. For every ton of extracted material, only 30 pounds will be copper and 1,970 pounds will be waste.

If 98.55% of what you make are hats and only 1.45% are shoes, it’s most accurate to call yourself a hat-maker, no matter how much you love or profit from your shoes. And so Copperwood would best be described as a waste mine.

All in all, Copperwood’s waste would comprise 40+ million tons in total, containing mercury, arsenic, cadmium, led, and many other toxins, to be stored forever on downward-sloping topography, in a water-rich environment, in unprecedented proximity to this continent’s largest, cleanest source of surface freshwater.

We explore the motivations behind the campaign, intervention points around securing funding for mining projects, and the environmental impacts of mining. We also dive into the importance of art and culture. Tom and the rest of the team at Protect the Porkies have used community engagement and art to involve and inspire people throughout their campaign.

Note: This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth. For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.

CELDF has its own Substack, which I help produce. It’s called Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it — so please subscribe there as well.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

Artwork created by community members to honor and support the protection of the Porcupine Mountains

Chapters

03:00 Introduction to Protect the Porkies

05:50 Tom’s Background and motivation

09:29 Max’s experience with Thacker Pass

13:02 Funding for mining projects

19:35 Environmental impacts and permitting issues

25:45 Government and corporate partnerships

31:28 Lessons from Thacker Pass

36:56 Rights of Nature, including challenges and successes

52:03 Cultural change and community engagement

01:03:41 Strategies for Implementing Rights of Nature

Links and Resources

* Protect the Porkies website

* How to take action on Copperwood

* Protect Thacker Pass website

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

The new series began earlier this week, when I posted a review of the film Woman at War. I have many more pieces in the works, including articles looking at eco-sabotage via forms of non-violent direct action, the backlash caused by sabotage actions, the radical flank effect and why mainstream environmentalists should support eco-sabotage, a historical breakdowns of sabotage in World War II and in the struggle against apartheid, a discussion of sabotage in the context of deep sea mining, a strategy piece about why sabotage may be the most effective tactic we have, and a couple dozen more.

This is important, and there is a lot to cover.

When discussing these topics, make sure you know security culture:

But, this type of clandestine resistance isn’t something that is possible for everyone to take part in. Many people have obligations or restrictions that might make participation difficult or impossible. And even for those who do engage in these actions, you just can’t do it all the time. There will always be downtime.

The purpose of this video is to challenge those of you taking a break between actions or who are unable to be on the front lines to do something tangible for the land where you live.

In this video, I bring you along as I’m planting two native plants — common camas (camassia quamash), a species in the lily family, and ookow (dichelostemma congesta), a species in the asparagus family — in a meadow where I live which has been degraded by overgrazing. Both are valuable human food sources which were widely cultivated by native people across the region where I live. Both benefit from being dug and harvested, and are native meadow plants and wildflowers which support pollinators and other wildlife.

What have you done for the land you belong to this week?

This is an important one. It’s a pair of interviews I conducted just over a week ago with Elder Bill Jones of the Pacheedaht First Nation and Will O’Connell, who have both been key figures in defending ancient forests being logged as you read these words on Vancouver Island.

This is a cross-post from the organization that I work for, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. That organization can be found at Truth and Reckoning. I cross post some of the material we post there to Biocentric, but not all of it. You don’t want to miss the recent piece about John Brown, shared as Luigi Mangione stands trial, so subscribe there if you want to follow the rights of nature movement and my work in community resistance and resilience.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

In this episode, we speak with Elder Bill Jones of the Pacheedaht First Nation and Will O’Connell on the frontlines of old-growth forest defense

First we’ll hear from Will O’Connell, a 34-year-old science and math teacher who has been on the front lines of these protests and joins us from his car at the protest camp, then from Elder Bill Jones from the Pacheedaht First Nation, two leaders in the forest defense movement currently taking place in Vancouver Island in western Canada.

