Grassroots/Hank Kalet

Fierce Urgency of Now

Edward Abbey has described the American wilderness as our collective home. The radical anarchist/environmentalist erected this metaphor to justify an aggressive program of targeted vandalism, referred to as “monkeywrenching.”

“Monkey-wrenching,” as defined by his fellow anarchist Dave Foreman, is the strategic disruption of commercial systems by individuals gumming up the works, by tossing a “monkeywrench into the gears of the machine that is destroying natural diversity.”

Abbey and Foreman saw the erosion and destruction of wilderness areas and the natural diversity they contained as an existential threat. Defense of the wild, they would argue, is defense of ecological diversity, of clean air and water, of a livable planet. Corporate interests, Abbey argued, were “bashing their way into our forests, mountains and rangelands and looting them for everything they can get away with,” all for “short-term profits in the corporate sector.”

These “three-piece-suited gangsters” of industry were the stranger at the door, the push-in robber who “threatens your family and yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he wants.” We, as the “householder,” Abbey says, have “both the right and the obligation” to defend ourselves, our family and our property “by whatever means are necessary.”

Abbey and Foreman make these points in “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching,” which was originally published in 1985 and updated several times since, well before we understood the full calamity facing the planet. In the intervening three-plus decades, the existential threat has only grown worse and encompasses ore than just the loss of biodiversity and undeveloped land. Sea levels are rising dramatically, droughts and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, and parasitical species are spreading. And we are to blame.

Despite this, the national conversation about the climate has been lacking. Extensive programs like the Green New Deal — a collection of polices that would redesign our infrastructure and economy — has been dismissed as too expensive, while climate-change-deniers have taken over one of the two major political parties in this country, effectively ending any chance to shift direction.

So, where does this leave us? Environmental summits like COP26, which took place last fall, are useful but limited. As Grist reported, an agreement was reached “limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit),” which “represents the most dramatic step forward for international climate progress since the Paris Agreement in 2015.”

The Glasgow agreement, said Alok Sharma, president of the conference, “charts a course for the world to deliver on promises made” in the past.

And yet, they remain pledges, promises, dependent on national political will to actually make the changes needed. Much of this will leaves us at the mercy of corporate interests that have little incentive to change and that use their vast wealth to influence government action. Already, the major petroleum and natural gas companies are seeking ways to protect their businesses from international action, even as they pay lip service to going green. And government officials, especially in the United States, are shying away from straight talk on carbon, fearing the inevitable backlash when gasoline prices rise or energy companies threaten to jettison jobs.

This brings me back to Abbey, Foreman and “monkeywrenching.” I’ve taught Abbey’s essay numerous times, and its prescriptions have always seemed problematic to me, mostly because they seem less likely to harm the prospects of corporations than of the men and women who do the work. Spiking trees — which does not harm the trees — damages chain saws and other equipment, often leaving workers without the tools of their trades while the larger corporations write off the losses.

Still, we can look to Abbey and Foreman for inspiration, look to their calls for civil disobedience and direct action, and see in their willingness make trouble a way of challenging power. As Heather Alberro writes at The Conversation, the traditional lobbying organizations that have long been the public face of the environmental movement are more interested in nibbling at the edges and “making industrial capitalism more sustainable.” They ply their trades in the halls of Congress, but need help from the grassroots to push the agenda.

Civil disobedience is needed: occupation of land (see Dakota Pipeline protests, the early labor movement), small-scale and targeted vandalism (such as the actions taken by the Ploughshares group against nuclear weapons), and mass protests.

“These are desperate times,” she writes. And desperate times, what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. might describe as “the fierce urgency of now,” require immediate action, forceful action.

Hank Kalet is a poet and journalist in New Jersey. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Substack, hankkaltet.substack.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2022

Populist.com