Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio, Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Earth Fire, Wind, Water, Heart,
Speaker 1: Go Planet, although you're gonna make an Earth Wind and
Speaker 1: Fire reference, but then you changed course midway and I
Speaker 1: was on board again. I'm not on board with earth Fire,
Speaker 1: but I love me some Captain Planet right right. This
Speaker 1: will be familiar to many many of our fellow listeners
Speaker 1: who were based in the US. Captain Planet was an
Speaker 1: animated series about these kids, these plucky young upstarts who
Speaker 1: wanted to save the world with the help of their
Speaker 1: superpowered friend, Captain Planet, the eponymous star of the show,
Speaker 1: Uh Captain Plants gonna come up a couple of times
Speaker 1: in today's episode. The topic of our show today has
Speaker 1: been on our minds for a while because the facts
Speaker 1: are written regardless of where you live, your country has
Speaker 1: probably at some point been ground zero for a serious
Speaker 1: environmental disaster. Oils bills, hurricanes, mass extinctions, forest fires, flooding, droughts,
Speaker 1: you name it, something has happened. And right now, at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording, people across the planet have
Speaker 1: tried to propose any number of solutions to these problems,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, very few of these initiatives have met with
Speaker 1: great success, and the world continues to degrade at an
Speaker 1: unprecedented Paceum yeah, bummer. Indeed. I mean, you know, for
Speaker 1: some people, maybe in the crowd today, this means that
Speaker 1: drastic new tactics are needed. If you can't change the
Speaker 1: system from within the system, then the system itself becomes
Speaker 1: your enemy. So certain groups have decided to conspire to
Speaker 1: act outside of the law in service of what they
Speaker 1: see as a greater environmental good. And some folks will
Speaker 1: call these people heroes. Other folks, as we'll find, will
Speaker 1: call them terrorists. Here are the facts when before we
Speaker 1: talk about the concept of so called eco terrorism, we
Speaker 1: have to lay out some some depressing information. Uh, the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that has made me actively subscribe to
Speaker 1: the philosophy of optimistic nihilism. Uh, it doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: you vote for, doesn't matter what kind of music you like,
Speaker 1: what kind of food you eat, what kind of clothes
Speaker 1: you wear. The environment is screwed, I mean for all
Speaker 1: in dens and purposes. And you don't have to be
Speaker 1: like a super activists in this space, you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of hippie living in its treehouse to agree with
Speaker 1: that point. I mean, it's pretty clear, um that there
Speaker 1: are some very very very serious and in many cases
Speaker 1: irreversible problems with the environment. Well, yeah, we we learned.
Speaker 1: We did an episode not long ago, maybe actually it
Speaker 1: was years ago now, but he was about specifically that
Speaker 1: what the oil companies new when it came to climate
Speaker 1: change and the effects that their companies were having on
Speaker 1: that whole process. I mean, it's it's pretty much an
Speaker 1: accepted fact that humans have at least pushed forward the
Speaker 1: changing climate on Earth. Yeah. Absolutely, And a lot of
Speaker 1: the arguments attempting to debunk studies about that were paid
Speaker 1: by the corporations who were at least partially responsible. They knew,
Speaker 1: they very much knew, and they just decided they're Q
Speaker 1: four profits were you know, more important than their grandchildren
Speaker 1: or the people who come after the current generation. Mammy,
Speaker 1: climate change is accepted as a fact. Uh, the conspiracy
Speaker 1: is that people tried to cover it up. So today
Speaker 1: the real debates are the real like active debates in
Speaker 1: this sphere, are the extent of the damage, like you're
Speaker 1: alluding to, Matt, Like humans did something, how much did
Speaker 1: they do? And then secondly, what is to be done
Speaker 1: about this? And when do humans need to get off
Speaker 1: their collective keysters and do something. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: you know, international agreements and climate accords and you know,
Speaker 1: um emission standards and things like that. But you're right,
Speaker 1: even stuff like that is super politicized and often you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit toothless in terms of like how much
Speaker 1: accountability the nations that are part of those agreements actually have.
Speaker 1: M And we're not you know, this is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a hit piece on the authors of those declarations or
Speaker 1: the proponents or signatories of those agreements. You're right. Well,
Speaker 1: for many, many years, the problem of environmental degradation was
Speaker 1: a politically seen as a political opportunity. It was politicized.
Speaker 1: People who are out to make money. Consequences be damned
Speaker 1: were quite successful leveraging the problems of human psychology. Right,
Speaker 1: and now, now the idea of your opinion about environmentalism
Speaker 1: is inherently wrapped up in your concept of a tribe
Speaker 1: and your membership in a tribe. But the thing is, like, okay,
Speaker 1: So people who are fighting for conservation, at least in
Speaker 1: the US were often accused of being quote far left
Speaker 1: radicals or the you know, the accusation was they were
Speaker 1: unfairly attacking people who are just trying to earn a living,
Speaker 1: put food on the dinner table, etcetera, etcetera, whatever kind
Speaker 1: of political rhetoric was in vogue at the time. Dare
Speaker 1: dare you say attacking a whole part of the country, right,
Speaker 1: like Middle America, you know, it is under attack by
Speaker 1: far left radicals because they're trying to get rid of
Speaker 1: you know, um coal mining or you know, impose all
Speaker 1: of these draconian standards on all of these stuff that
Speaker 1: people just want to earn a living. I mean, And
Speaker 1: of course at some level there's truth to that, like
Speaker 1: in terms of people needing to earn a living, but
Speaker 1: at what cost? Right? Also, economy is a religion. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep saying that until somebody proves me wrong.
Speaker 1: But you guys are absolutely right. This this shift, this
Speaker 1: politicization is very interesting if you are a student of history,
Speaker 1: because a great many conservation movements in the US and
Speaker 1: abroad had fairly patrician, politically conservative roots, you know, like
Speaker 1: the aristocracy would preserve land for their own purposes usually,
Speaker 1: or think of Teddy Roosevelt was a huge proponent of
Speaker 1: conservation and vironmentalism, but he also liked to murder you
Speaker 1: know things a lot. True, true, he did, he did, uh,
Speaker 1: And right now a lot of large institutions are making
Speaker 1: tons of profit because people are not aware of this
Speaker 1: historical context. Right the conversation has evolved. Things weren't always
Speaker 1: this way, sort of similar to how the Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans so called of the like eighteen hundreds were way
Speaker 1: different than the people you see calling themselves that today.
Speaker 1: You have to look deeper into things to understand them.
Speaker 1: And regardless of where you find yourself on the political spectrum,
Speaker 1: arguments that politicized climate change are usually either I'll say it,
Speaker 1: take a shot, cartoonishly ignorant, or they are made in
Speaker 1: bad faith to mislead credulous people. You if you were
Speaker 1: listening and you're human being, you need the same things
Speaker 1: as all the people that you love or hate or
Speaker 1: don't know across the planet. You know, you gotta breathe, right,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things. You want to eat food,
Speaker 1: which means you need arable land or access to someone
Speaker 1: who has that. You also need clean water. It's cool
Speaker 1: to have shelter from the elements. These are like the base,
Speaker 1: this is day one stuff. As they said at work,
Speaker 1: allics and the and the problem is just too big
Speaker 1: for any one single institution to solve it on its own.
