Take the power back: Earth needs us now
As young people, we already know we're screwed. We've been robbed of a future by our elders who consumed it. The last few generations have taken every resource imaginable and extracted it at an ever-increasing rate. Blind to the world around them they planned our obsolescence like the products they designed for the dump. Now everything is unbalanced and we're coming to a tipping point.
We already see the consequences everywhere. Depression economics, ecological catastrophes, violent and oppressive social relations. Their poisons have logically spread beyond our rivers and land into our bodies and minds. It's in the air we breathe, it's broadcast on the airwaves, it's all pervasive, and always present. They dug us into a coffin and we must escape it. This will be no small task. It demands the radical re-organization of humanity and a total re-evaluation of our relationship with our ecological support systems.
What we know is this: There's no future on this path and we're speeding to the finish line. These are desparate times, the very survival of life on this planet, including our own, lies in the balance of the decisions we make now. Everything will flow from here.
The damage is done, the climate is not only changing, it has changed. We already live in an ecological catastrophe. But this only means that we must fight harder to save the small pockets of vibrant ecosystems that still exist. There are fools among us that still wish to pillage what little remains and it's up to us to stop them. We cannot count on governments to do this work for us either. They have never worked for us, and have always paved the way for corporate exploitation of the Earth's resources.
Politicians are bought and paid for by those who fund their campaigns. Clear-cutters, mining companies, and developers own the Canadian economy and by extension our politicians, who gladly rubber-stamp their ecocidal projects. The most important thing we can do now is directly confront the forces of industrial expansion by intervening as individuals and communities of resistance. We must create conflict with these forces every time they attempt to replace a forest with new suburban sprawl, every time they attempt to rob our mother and turn her into commodities, and every time they attempt to expand the roads and highways to facilitate larger distribution of their products.
But even this is not enough, we must dismantle the system of industrial capitalism not merely contain it. We need to reverse the process not just stall its expansion.
We need to develop sustainable alternatives to everything we have come to take for granted in our culture. We need to realize our way of life is incompatible with life itself. We need to decontaminate our soil water and air, because even if we drastically decreased emissions we would still be breathing in toxins and living on a toxic planet. We need to dismantle the power grid, stop all mass production of energy and transition into more resilient community-controlled autonomous energy production. We need to abolish patent-laws that protect intellectual property and liberate the knowledge of sustainable alternatives. Corporations have been keeping us dependent on their inefficient and dirty technologies for decades through copyright laws.
We need to challenge the forces of social control that exist to keep us passively marching towards the nightmare they are steadily building for us on this planet. We need to reject their products, and make their entire industrial system collapse before there is a total ecological collapse and mass extinction. Species extinction is currently accelerating on this planet due to our culture of consumerism and the economic domination of this planet. The oceans have massive dead zones, most rivers have become undrinkable from dams and industrial runoff, and we live in concrete jungles, saturated in smog, where we slave away to meet our basic needs.
Another way of life is possible and necessary. We can radically change this world for the better, all we need to do is start acting on our desires and putting our ideas into practice. We can start liberating our lives, communities, and bioregions from the tyranny of the market. We can challenge the authority of governments and reclaim local autonomy. We can defend the ecosystems that are still intact while re-wilding areas that have been devastated. We can tear up parking lots, detoxify soil, and create community gardens. We can occupy and take over the existing infrastructure and run it collectively while reconnecting it to our environment by collecting rainwater, building rooftop gardens, and ripping out lawns to allow diverse plant and animal life to flourish.
We can start in the here and now. We do not need to wait for action from the powers that be. We must take action and be the power for change ourselves. The fate of the world is in our hands. We can either create resilient communities capable of surviving the collapse, defending and regenerating our ecosystems, or we can continue down the suicidal path of industrial expansion and consumer culture. It's time to get off the fence and stand up against those who have sold out the future.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
We already see the consequences everywhere. Depression economics, ecological catastrophes, violent and oppressive social relations. Their poisons have logically spread beyond our rivers and land into our bodies and minds. It's in the air we breathe, it's broadcast on the airwaves, it's all pervasive, and always present. They dug us into a coffin and we must escape it. This will be no small task. It demands the radical re-organization of humanity and a total re-evaluation of our relationship with our ecological support systems.
What we know is this: There's no future on this path and we're speeding to the finish line. These are desparate times, the very survival of life on this planet, including our own, lies in the balance of the decisions we make now. Everything will flow from here.
The damage is done, the climate is not only changing, it has changed. We already live in an ecological catastrophe. But this only means that we must fight harder to save the small pockets of vibrant ecosystems that still exist. There are fools among us that still wish to pillage what little remains and it's up to us to stop them. We cannot count on governments to do this work for us either. They have never worked for us, and have always paved the way for corporate exploitation of the Earth's resources.
Politicians are bought and paid for by those who fund their campaigns. Clear-cutters, mining companies, and developers own the Canadian economy and by extension our politicians, who gladly rubber-stamp their ecocidal projects. The most important thing we can do now is directly confront the forces of industrial expansion by intervening as individuals and communities of resistance. We must create conflict with these forces every time they attempt to replace a forest with new suburban sprawl, every time they attempt to rob our mother and turn her into commodities, and every time they attempt to expand the roads and highways to facilitate larger distribution of their products.
But even this is not enough, we must dismantle the system of industrial capitalism not merely contain it. We need to reverse the process not just stall its expansion.
We need to develop sustainable alternatives to everything we have come to take for granted in our culture. We need to realize our way of life is incompatible with life itself. We need to decontaminate our soil water and air, because even if we drastically decreased emissions we would still be breathing in toxins and living on a toxic planet. We need to dismantle the power grid, stop all mass production of energy and transition into more resilient community-controlled autonomous energy production. We need to abolish patent-laws that protect intellectual property and liberate the knowledge of sustainable alternatives. Corporations have been keeping us dependent on their inefficient and dirty technologies for decades through copyright laws.
We need to challenge the forces of social control that exist to keep us passively marching towards the nightmare they are steadily building for us on this planet. We need to reject their products, and make their entire industrial system collapse before there is a total ecological collapse and mass extinction. Species extinction is currently accelerating on this planet due to our culture of consumerism and the economic domination of this planet. The oceans have massive dead zones, most rivers have become undrinkable from dams and industrial runoff, and we live in concrete jungles, saturated in smog, where we slave away to meet our basic needs.
Another way of life is possible and necessary. We can radically change this world for the better, all we need to do is start acting on our desires and putting our ideas into practice. We can start liberating our lives, communities, and bioregions from the tyranny of the market. We can challenge the authority of governments and reclaim local autonomy. We can defend the ecosystems that are still intact while re-wilding areas that have been devastated. We can tear up parking lots, detoxify soil, and create community gardens. We can occupy and take over the existing infrastructure and run it collectively while reconnecting it to our environment by collecting rainwater, building rooftop gardens, and ripping out lawns to allow diverse plant and animal life to flourish.
We can start in the here and now. We do not need to wait for action from the powers that be. We must take action and be the power for change ourselves. The fate of the world is in our hands. We can either create resilient communities capable of surviving the collapse, defending and regenerating our ecosystems, or we can continue down the suicidal path of industrial expansion and consumer culture. It's time to get off the fence and stand up against those who have sold out the future.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