Elder Bill is 85 years old. For decades, he has welcomed people into the forests to stand with him in defense of the last old-growth trees on his territory. At Fairy Creek, his invitation sparked one of the largest acts of civil resistance in Canadian history. Now, Western Forest Products has filed a civil suit against him, seeking an injunction that would make it illegal for Bill to be on his own land. If this injunction is granted, police will be authorized to arrest and detain those protecting the old growth.

Bill’s grandfather once told him: “Sonny, go out into the forest. That is where you will find the Great Mother. In the forest. It is a place of worship.” Today, that sacred place is under threat as logging companies push to cut what remains.

On the day before we recorded this interview, Monday December 8th, Will had been wrongfully arrested by the RCMP, the Canadian federal police, while on-site in the Walbran, and loggers had been able to pass the blockades and begin logging ancient forests again - towering 2,000 year old western red cedars, ancient firs and hemlocks.

A dozen people or more have been arrested over the past week or so, with more every day. They need support on the front lines, so if you’re near Vancouver Island, please go. And if you’re not, we need you elsewhere.

This conversation explores the ongoing efforts to protect the Walbran Valley’s ancient forests, highlighting the role of community activists, including Elder Bill Jones, and the challenges posed by law enforcement. The discussion delves into the tactics used by forest defenders, the historical context of forest defense movements, and the personal experiences of activists on the front lines. It emphasizes the importance of solidarity and the need for continued action against ecological devastation.

Message from Walbran forest defenders

COME TO CAMP We are currently in Kaxi;ks (the Upper Walbran) Valley, fighting for an end to old growth logging. NEW CAMP: 48.75088, -124.50931

Links and Resources

The YouTube version of this podcast will be shared here shortly.

* Donation link to support the resistance

* Fairy Creek Blockade on Instagram

* ‘Indian Against Indian’: The Walbran Forest Protection Blockade and Truth & Reconciliation as Colonialism Continues ...

* How the Walbran Blockade Echoes Another Famous Stand in the Forest

Topics Covered

Walbran Valley, old growth forests, forest defense, RCMP, direct action, community mobilization, environmental activism, Elder Bill Jones, logging, climate change, anthropology, empire, civilization, food supply, population pressure, extraction, and the preservation of wild places and forests as a source of life for future people.

Takeaways

* The Walbran Valley is home to ancient forests that are under threat from logging.

* Elder Bill Jones plays a crucial role in the movement to protect these forests.

* The RCMP has been using heavy-handed tactics against forest defenders.

* Direct action tactics, such as cantilevers, are being employed to block logging roads.

* Historical forest defense movements have shaped current activism strategies.

* Solidarity among activists is vital for sustaining the movement.

* The legal landscape is complex, with injunctions leading to police action.

* Community mobilization is essential for effective forest defense.

* The fight for the Walbran Valley reflects broader ecological issues.

* Activists are determined to continue their efforts despite challenges.

About the Truth and Reckoning Podcast

In this show, we learn from front-line organizers and communities fighting against environmental destruction. We explore different perspectives and innovative strategies for movement building, the potency and potential of rights of nature, and effective action in defense of our communities. And, we share inspiring stories of people working towards right relationship with the land and each other. The show is hosted by CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Program Co-Director Max Wilbert.

You can find the show on:

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

* Pocketcasts

* YouTube (video and audio)

* And anywhere else you get your podcasts (click here to find this podcast via your preferred app)

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

On a frosty morning earlier this autumn, I wandered through a roadless area in a national forest in Oregon near my home — a place which has been protected for more than two decades by a policy the Trump Administration is now working to dismantle.

Join me on this walk, where I discuss the ongoing repeal of the “roadless rule” and the need for a new forest defense movement to stand between these sacred places and the bulldozers and chainsaws.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

What is the “roadless rule”?

The roadless area conservation policy, commonly known as the “roadless rule,” was established in 2001, and protected almost 60 million acres of national forest in the United States from most logging and road building.