Speaker 1: There are too many players involved. You could call them
Speaker 1: stakeholders or whatever. But we're we're not just talking about
Speaker 1: the almost eight billion people who rely on the ecosystem
Speaker 1: to survive, which is you know, that's everyone. We're also
Speaker 1: talking about the institutions that these people have formed throughout
Speaker 1: history or will form in the future. Like um okay,
Speaker 1: I I hate that we have to say this, but
Speaker 1: we have to be fair, right, We talked about this
Speaker 1: in the world without plastic, they're huge private industries that
Speaker 1: you know, move billions and trillions of dollars depending on
Speaker 1: how you slice it. And if you flip a switch
Speaker 1: and you say, you know, like no more plastic more
Speaker 1: CEO two emissions or something like that. They are going
Speaker 1: to tank and they will drive millions of innocent people
Speaker 1: with them into the ground. Too much change too soon
Speaker 1: could be as dangerous has no change in the immediate future.
Speaker 1: If does that make sense? Oh? Absolutely, And we already
Speaker 1: we alluded to that earlier in the episode, just when
Speaker 1: talking about the whole problem in general of making one
Speaker 1: massive change. And the other thing to take into account
Speaker 1: here is that every country that exists has its own
Speaker 1: kind of economy that functions based on the resources and
Speaker 1: what's available within the land and sea that they own. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you try and make a sweeping change on
Speaker 1: every one of those countries and every one of those economies,
Speaker 1: let alone the global economy, uh, you're gonna have major problems.
Speaker 1: They're the same ones you just described, Ben, where one
Speaker 1: one company goes down or an industry goes down in
Speaker 1: a certain fishing you know area, let's say on the
Speaker 1: northeast coast of the United States or you know of
Speaker 1: North America. Um, you're gonna have major issues not only
Speaker 1: in that area, but then that's gonna affect the rest
Speaker 1: of the economy and the fishing economy anyway. It's a
Speaker 1: bad example, but it's it's a major problem. Well, and
Speaker 1: not only that, you have developing countries that are maybe
Speaker 1: just now starting to become you know, um economic superpowers
Speaker 1: are working their way up to it. And they're like,
Speaker 1: what about all that time that you spent polluting, you know,
Speaker 1: and getting to get up and running, and now you're
Speaker 1: saying that we have to cut back because of all
Speaker 1: the you know, greenhouse gases you put out, like over
Speaker 1: the years, when we weren't like, that's not fair, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a point I want to spend some time
Speaker 1: on in a second, in every like we're on the
Speaker 1: same page here, we might accidentally radicalize each other in
Speaker 1: this episode, folks, which is fine. So you so we've
Speaker 1: got the companies no matter if you love them, you
Speaker 1: hate them, you think they're necessary evil. Uh, it would
Speaker 1: be bad news if they all of a sudden had
Speaker 1: to flip a switch and stop. The economic consequences would
Speaker 1: be unprecedented. Those two almost two hundred un recognized countries,
Speaker 1: they've each got their own vibes, often contradictory goals. They're
Speaker 1: not going to be super great at cooperating. And then
Speaker 1: especially now to steal a line from Fox News. Now
Speaker 1: more than ever, you have incredibly wealthy individuals, each of
Speaker 1: whom also has their own agenda, and they are capable
Speaker 1: of affecting these conversations at every single step along the way.
Speaker 1: If you are listening to today's show, odds are you
Speaker 1: can't do a thing to stop any of those three
Speaker 1: um categories of ventity. You can try to make your
Speaker 1: voice heard, but the traditional channels, it's gonna be tough.
Speaker 1: Not everybody gets to be Greta Thunberg. You know, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a prisoner's dilemma here at play as well. No
Speaker 1: one wants to get left behind. Logically, no one wants
Speaker 1: to commit to a decision or a policy that will
Speaker 1: leave them at a disadvantage. Very basically, why would you?
Speaker 1: You know, Like I was trying to think of some
Speaker 1: examples and I just came up with some hypothetical ones.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to think of like a really
Speaker 1: big corporation, and I just pulled Uni Lever out of
Speaker 1: Scullies cranium over there. And let's say you're let's say
Speaker 1: you're Noelan Matt and you are the heads of Uni Lever,
Speaker 1: and you know that a lot of let's Let's say
Speaker 1: you make a lot of stuff that uses palm oil,
Speaker 1: and you know that the palm oil industry is very
Speaker 1: damaging to the ecosystems in which it's harvested. But you
Speaker 1: also know that if you decide to get some good
Speaker 1: pr and say, okay, we're cutting out all palm oil
Speaker 1: products and we're an international corporation, so we're gonna make
Speaker 1: a splash with this, you know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: If you do that, You're gonna lose billions of dollars
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and worse, your competitors are going to move
Speaker 1: into that space lickety split. So the problem is going
Speaker 1: to continue and you just won't be making money off
Speaker 1: of it. That is what will happen. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: like Lego, for example, they're not going to stop using plastic,
Speaker 1: but they did make a gesture and saying they're gonna
Speaker 1: phase out plastic bags in their packaging. So it's like
Speaker 1: that's sort of the middle ground of pr opportunity there.
Speaker 1: Because your Lego, it's such a hit to your supply,
Speaker 1: you can't what are you gonna make it out of?
Speaker 1: Like seashells, Like, you know, you've got to figure something out,
Speaker 1: and that's a much more long term problem to figure
Speaker 1: out a material that they can actually integrate into their
Speaker 1: supply chain to replace plastics and oil based products. So
Speaker 1: instead they're like, well, we know that this problem, but
Speaker 1: we're lego. We gotta have your legos. So let's just
Speaker 1: you know, make the bags out of paper, you know.
Speaker 1: Or I think McDonald's even is like they're happy meal
Speaker 1: toys are not made of plastic anymore. They're made of paper,
Speaker 1: but they're also gonna still have plastic straws. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I mean, it's it's true. It really is a
Speaker 1: pickle because these the folks are in charge of these
Speaker 1: decisions are trying to mitigate damage, but they're trying to
Speaker 1: mitigate it in a way that is sustainable for their enterprise,
Speaker 1: if not sustainable for the planet and the scale of
Speaker 1: time that that is one of the biggest complicating factors here.
Speaker 1: Let's say, okay, let's say your Paul Mission controlled decond
Speaker 1: you are the ruler of Let's give Paul Transylvania. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: also love that he's the ruler. He's just the ruler
Speaker 1: of it, you know, with a with a very tasteful
Speaker 1: iron fist mission control rules Transylvania. And as the leader
Speaker 1: of this country, he knows that his nation depends upon
Speaker 1: certain industries that are damaging to the environment. Maybe it's mining,
Speaker 1: maybe it's oil and rare earth minerals, whatever. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a mono agriculture in just exports one thing and that's
Speaker 1: what most of the arable land is used for. So uh,
Speaker 1: dear leader Paul Decans says, Okay, I could end these industries,
Speaker 1: and if I do, then Transylvania will play a role
Speaker 1: in making the world arguably a better place decades from now.
Speaker 1: I won't be around to see it. Instead, I will
Speaker 1: be the scapegoat. I will be public enemy number one.
Speaker 1: I'll be the guy who tanked to the economy and
Speaker 1: put the population in the poorhouse and out of work.
Speaker 1: That also is the calculus that a lot of world
Speaker 1: leaders use, and they're not wrong. Is the problem. So
Speaker 1: they're still mine asbestos and parts of Russia, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's that What does that whole town asked us,
Speaker 1: I believe something like that. That that is that's literally
Speaker 1: they're they're one industry um and everyone that's they're doing
Speaker 1: that job is okay with doing that job, so they
Speaker 1: keep putting it out. What else are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know? Uh, these are broad kind of aside from Russia,
Speaker 1: which is a real world example, these are broad hypothetical examples,
Speaker 1: but we guarantee you they are based in fact. And
Speaker 1: so now the question becomes the same old question. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows there's a problem, everybody knows something needs to be done.
Speaker 1: Can't we all just get along and agree on a solution?
Speaker 1: Record scratch, no, actually no, we cannot. We will not.
Speaker 1: As discussed earlier, many of the countries and entities that
Speaker 1: are driving these conversations about environmentalism and preservation, they're coming
Speaker 1: from a place of immense historical privilege. Like of course,
Speaker 1: and this is not a thing on our British or
Speaker 1: European friends in the audience today, but think about it.
Speaker 1: Of course, the U K. And Western Europe can get
Speaker 1: kind of high in my about the conversation around alternative
Speaker 1: energy because they're still sitting pretty off untold trillions of
Speaker 1: dollars of historical profits from the coal power of the
Speaker 1: industrial age, to slavery to colonialism, all the other sins
Speaker 1: of the past made them a lot of money and
Speaker 1: gave them a lot of influence and they still have it.
Speaker 1: So of course, if you're an up and coming country, um,
Speaker 1: you'll sometimes hear them referred to as the brick countries.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a misnomer, but it's an
Speaker 1: acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China countries
Speaker 1: like on that level, of course, you're gonna be frustrated
Speaker 1: if some if some grand puba from the U N
Speaker 1: comes to you and says, Okay, yeah, I'll destroy the planet.
Speaker 1: Was all fine and dandy for us, but you guys
Speaker 1: are gonna need to find a different, more expensive route
Speaker 1: to our level of success. Funny voice, take a drink.
Speaker 1: Was that a funny voice or was it my real voice?
Speaker 1: So it's it's tough, it's tough, and people here valid concerns.
Speaker 1: Big change rarely happens overnight, unless you're talking about like
Speaker 1: POMPEII or another natural disaster. So, like you were talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, Matt, things have to be phased in out
Speaker 1: pretty slowly. This takes a huge level of commitment across administrations,
Speaker 1: across governments, across continents, across generations, and it requires this
Speaker 1: is even trickier thing. It requires everybody involved to imagine
Speaker 1: a future that, for better or worse, does not yet exist.
Speaker 1: We can just see the problems on the horizon. I
Speaker 1: think I've got to I even have a note in
Speaker 1: the outline, like, folks, we are past the tipping point.
Speaker 1: We are. I was talking with UM. We have a
Speaker 1: good friend of the show, very old friend of Noel's,
Speaker 1: named Matt Riddle, and Matt Riddle and I were talking
Speaker 1: about this recently. Um, maybe the best analogy for where
Speaker 1: human civilization and climate changes now is to say this
Speaker 1: and freestyling a little. But let's say you're still, for
Speaker 1: some reason driving that horrid Peugio Honda Odyssey hybrid we
Speaker 1: made up earlier, and you have careened off the road.
Speaker 1: You were at the point in a car accident where
Speaker 1: everything seems to slow down. You see the tree that
Speaker 1: you're going to hit. You are going to hit the tree. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just a question of how much time you have
Speaker 1: to put your seatbelt on, whether you have time to
Speaker 1: have an air bag or something like that. The car
Speaker 1: crash is coming, and that's a scary thing for people
Speaker 1: to think about. We don't want to think about it.
Speaker 1: But the statistics are all there. We've mentioned the multiple
Speaker 1: times in past episodes. Uh, like parts of the world
Speaker 1: are going to be uninhabitable without around the clock technology
Speaker 1: creating a more hospitable environment. And it's just true. I
Speaker 1: mean Tool predicted it in the song Anema, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean what decades ago. California Bay, Yeah, Arizona Bay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Arizona Bay. But basically it's that whole, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: accepted idea that parts of California are going to fall
Speaker 1: into the ocean. And again this isn't fearmongering. I mean
Speaker 1: you can find multiple, i mean innumerable resources that that
Speaker 1: that show the stats heading in that direction. It's also
Speaker 1: probably why California is like ground zero for so much concern,
Speaker 1: you know, conservation environmentalist kind of activism, because they're like
Speaker 1: really at risk. Yeah, and that that event is further
Speaker 1: off in the future where California falls away because of
Speaker 1: kind of strong tectonic movements. But the stuff we are
Speaker 1: talking about is is very real, especially the ones where
Speaker 1: places will be underwater. And uh, the drought situation and
Speaker 1: desertification of places is going to continue pretty rapidly, very
Speaker 1: very second. Yeah, and it's just gonna get worse as
Speaker 1: time goes on. It's gonna happen in your lifetime if
Speaker 1: you're listening now, But what you should be even more
Speaker 1: concerned about will be your loved ones you continue after you.
Speaker 1: Real estate is going to become a much more dicey proposition,
Speaker 1: and countries like the Maldives, for instance, are probably going
Speaker 1: to be underwater pretty soon. Climate refugees are going to
Speaker 1: continue to flee from these sorts of these sorts of
Speaker 1: large scale changes. Uh, we're talking millions of people, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands, millions on the way to you. If you
Speaker 1: live in a place that will still be habitable, things
Speaker 1: are going to become increasingly expensive and then they're going
Speaker 1: to become unavailable. And that's something that I would pose
Speaker 1: it was a foreign concept to many people living in
Speaker 1: the United States until COVID shortages hit, Like I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of folks in the US are aware
Speaker 1: that in a lot of other places in the world,
Speaker 1: you will run into situations where you stuff just isn't there.
Speaker 1: The grocery store shelves are empty, even if you have money.
Speaker 1: Not to mention resource wars, you know, on a larger
Speaker 1: scale that's already a thing that happens. Like there were
Speaker 1: water wars disputes, you know between I believe Georgia and
Speaker 1: Tennessee if I'm not mistaken, um that you know, and
Speaker 1: those are real problems in terms of like potable water
Speaker 1: and like who controls the resources, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: not to get to doom and gloom, but like think
Speaker 1: about how it was in mad Max Fury Road. That's
Speaker 1: like the most extreme version of that. But I mean
Speaker 1: water is it could be the most precious commodity of
Speaker 1: them all. Yeah, and right now we're seeing legal battles,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of those situations, at least within
Speaker 1: the United States, but those will quickly turn into more
Speaker 1: intense situations, yes, hand to hand combat m h. And
Speaker 1: if you want to if you want to look at
Speaker 1: that going to the earlier idea of science fiction often
Speaker 1: becoming fact nonfiction, do check out a great collection of
Speaker 1: short stories called Pump six. One of those stories is
Speaker 1: about is a pretty plot possible scenario about the future
Speaker 1: of water and privatization. Or check out our episode on
Speaker 1: World War three, our episode on water Wars, our YouTube
Speaker 1: videos on it. The truth is out there, the facts
Speaker 1: are in These are not these are not conspiracies. But
Speaker 1: we're getting to the conspiracy. The big thing is conventional solutions,
Speaker 1: as we've outlined, don't work. We can fill ours debating them,
Speaker 1: their pros and cons They come in all sorts of forms.
Speaker 1: You'll see the glossy pr pledges from insert company here,
Speaker 1: Lego says this. McDonald says that you'll also see those
Speaker 1: non binding resolutions from international organizations, you and committees. You'll
Speaker 1: see any number of ted talks. You'll see sweeping declarations
Speaker 1: from billionaires like Bill Gates says we need to fix
Speaker 1: this or that or whatever. And to be clear, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of those proposed solutions are made in good
Speaker 1: faith and they're made by very intelligent people, but they
Speaker 1: fall shorter their goals and they fade from the headlines.
Speaker 1: It makes sense that they fade from the headlines because,
Speaker 1: let's face it, the little conspiracy realist most people don't
Speaker 1: like to think about the end of the world, especially
Speaker 1: if they feel like they've got a pretty good right now.