While it’s an imperfect law— it can’t be otherwise, emerging as it does from the colonial legal structure of the United States — it has nonetheless protected places like the forest I show you in this video from chainsaws and bulldozers. And that is worthwhile.

Forest defenders fought for this

The roadless rule didn’t just happen out of the goodness of the Clinton administration’s heart.

It came into being in the wake of the “timber wars” in the Pacific Northwest, a between the late 1980’s and late 1990’s during which thousands of tree sits, logging road blockades, disruptive protests, and rallies took place to defend the last remaining old growth forests in the region from logging. On top of this direct action movement, people conducted extensive public education and ecologically-oriented scientific research, as well as political pressure campaigns.

In other words, people fought like hell to protect the forest, and eventually — despite many losses — they won some significant protections for much of the remaining old growth forest in the region.

Since 2001, various state governments, the logging industry, and several presidential administrations have tried to overturn the roadless rule, especially to facilitate logging of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. But the rule has mostly stood strong — until now.

Now, the Trump Administration is working to destroy the roadless rule completely

On his first day in office, Trump signed an Executive Order aiming to repeal all roadless rule protections in the Tongass National Forest, and on August 27th, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began a process to repeal the roadless rule entirely. Their aim is simple: to maximize logging in previously protected old-growth and mature forests, and thus to make as much profit as possible for the logging industry and its Wall Street financiers.

And unfortunately, this is far from the only thread facing forests on this continent. On vast swaths of privately-owned timberland, plantation “forests” are grown in rapid rotations like GMO corn, subjected to repeated aerial spray of pesticides, sloughing sediment in streams and rivers, and serving as tinderboxes for climate-influenced wildfires.

On top of this, for the last decade we’ve seen a growing bipartisan push to make forests “wildfire resilient” by essentially cutting all the trees down. It’s absolute madness, but somehow even many supposed environmentalists have lost the plot due to justified climate anxiety and a very effective “shock doctrine”-style propaganda campaign from the timber industry and their NGO allies.

It’s time for a new forest defense movement

We’re facing major threats to forests across the United States. With a determinedly fascist and extraction-oriented administration in control of the Federal Government, times are dire. Governors, legislatures, and big environmental groups aren’t going to stop these logging projects — either because they don’t want to, or because they can’t.

In my area, major logging projects on Federal lands are already ramping up. That means it’s time for the resistance to ramp up, too. No one else is coming to save us. If we don’t protect these areas, no one will. It’s time for a revitalized forest defense movement. It’s time for courageous action. It’s time for risk taking. Not just in the forests, but in the desert and on the plains and in the mountains, too. This accelerated wave of destruction must be stopped.

It can be challenging to know where to get started. I often get asked, “what can I do as just one person?”

The answer is, don’t be just one person. Do this instead.

I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

Join me on this walk, where I discuss the ecological problems facing the Columbia — headlined by the dams. Guest appearances from the endangered Columbian white-tailed deer, beavers, and river otters.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance, and I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts, which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

The Columbia River is no longer a free-flowing river. Dammed at fourteen places along the mainstem, there are more than 225 major dams in the watershed in total. Much of the river is essentially now a series of reservoirs.

Cheap and plentiful electricity from the dams powers chemical production, metal smelting and alloying, manufacturing, and, increasingly, data centers up and down the river. Barging made possible by the dams makes the river a highway for extractive industries: timber, grain, fossil fuels, and more. At a nuclear site in Washington State known as Hanford, more than 1 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste — and counting — has leaked out of old underground storage tanks and is slowly filtering through the soil into the river.

A barge moves logs up the Columbia River. Video by the author.

In the area where I filmed this video, the endangered Columbian white-tailed deer is hanging on to scraps of habitat, but is threatened mainly by habitat destruction and fragmentation from development (rural housing, urban sprawl, roads, highways, rail, industrial projects, and so on).