Speaker 1: They're also not sexy because they are long term solutions
Speaker 1: that you know, people want instant gratification. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot to ask for people to
Speaker 1: like think about ten years down the line when they
Speaker 1: can have something yesterday, especially if you're only in office
Speaker 1: for four to eight years. But yeah, seriously, I would
Speaker 1: pause it. The biggest problem we face is that the
Speaker 1: solutions to these problems are not inherently profitable. Inherentbly profitable joke, dude,
Speaker 1: because I mean, who who pays you right now to
Speaker 1: clean carbon out of the ocean. They're they're you know,
Speaker 1: groups from colleges and companies that are attempting to you
Speaker 1: that kind of work and developed technologies for that. But
Speaker 1: who's gonna pay you outside of maybe a government grant
Speaker 1: because you know, the citizens are paying more taxes so
Speaker 1: that then it can happen. And it's just it's not
Speaker 1: it's not immediately appealing to anyone other than each individual's
Speaker 1: self preservation or the need for it. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: once they figure out how to turn that ocean cleaning
Speaker 1: stuff into like the spice melons or something, you know,
Speaker 1: But other than that, it's it's pretty dire. That's where
Speaker 1: you see more like neoliberal market based approaches. That's where
Speaker 1: that's why outfits like the economists are always so twitter
Speaker 1: painted about a carbon tax, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And is that is that a viable solution. Some people
Speaker 1: are convinced it is, other people are convinced it's not.
Speaker 1: But but we are living in the sixth Great mass extinction.
Speaker 1: For anybody who is looking for another example of a
Speaker 1: mass extinct, and think about why we don't have dinosaurs anymore, right,
Speaker 1: like we have things that survived from dinosaurs, chickens, it's etcetera.
Speaker 1: But you're not going to see a t rex until
Speaker 1: cloning goes, you know, cloning reaches and breakthroughs, or maybe
Speaker 1: you'll see an n f T t rex. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But the issue is, and I think about this a lot,
Speaker 1: and I wish more people would mention this. We are
Speaker 1: living in what is commonly called nowadays the anthroposine, right,
Speaker 1: so you know about like the Plistine, etcetera. The anthroposine
Speaker 1: is just a dressed up word for the age of humanity.
Speaker 1: And it is overwhelmingly likely that the biggest legacy all
Speaker 1: these people who have lived and died will end up
Speaker 1: leaving is a wreck of earth. Is a mass extinction.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of it. It is happening. It
Speaker 1: is possible that the idea of wildlife will sound like
Speaker 1: a crazy story to your grandchildren. That's again, I'm not
Speaker 1: being hyperbolic. This is happening, and this is something people
Speaker 1: knew about for more than half a century. And this
Speaker 1: frustration turned to desperation, and some folks said, we have
Speaker 1: to go beyond writing letters. Are going to protest or
Speaker 1: just recycling, you know, for five cent refunds. You know
Speaker 1: what he's doing in a glass bottle or something. And
Speaker 1: that's where we saw the rise of something called radical
Speaker 1: environmentalism in the nineties sixties. And we can dive into
Speaker 1: a little more of that ideology is the show goes on.
Speaker 1: But from radical environmentalism we see the rise of people
Speaker 1: in groups who decided, let's cut past these useless, doomed negotiations,
Speaker 1: let's skip beyond the half measures, those so called toothless proposals,
Speaker 1: let's take direct action. Today those people are known as
Speaker 1: eco terrorist, But what are they? Will pause, We'll tell
Speaker 1: you after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy, all right, I told you guys earlier, I
Speaker 1: figured it out. My favorite eco terrorist, Captain Planet as
Speaker 1: played by Don Cheatle. It's good sketch. I get you know,
Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I agree with him, but I get where he's coming from.
Speaker 1: He is he's he's an eco terrorist. Uh, eco terrorists,
Speaker 1: What does it mean? It's a portmanteau obviously, Uh, ecology
Speaker 1: plus terrorism. It's a combo. Not quite as popular as
Speaker 1: peanut butter and jelly. Uh. And at first glance, it
Speaker 1: feels like a really loaded term, like you would hear
Speaker 1: this on far right news. Right someone would say, these
Speaker 1: people want to stop an oil pipeline, they're eco terrorist,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And next up the war
Speaker 1: on Christmas. It feels very very biased. But I found
Speaker 1: something interesting. Uh, the the far left activists that were
Speaker 1: described as eco terrorists, they had a war with the
Speaker 1: far right to control the definition of that word, and
Speaker 1: they were saying stuff like, hey, we're not the eco terrorists.
Speaker 1: Ex on mobile is the eco terrorists. They are terrorizing
Speaker 1: Earth with what they're doing. Unfortunately, the left lost that argument,
Speaker 1: and so now when you hear eco terrorists you have
Speaker 1: to be really conscious of the source because you might
Speaker 1: just be hearing like a hit piece from a corporation
Speaker 1: disguised as news. Absolutely not, no question about it. That
Speaker 1: term has been weaponized. What would the weather underground be
Speaker 1: considered eco terrorists, know they were domestic terrorists. They seem
Speaker 1: more political specifically, but it all is kind of political
Speaker 1: since the environment has been politicized, so you're kind of
Speaker 1: fighting against policy too when you're when you're carrying out
Speaker 1: some of these acts. Yeah. Yeah, the weather underground probably
Speaker 1: has some Vin Diagram situation and some overlap in notable
Speaker 1: individuals and so on. But they are they're not they're
Speaker 1: not considered as focusing on environmental issues. They were more oriented,
Speaker 1: as you said, toward political change. Like the big proponents
Speaker 1: of communist ideology. Uh. I don't know when I hear
Speaker 1: Like when I think of conservation environmental groups, I think
Speaker 1: of like the pandal logo on the World Wildlife Fund
Speaker 1: or Federation or whatever it's called, you know, the other
Speaker 1: w WF. I think of like Sarah McGlaughlin telling you
Speaker 1: to treat puppies better, the arms of the Angels. I
Speaker 1: was just talking to my kid about that the other night.
Speaker 1: She's never had the privilege of experiencing that ad campaign
Speaker 1: with the sad puppies and the shelters and Sarah McLaughlin's
Speaker 1: Saddest song in the world, especially when paired with sad puppies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is like, like, when you think of this
Speaker 1: kind of activism, you probably have a stereotype in your head. Right,
Speaker 1: there's this there's a scent of patuli wafting through the air.
Speaker 1: Someone's playing a sitar, everybody is wearing something that's somehow
Speaker 1: made out of hemp. You probably don't think of people
Speaker 1: launching RPGs at nuclear facilities, but that's part and parcel
Speaker 1: of this. Uh. Eco terrorists are defined by their tactics
Speaker 1: more so than their ideology, but ideology is part of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are acts. They're perpetrating acts of violence against people
Speaker 1: or property or companies with the aim of not killing folks,
Speaker 1: but disrupting actions that they feel are damaging to the environment.
Speaker 1: And the word itself is is kind of new. It's
Speaker 1: from like the nineteen sixties, you can call it. Nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies gets popularized. But the idea of using getty a
Speaker 1: tactics to fight the power is a it's like surprisingly old.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have done this. A lot of
Speaker 1: people like banded together in sort of a we must
Speaker 1: protect the wild kind of vibe. Uh. One example is
Speaker 1: in France in eighteen seven, a bunch of peasants revolted
Speaker 1: against the government's new codes regarding forestry and how to
Speaker 1: harvest resources from the forest, who could do what, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And they went into a full out war. It's called
Speaker 1: the War of the Maidens. So they didn't call it
Speaker 1: eco terrorism, but that's what it was. That's what we
Speaker 1: will call it today. The French take foraging very seriously.