I conclude the video by talking about life as a process flowing with complexity greater than we can understand. It’s not enough to preserve a remnant of a remnant, which is all that the inadequate Endangered Species Act, which is currently under assault, manages to do. Whenever biodiversity and abundance and resilience is lost, the web of life is impoverished. This progressive impoverishment is the main problem the planet faces today.

A recent paper published in Nature, as shared by my friend Justin McAffee over at Collapse Curriculum, reaches a similar conclusion: “land-use change [read: habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation] may have major undetected impacts on the resilience of key ecological functions, hindering the capacity of natural ecosystems to absorb further reductions in functionality caused by ongoing perturbations.”

In other words, degraded landscapes can show a false resilience, like a person who has suffered a major injury or malady and is in state called “compensatory shock.” These people may appear almost healthy until their blood pressure collapses and they fall into a rapid spiral towards death. Similarly, degraded ecosystems are living on borrowed time. Their health is fundamentally compromised.

The Columbia River is a prime example of shifting baseline syndrome. The last of those who remember the river before the big dams were built are dying now. And with them die the memories, now becoming myth, of salmon and sturgeon and lampreys in their millions. But what humans have made, we can unmake.

The dams must fall, and the river must be freed.

I rely entirely on readers to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you!

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

In this video, I talk about the rise of AI slop and the weaponization of AI to “flood the zone with s**t” (to quote Steve Bannon), about resistance to the rapid metastasizing of data centers around the world, about the rise of a new luddism as a revolutionary sentiment, and about a piece written by my friend Cris titled “The War on Truth.” In it, Cris writes:

The rise of social media created a double-edged sword. On one side, it offered an open space for people to express themselves, form communities, and access information outside of mainstream channels. On the other, it enabled the widespread proliferation of fake news, disinformation, and algorithm-driven echo chambers—tools that have become vital to the resurgence of authoritarianism and fascism across the globe, including in the USA, the Philippines, Brazil, and beyond.

Access to information is still a privilege, not a right. Even in the age of “free” information, structural inequalities continue to determine who gets to speak and who gets heard. Historically, traditional media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—was tightly controlled by elites. Today, while digital platforms appear decentralized, they are still subject to corporate and political manipulation. According to doctrines like Unrestricted Warfare, media becomes a weapon: not just for communication, but for disinformation, confusion, and the erosion of public trust. The battle of propaganda still happening in a new battlefield and a war on narrative are ongoing.

I recommend reading the full piece.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

I’ve left social media to focus my attention on organizing and writing. That means I rely entirely on readers like you to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.

A few years ago I connected with Aashis Joshi, who at the time was studying for a PhD in climate adaptation and lives in Nepal. I was immediately struck by his clarity of analysis, and in the intervening years we’ve stayed in touch and learned from each other’s work.

This interview, cross-posted from Truth and Reckoning (I recommend subscribing if you haven’t already), is one of the more enjoyable and important out of more than a hundred I’ve conducted since 2019.

If you’re new here, this is Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, greenwashing, and resistance. I’m author and organizer Max Wilbert. If you want to follow, you can subscribe for free. Paid subscribers, in return for supporting this publication and the activism you see here, receive access to private posts which contain behind-the-scenes reports and unreleased drafts. I can’t do this without support from readers, so thank you!

In this episode, I speak with Aashis Joshi

Aashis lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, and is a fierce critic of imperialism and greenwashing. He was pursuing a PhD in climate adaptation at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands until recently, when he dropped out after increasingly recognizing that the technological solutionism and Eurocentric siloed thinking that characterized academia was leading to more problems than it was solving. He is now pursuing public education on these topics.

Our conversation explores these topics, weaving through the challenges and misconceptions in climate adaptation and ecological research, the scale of the ecological crisis, the imperialism and colonial violence inherent in technological approaches to solving these problems, and the political agency that’s available when we abandon these false solutions.