Speaker 1: And then additionally, take the example of indigenous native populations
Speaker 1: in the America's when Europeans came to colonize this, and
Speaker 1: they have very different philosophies on how humans should relate
Speaker 1: to the land. Right, native populations thought to protect their philosophy,
Speaker 1: which was clearly less exploitative than the pitch that these
Speaker 1: uh colonials were coming in with. It's weird. A ton
Speaker 1: of people throughout history have fought wars over how they
Speaker 1: feel land should be used or preserved. And when we
Speaker 1: talk about eco terrorists, there are real, genuine groups that
Speaker 1: can be described as such. It's not it's important to say,
Speaker 1: it's not like one loan actor, right, It's not some
Speaker 1: quote unquote unstable person going rogue. Right. These are groups
Speaker 1: who get together for this purpose. And I was surprised
Speaker 1: to find that the FBI back in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: specifically name checked eco terrorists as quote one of the
Speaker 1: most serious domestic terrorism threats in the US today, and
Speaker 1: they backed up the reasoning too, like they had At
Speaker 1: first I thought, no, I don't know, you guys are exaggerating,
Speaker 1: but then they laid out they lay doubt the rationale,
Speaker 1: and it does make sense that they would describe them
Speaker 1: as a serious threat. Yes, And this assessment was due
Speaker 1: to the volume of crimes over two thousand known incidents
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy nine to two thousand eight, and if
Speaker 1: you think about the economic impact of those incidents, it
Speaker 1: was over a hundred and ten million dollars. And that
Speaker 1: also includes the wide range of victims, the you know,
Speaker 1: the companies and things that were impacted by the actions
Speaker 1: and incidents. Um, the FBI saw an increasing trend towards violence.
Speaker 1: And there was also a two thousand four FBI document
Speaker 1: you can read on archives dot FBI dot gov that's
Speaker 1: from two four and it just it's the same kind
Speaker 1: of thing. It's a judiciary committee where they're talking about
Speaker 1: the extreme seriousness of eco terrorism and they they're taking
Speaker 1: it very very seriously. And then at this point of course,
Speaker 1: this is where we all have to have that gut
Speaker 1: check with ourselves and say how much do I trust
Speaker 1: the FBI? Get to that part two. Yeah, we get
Speaker 1: to that part two. But let's let's talk about some
Speaker 1: specific groups have been described as eco terrorists. There's Earth
Speaker 1: Liberation Front or ELF. I know it's the LF, but
Speaker 1: I like saying ELF. There's Stop Huntington's Animal Cruelty or
Speaker 1: SHACK or you know, Personal Favorite Animal Liberation Front ALF.
Speaker 1: I just like that itself. Is any cats? Do you
Speaker 1: think I was wondering about that too? I haven't haven't
Speaker 1: emailed them yet. It's not very eco friendly. Well eating cat,
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. Well if you if you get rid
Speaker 1: of cats, you're saving birds. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: groups are usually going to be focused on two things.
Speaker 1: One some version or genre of radical environmentalism or two uh,
Speaker 1: some kind of animal rights initiative. And and people may
Speaker 1: try and label other groups as eco terrorists, but there's
Speaker 1: there's differences. Consider the c Shepherd group that we looked
Speaker 1: at not that long ago, the one that you know
Speaker 1: had a ship back in the sixties and seventies. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the exact timeframe of Sea Shepherds activities, but
Speaker 1: it was in the seventies where they were going around
Speaker 1: and actually running into ships that were wailing off the
Speaker 1: coast of Japan, where they're they're taking violent action. Right.
Speaker 1: The weird thing, the kind of gray area that it
Speaker 1: leads you to though, is that c Shepherd was generally
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say this, generally fighting against people that were
Speaker 1: taking illegal actions or actions that were legal in you know,
Speaker 1: to some country, to some you know group would consider
Speaker 1: it illegal even though maybe it's not illegal in one
Speaker 1: other country. Um, it's just a weird gray area that
Speaker 1: can exist there because I'm also thinking about other groups
Speaker 1: that are animal rights activists but are not animal rights
Speaker 1: they don't take part in animal rights terrorism necessarily. But
Speaker 1: it's right on the line, it feels like, because it
Speaker 1: just depends on the definition. It feels like like throwing
Speaker 1: paint on a fur coat or something like that, like
Speaker 1: is that a prank? Is that act of terrorism? Etcetera.
Speaker 1: P But it goes deeper than that to uh, with
Speaker 1: some other groups and I'm not even gonna name right now,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that that kind of thing is
Speaker 1: is a bit weird because it well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Sea Shepherd again. I'm having such trouble saying Sea Shepherd. Um,
Speaker 1: you're nailing it. They're the ones that that are concerned
Speaker 1: with like the dolphin slaughter in Japan and things like that. Right,
Speaker 1: and they've got an amazing ship that looks like it's
Speaker 1: it means business. It looks like a warship. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty shout out by the way to all our friends
Speaker 1: in New Zealand who rope to us. Uh. In regards
Speaker 1: to that episode, that's where the event with the Sea
Speaker 1: Shepherd occur. Uh. Do check out that episode and don't
Speaker 1: let that story be forgotten. And you know it was France.
Speaker 1: France did it. France did what would be considered an
Speaker 1: act of terrorism in that case. Uh. And the name
Speaker 1: of the ship was the Rainbow Warrior. But as that's right,
Speaker 1: what a great name ship. Don't don't let the name
Speaker 1: fool you. It is not a warm, fuzzy care bear
Speaker 1: type of ship. It's built for business. Uh. Anyway, now
Speaker 1: we know that eco terrorism as a concept is it's
Speaker 1: not maybe quite what the name implies, because when you
Speaker 1: think of terrorism, you think of things like purposeful mass
Speaker 1: casualty events. You think of the Nine elevens, you think
Speaker 1: of um bombings or gassings on trains, you think of
Speaker 1: suicide bombers. The vast majority of acts described as eco
Speaker 1: terrorism are meant to disrupt at activity, And in fact,
Speaker 1: you'll hear people who are involved in these groups and
Speaker 1: people who lead these groups saying that they intentionally avoid
Speaker 1: harming humans or animals, or that they do everything in
Speaker 1: their power to make sure no one gets hurt. But
Speaker 1: when the palm oil hits the chocolate, of course, these
Speaker 1: things can resulted injuries and fatalities. And I think we
Speaker 1: especially which is something that happen. Yes, yes, exactly. Like
Speaker 1: we're not talking about your garden variety protests. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about just culture jamming, although culture jamming is a
Speaker 1: really cool thing. Shout out to all the Discordians in
Speaker 1: the crowd. Today, we are talking about things like sabotage,
Speaker 1: arson bombing. Um, most of the actions aren't that extreme,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, there's stuff like like tree spiking. Have
Speaker 1: you guys heard about tree spiking? Just just from reading
Speaker 1: the research on this episode, it's it's definitely interesting. Reminds
Speaker 1: me of like, you know, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of misinformation around the like the idea of lead the
Speaker 1: Luddites or whatever, like sabotaging printing presses. It's the idea
Speaker 1: of you know, sabotaging a supply chain or something that
Speaker 1: does not ideologically sit right with you. And I guess
Speaker 1: what you you put? You put things in, hammer spikes
Speaker 1: in the tree so that it would damage equipment potentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not just equipment. It would get damaged right
Speaker 1: because there are people on the other side of those chainsaws.
Speaker 1: Is the problem, that's the flaw in the system there.
Speaker 1: So tree spiking is exactly like you described. You sneak
Speaker 1: onto a logging site or a future logging site and
Speaker 1: you hammer in some spikes in the trunk of a
Speaker 1: tree around where somebody would be attempting to cut the
Speaker 1: tree down. This is not gonna kill the tree. It's
Speaker 1: not going to do serious damage to it, just like
Speaker 1: tapping a tree from maple syrup is not going to
Speaker 1: kill the tree. So what they're doing is there Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's like if these trees were people. Imagine if there
Speaker 1: was a way you could make everybody get an ear
Speaker 1: ring or a nose ring, and it meant that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be shot in the street. That's a weird analogy,
Speaker 1: but that's almost one to one really quickly. I know
Speaker 1: the ledites did not damage printing press. It was like
Speaker 1: cotton mills, woolen mills and cotton gins and things like that.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing if mad'll let me slide with that terrible analogy,
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about it. All right, Well, they're not
Speaker 1: all going to be winners. Were working. But but the
Speaker 1: problem with this is, like million equipment, uh could also
Speaker 1: be affected by these tree spikes. If you have ever,
Speaker 1: if you've had munch experience logging or with a chainsaw,
Speaker 1: you know that they can be quite dangerous if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong. Right, So, in at least one case, this
Speaker 1: practice of tree biking did result in a serious injury,
Speaker 1: but not a fatality. And so far none of the
Speaker 1: tree spiking things in particular have led to fatalities. They're
Speaker 1: meant to be disruptive, yeah, and it's also not led
Speaker 1: to a major change in how the logging companies continue on.
Speaker 1: You just get more equipment ding ding, because and then
Speaker 1: you've made you you're essentially creating waste of large you know,
Speaker 1: metal filled equipment that's just gonna go into a garbage
Speaker 1: eep somewhere. Uh, that's good if you're someone trying to
Speaker 1: do good by taking this kind of action, right, and
Speaker 1: then you could say, well, well it's it's still on
Speaker 1: balance a good thing to do because I am saving
Speaker 1: some trees. Maybe the logging company will say, we don't
Speaker 1: know how many trees have been spiked. We can't check everyone,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna at least hold off unlinking. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hold off on this part of our operation.
Speaker 1: But I would argue a lot of this stuff, a
Speaker 1: lot of these activities and tactics are just examples of
Speaker 1: the larger concept of sabotage, which is known as monkey wrenching.
Speaker 1: Sabotage is a cool word with great etymology. Leave you
Speaker 1: to discover it. Um they There's also another buzzword I found,
Speaker 1: which I don't like. It's very rare for me to
Speaker 1: hate a word. But echo taj Do you guys ever
Speaker 1: hear that one? You know? Is that like is that
Speaker 1: like making like like scrap booking sabotaging stuff for uh
Speaker 1: a local ecological system? You know, it occurs to me
Speaker 1: with the whole spiking thing, and like you know your point,
Speaker 1: Mad about Well, they just get new equipment. Uh not
Speaker 1: only that is get new equipment, They just make it
Speaker 1: harder for like, you know, the workers that they add
Speaker 1: more security you know to the sites and and make
Speaker 1: it more prohibitive to work there in the same way
Speaker 1: that like the t say, after nine eleven, like you know,
Speaker 1: the terrorists did not win except in making us have
Speaker 1: to you know, take our shoes off, which then causes
Speaker 1: the price of lumber to rise just slightly because the
Speaker 1: company has to charge more money to hire more people,
Speaker 1: which then makes you want to make more because it's
Speaker 1: going to be more profitable. Oh god, you see the
Speaker 1: feedback loop. Yes, and and uh so listen everyone, it's
Speaker 1: eco tag whatever. Do so on to a parody song
Speaker 1: of that. I will write the lyrics for that, and
Speaker 1: we can we can be the Beastie Boys for a second.
Speaker 1: But but this, these actions, the symphasis on sabotage is
Speaker 1: in a very large way inspired by a novel written
Speaker 1: by a guy named Edward Abbey in the name of
Speaker 1: the novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. The Monkey Wrench Gang
Speaker 1: follows a Vietnam that former prisoner of war named George
Speaker 1: hay Duke who is trying to fight back against people
Speaker 1: polluting the southwestern desert where he lives, and he loves
Speaker 1: the land, so he has a campaign of sabotage. This
Speaker 1: inspires the creation of these real life eco terrorist groups
Speaker 1: such as Earth First. You have to say it that
Speaker 1: way because the exclamation marks in the name irma gird
Speaker 1: Earth First. Exactly. It sounds so nice, so does Elf
Speaker 1: and alf. It sounds although none of it looks none
Speaker 1: of it seems that nice when it's spray painted on
Speaker 1: the side of a trailer, because I've seen numerous versions
Speaker 1: of it, just like hastily scrawled. You know what else
Speaker 1: sounds like the Monkey wrench Gang sounds like a charming
Speaker 1: Disney film from the forties, like the Apple Dumpling Gang,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The The
Speaker 1: thing here is that those acts, those disruptive acts that
Speaker 1: are kind of in that gray area we've described, like
Speaker 1: what what could be called just vandalism or prank versus
Speaker 1: what what do you call terrorism? I mean, the FBI
Speaker 1: is pretty loose with their definition of terrorism, and you
Speaker 1: could say that's by necessity. You could say that there
Speaker 1: is a financial motivation because the more things that can
Speaker 1: be classified as terrorism. Uh, the more funding you can
Speaker 1: get for counter terrorism, right, that's another feedback loop. But
Speaker 1: there are things that are very serious, very dangerous crimes.
Speaker 1: One would be arson ELF in particular, the YLF became
Speaker 1: infamous throughout the nineties and early two thousands for pretty
Speaker 1: consistent decentralized arson sabotage kind of campaign. They included the
Speaker 1: arson of a ski resort and then other acts of
Speaker 1: arson were okay, I got thoughts on this with guys.
Speaker 1: Other acts of arson were things like housing developments, construction sites,
Speaker 1: auto dealerships, chain stores. I want to share an example
Speaker 1: of something that is really stuck with me, and I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, was researching the ethical dilemmas at
Speaker 1: play in this episode. So we have a chain restaurant
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta in the US called Chick fil A.
Speaker 1: Chick fil A, I'm pretty much a cyclical basis, will
Speaker 1: get bad press in the news because they have in
Speaker 1: the past supported things that are like anti same sex marriage.
Speaker 1: Very it's it's a very conservative Christian based chicken joint.
Speaker 1: And there when this this spiked again a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and an old spike again in the future because Chick
Speaker 1: fil A is not really going to change, right, They've
Speaker 1: seen that. They don't lose a ton of money, so
Speaker 1: they're they're you know, they're not going to be compelled
Speaker 1: to change their ideology. Think of all the money they
Speaker 1: could make just staying open on Sunday. I mean, they
Speaker 1: are committed to the bit here, right, and look full disclosure, true,
Speaker 1: Cathy gave me money and tons of his books when
Speaker 1: I became an Eagle scout and I cashed the check.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I was a broke teenager.
Speaker 1: So I'm in a glasshouse here. Yeah, and where we live.
Speaker 1: The lines for Chick fil A's never go down. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what time it is. There's always a massive
Speaker 1: line and they move super quickly. Those places make bank.
Speaker 1: They got it down to a science. Man. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: logistics are yeah, no shame in that. The logistics are amazing.
Speaker 1: But here's why I'm bringing up Chick fil A and
Speaker 1: the controversy with their political funding. There was a video
Speaker 1: that went viral of this guy who goes to a
Speaker 1: Chick fil A drive through. And maybe you guys have
Speaker 1: seen this, maybe some of our fellow listeners have seen this.
Speaker 1: This guy goes to a Chick fil A drive through.