That violence is key to the functioning of the global industrial economy, and it’s not an accident. As Aashis recently wrote:

“The ruling class of the West & Global North knows that food & resource scarcities & unlivable conditions leading to mass migrations & geopolitical turmoil are inevitable & imminent. They know full well that there is no way to address climate & ecological breakdown & live with their consequences in a fair way that doesn’t involve redressing global power imbalances, i.e. without ending their economic & geopolitical hegemony.

As they have no intention to carry out real climate & ecological action, they hold climate conferences & peddle techno-consumerist greenwashing “solutions” to buy time to divert resources towards systems that help strengthen their imperial hegemony. It’s all distraction.

In a world woefully unprepared for the biosphere breakdown that’s just getting started, they are investing in their military & armed forces to control lands & resources abroad & their public at home.

They are fortifying their borders & developing advanced technologies & methods of surveillance, terror & deadly violence including AI & drones, which they are currently testing on the people of Palestine.

Their media, academic & cultural institutions are actively complicit in their imperialist agenda, helping run their propaganda to normalize colonialist & fascist atrocities & enforce a performative democracy where people protesting genocide & ecocide are brutalized & criminalized but universities have research & financial ties with weapons manufacturers & fossil fuel & other ecocidal corporations.

They will go to great lengths & cross many red lines to quash the global public’s potential to strive for a better, kinder system than the extractivist capitalist empire they helm, which lies at the root of our accelerating social-ecological polycrisis.

They have abandoned global cooperation on the climate, biodiversity & human rights & committed themselves to the vicious & insane vision of maintaining their imperialist, white supremacist domination at all cost instead.”

Aashis is a brilliant thinker and I am glad bring you his voice.

Links and Resources

* The Global South’s Climate Aid Strategy is Flawed by Aashis Joshi (a relevant piece as COP30 is scheduled to begin on November 10th, 2025 in Brazil)

* Facing Climate And Ecological Breakdown Requires A New Vision For Education And Politics by Aashis Joshi

* A discussion on degrowth and decoloniality featuring Aashis Joshi and Erin Remblance

* Decolonizing the Degrowth Movement’s Imaginary of Technology by Max Wilbert (a response to Jason Hickel’s piece in Monthly Review titled “On Technology and Degrowth”)

Chapters

* 00:00 Introduction to Ashish Joshi and His Work

* 8:08 The Flaws in Climate Action Research

* 15:28 The Dutch Approach to Climate Adaptation

* 24:15 The Limits of Technological Solutions

* 32:21 The Disconnect Between Science and Social Change

* 41:00 The Role of Academia in Climate Solutions

* 44:00 Educating Broadly vs. Hyperspecialization

* 46:49 Conquest and Assimilation (Forced Proletarianization) of Land-Based Peoples as Imperial Expansion

* 49:00 Fascists Always Target Intellectuals and the Need for Courage

* 53:00 Interconnectedness of Climate and Geopolitical Injustices

* 55:45 Scale of the Ecological Crisis, Climate Denialism, and Psychopaths

* 1:04:15 Fear, Courage, and Collective Action

* 1:10:40 The Rise of AI and Other New Technologies

* 1:24:50 Reimagining Progress and Other Paths Forward

About the Truth and Reckoning Podcast

In this show, we learn from front-line organizers and communities fighting against environmental destruction. We explore different perspectives and innovative strategies for movement building, the potency and potential of rights of nature, and effective action in defense of our communities. And, we share inspiring stories of people working towards right relationship with the land and each other. The show is hosted by CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Program Co-Director Max Wilbert.

You can find the show on:

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

* Pocketcasts

* YouTube (video and audio)

* And anywhere else you get your podcasts (click here to find this podcast via your preferred app)

About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.

I’ve left social media to focus my attention on organizing and writing. That means I rely entirely on readers like you to share this content. If you appreciate what you read here, please share on social media, discussion forums, and in direct messages to friends. Thank you.

Biocentric is a liberated zone with zero AI-generated content.