Speaker 1: He's filming on his cell phone. And there's this there's
Speaker 1: this kid. She's a teenager. She has to work the
Speaker 1: drive through at the Chick fil A, And this guy
Speaker 1: is exc gorriating this child, screaming, screaming at this kid,
Speaker 1: making her cry because of Chick fil A's conservative political ideology.
Speaker 1: And that's super unfair because this kid has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that. This kid is just like slinging sandwiches
Speaker 1: and probably wants to get an A on her geometry
Speaker 1: quiz the next day. And that's like, that's what I
Speaker 1: think about when I when I hear about someone's like,
Speaker 1: you work at a dealership and the dealership gets bombed.
Speaker 1: What are you the one at the u N who
Speaker 1: makes decisions about carbon emissions? No? You like you mop
Speaker 1: the floor at a place that sells s U V s?
Speaker 1: Are you used to now you're now you're out of
Speaker 1: a job. What is that great or good? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think you can lose humanity very easily in those
Speaker 1: sorts of situations. It makes me want to drill down
Speaker 1: into this. The veil Colorado Arson that we described that
Speaker 1: the Earth Liberation Front UH did that was specifically the
Speaker 1: one in Veil, Colorado happened in I believe. Um. If
Speaker 1: you if you find like the there's an independent article
Speaker 1: that was written at the time about it that goes
Speaker 1: through some of the specifics and you learn how it's
Speaker 1: actually carried out. How there you know, they were supposedly
Speaker 1: going to be timed, uh, not explosive advices, but devices
Speaker 1: that would cause a fire to start on a gas tank.
Speaker 1: And they were set up all around this this ski
Speaker 1: resort in Veil, Colorado, and it took two people to
Speaker 1: carry out the actual event where they set fire to
Speaker 1: at least three buildings and the fire spread after that point.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting moment in that article specifically that says
Speaker 1: the person that set the fires noticed there were human
Speaker 1: beings in one of the buildings where he had planned
Speaker 1: to set the fire, but chose not to set the
Speaker 1: fire in that building. Um, which kind of you know,
Speaker 1: makes speaks to the points that we've been mentioning this
Speaker 1: whole time. The attempt isn't to kill the human uh.
Speaker 1: The attempt is to stop a larger thing from happening.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was the expansion of this Veil
Speaker 1: ski resort out there in Colorado. Because they were going
Speaker 1: to take over more of the land that was, you know,
Speaker 1: at least according to this group's beliefs that land should
Speaker 1: be kept natural right, And it was one of the
Speaker 1: last places where Oh lord, I'm having a hard time
Speaker 1: we're calling the article, but I believe it was one
Speaker 1: of the last refuges for the links, the cat links. UM,
Speaker 1: I think you're correct. It's interesting too. There's another situation
Speaker 1: with ELF that really shows how the the the period
Speaker 1: you guys described where the government was really out to
Speaker 1: get these types of groups and and they were made
Speaker 1: a really big priority. Uh, no matter what it took. Um.
Speaker 1: There is a guy who is a member of ELF
Speaker 1: who is essentially, I don't know, framed I guess more
Speaker 1: or less um by an FBI informant who infiltrated the group.
Speaker 1: Um you only referred to as Anna in the in
Speaker 1: the court proceedings and all that. And apparently she acted
Speaker 1: as an agent provocateur, at least according to this guy's lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The guy's game, by the way, was Eric
Speaker 1: McDavid UM, and his lawyer made the argument that this Anna,
Speaker 1: who was providing them with bomb making information and materials
Speaker 1: and things like that, and like paying for them to
Speaker 1: live and you know, renting a cabin for them to
Speaker 1: like build the bombs in transportation. All this stuff was acting,
Speaker 1: you know, coercing them into making plans to bomb this
Speaker 1: damn the nimbus damn. Uh and also the U. S.
Speaker 1: Forest Service and other utilities in the area. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this guy got off. He served eight years and some change.
Speaker 1: But UM, that agent provocateur argument ultimately you know, convinced
Speaker 1: the judge to have him released. Um. And that happened
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, after he spent eight years and and
Speaker 1: some change of his life, you know, behind bars, and
Speaker 1: he can't get those eight years back. Also check out
Speaker 1: our earlier episode. Does the FBI manufacture terrorists? The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, unfortunately or certainly attempt to. Um. The real
Speaker 1: question is the motivations and the level of awareness they
Speaker 1: had when they were doing this. But you can you know,
Speaker 1: that's similar to the story about the mosque who reported
Speaker 1: an FBI undercover agent for trying to turn people into suicide. Oops.
Speaker 1: UH lightened up a little bit there with the yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is a great set up for for a
Speaker 1: part of our final act to day. I do want
Speaker 1: to point out something that's a little bit cynical here, Matt.
Speaker 1: You point you noted that U e l F members
Speaker 1: during the ski resort Arson, one of them did decide
Speaker 1: not to blow up a building because he was worried
Speaker 1: that he would injure or kill people. Understandable thing, and
Speaker 1: it's in line with the stated goals of these organizations. However,
Speaker 1: there is a there is a slightly less possible noble
Speaker 1: motivation for this. And this is something there's something you
Speaker 1: might not know if you're not super acquainted with the
Speaker 1: criminal world. But if you are perpetrating certain acts and
Speaker 1: you already know what crimes you are going to be committing,
Speaker 1: you want to try to h do your best to
Speaker 1: avoid more serious charges. That's why that's why sometimes in robberies, right,
Speaker 1: if you see someone get shot, you'll you'll find that
Speaker 1: some criminals will purposely shoot someone kind of like below
Speaker 1: the waist or in below the knee and the leg
Speaker 1: because then it doesn't count as attempted murder. Right is
Speaker 1: the concept. Now that your mileage may vary, please don't
Speaker 1: mug people and shoot them up least, you know, just
Speaker 1: try not to kill anybody. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: very low bar to set try not to kill people. Um,
Speaker 1: but there I bring that up only because I'm wondering
Speaker 1: whether there was some kind of calculus like that, whether
Speaker 1: it's they said, look, if we do get caught for this,
Speaker 1: we don't want to be charged with murder, right, you
Speaker 1: just have to make space for it. Personally, I think
Speaker 1: they probably just didn't want to hurt actual people. But again,
Speaker 1: it's tough to know people's inner motivations. You know who
Speaker 1: we could ask about it is Josephine Sunshine over Acre,
Speaker 1: the one who got away, currently believed to be at
Speaker 1: large in Europe, wanted by the FBI. Josephine, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: would would love to have you on the show. We
Speaker 1: just have to find you. So which g e lf
Speaker 1: She was associated with the attacks that Matt was talking about,
Speaker 1: And there was one guy who just got arrested and
Speaker 1: he was on the run for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: but one of them did get away. Anyhow, this is
Speaker 1: still not the most extreme example. You were promised an RPG,
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realist, and at this point you're asking yourself,
Speaker 1: where is my RPG? Just like you know Dennis in
Speaker 1: Always Stunnying Philadelphia. Here it is actual bombing travel of
Speaker 1: France two January. Eco terrorists are super mad that there's
Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor being built, a nuclear power plant called
Speaker 1: super Phoenix, which sounds so frush right, uh so in
Speaker 1: in in the midst of these protests, these attempts to
Speaker 1: shut down construction, sam eco terrorists actually got RPGs, military
Speaker 1: grade rocket propelled grenade devices from a known arms dealer,
Speaker 1: Carlos the Jackal. That's really what he's called. There's the
Speaker 1: movie The Jackal with what's his name, Bruce Willis, Carlos
Speaker 1: the Jackal. Yeah, real dude gave gave these folks of
Speaker 1: RPGs and they fired them at a nuclear power plant
Speaker 1: it was granted still under construction. And years later somebody
Speaker 1: came out and admitted the responsibility for the attack, a
Speaker 1: guy named Kayam Neesom, who went on to become a
Speaker 1: Swiss politician. And this guy is good at politics. You
Speaker 1: could tell just from just from a quote we pulled
Speaker 1: his statement of the events. He later, you know, talked
Speaker 1: about this in a book. His statement of the events
Speaker 1: shows us a rationale that's pretty common with a lot
Speaker 1: of these direct action groups, and it's um, I don't
Speaker 1: know I'd love I'd love to hear everybody's take on it.
Speaker 1: Who wants to who's got a good, high, niesome voice.
Speaker 1: I know that it might sound odd to consider rockets
Speaker 1: as a non violent means of action. However, we took
Speaker 1: every imaginable precaution to be certain that no worker was
Speaker 1: at risk of being hit. Therefore, we committed a non
Speaker 1: violent attack. This is me with an RPG. What what
Speaker 1: I mean? In a weird way, It's true, it is
Speaker 1: a non violent attack in a way. It's true. In
Speaker 1: another way, is very very much not. That's the only
Speaker 1: non violent RPG I know about involves a twenty sided die. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this So I thought that was interesting because you can
Speaker 1: see you can see the rationale. It's textbook rationale. And
Speaker 1: to Neison's credit, no one was injured by that RPG attack.
Speaker 1: But we're we're gonna pause for a moment. We know
Speaker 1: today's episode is running a little long, but we're gonna pause.
Speaker 1: We're gonna come back and talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what this all means. And we have returned, so
Speaker 1: to some this up, we have to talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of perspective, right, the importance of empathy, humanity and
Speaker 1: and the cliff upon which this civilization is teetering. For
Speaker 1: a lot of us in the audience today, the ethical
Speaker 1: dilemmas are clear. First, yes, Earth is in a bad way,
Speaker 1: and second, yes, humans are responsible. And without dismissing the massive,
Speaker 1: massive efforts of various institutions, we have to note that
Speaker 1: they have not been as effective as people had hoped.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, and I think there's something
Speaker 1: we're talking about throughout the length of this show, how
Speaker 1: effective are these actions in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: Eco terrorism has added more fuel to the flame of
Speaker 1: the surveillance state, and as a result, countless innocent people
Speaker 1: are targeted for surveillance. There is so much money in
Speaker 1: that industry. Yes, surveillance is an industry, But I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: being on the mailing list of a vegan co op
Speaker 1: shouldn't mean someone is automatically getting treated as the next
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden. Like, I don't think you should be
Speaker 1: tracked for those kind of things, but it's proven that
Speaker 1: the FBI is doing that. And you know, we can
Speaker 1: say all terrorism is regardless of ideology, it's inherently conspiratorial.
Speaker 1: Right you are conspiring to do something and terrorism. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, people don't mention this as often as they should,
Speaker 1: but terrorism is also in some ways an opportunity for
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies, for people involved in the world of surveillance,
Speaker 1: because it it gives them an enemy, right, it gives
Speaker 1: them something to fight and pursue. And you could argue,
Speaker 1: then this is just there's a valid argument. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer is, but you could argue that
Speaker 1: through these acts, these eco terrorists, direct action groups, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call them, may actually be empowering the
Speaker 1: growth of some of the entities they seek to fight.
Speaker 1: You know, I I think about that all the time.
Speaker 1: Like they are targeting the people who literally bankroll politicians, Right,
Speaker 1: that's a lot different from knocking over a dollar store
Speaker 1: or something, you know. Uh. And then we talked about
Speaker 1: all the time the people on the ground, what's their perspective.
Speaker 1: They're just people like anyone else. The average person on
Speaker 1: an oil drilling platform isn't some arch supervillain from Captain Planet.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to not get fired, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. They want to go on vacation someday, they
Speaker 1: want to get home safe, and they're not dumb. In fact,
Speaker 1: most people. If they're given the opportunity and the space
Speaker 1: to really think things through, most people are incredibly intelligent.
Speaker 1: It means the people who are working on these oil rigs,
Speaker 1: they are aware of the problems posed by the oil industry.
Speaker 1: In fact, they probably know more about it than people
Speaker 1: were outside of the industry. They know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and they're not They're not trying to ruin the planet.
Speaker 1: They're trying to stay alive. Also, this is to me,
Speaker 1: this is the big thing about a lot of these
Speaker 1: sorts of tactics. Is it not clear that most people
Speaker 1: react adversely to hostile action. Violence is very rarely gonna
Speaker 1: prompt some come to Jesus critical thinking moment on the
Speaker 1: part of the victim. You know, those folks who are
Speaker 1: whaling chips. If they get if they get slammed into
Speaker 1: by a sea shepherd vessel or whatever, if there's someone's
Speaker 1: throwing stink bombs on them, someone's trashing their equipment, they're
Speaker 1: not gonna say, oh, snap, good point, we should change
Speaker 1: our lives, you know what I mean. They're gonna be pissed,
Speaker 1: will build back twice as you know powerful, you know,
Speaker 1: come back on them twofold. That's that's the way. That's
Speaker 1: what that prompts exactly, because that is I want everyone
Speaker 1: to hear. The capital letter is here. That is how
Speaker 1: humans are, for better or worse. It's been this way
Speaker 1: for a while. It's not going to change. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side, the people that the media are
Speaker 1: calling eco terrorists, they don't think of themselves as the
Speaker 1: bad guys, and they don't all agree. They're not monolithic.
Speaker 1: Some are issues specific, save the whales, save the redwood,
Speaker 1: save the Amazon, etcetera. And some are more extreme. Some
Speaker 1: people want to return the world to a pre industrial age,
Speaker 1: which is not going to happen unless some really terrible
Speaker 1: stuff happens first. But boy keep coming back to and
Speaker 1: I think what we all keep coming back to is
Speaker 1: simply this. The numbers are in. We've mentioned the various
Speaker 1: statistics that have been confirmed multiple times by multiple reputable sources.
Speaker 1: Things are going to get worse before they get better.
Speaker 1: And conventional approaches just don't seem to be moving the needle.
Speaker 1: And that's where we get to the end of the show.
Speaker 1: The questions, their questions, the ones really managed to answer
Speaker 1: what should be done? What can be done? You know,
Speaker 1: the clock is ticking and I know the three of
Speaker 1: us didn't take any um, any really hard stance on
Speaker 1: for it or against it quote unquote eco terrorism, because like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to unpack here. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I understand the impulse. I understand the frustration that would
Speaker 1: lead to thinking that the only way forward is through
Speaker 1: extreme action. I think it's misguided oftentimes, but also like,
Speaker 1: what's the alternative? It's so hard to get things done
Speaker 1: through policy, you know, it's so hard, and it's just
Speaker 1: like a slog mind numbing. It makes you want to
Speaker 1: give up. What's the term? He has been cautiously nihilistic,
Speaker 1: optimistically nihilistic. Sorry, I'm gonna take you back to that movie.
Speaker 1: Don't look up again. That's on Netflix or I know
Speaker 1: if you want to watch it. There's a great companion
Speaker 1: podcast called The Last Movie Ever Made. It talks with
Speaker 1: the cast and crew about how they made it, but
Speaker 1: specifically it goes to the writing process of the script
Speaker 1: itself and why it was created. And the reason it
Speaker 1: was created is because Adam McKay was looking at the
Speaker 1: climate change issue and realized all the things we've talked
Speaker 1: about today, the inevitability of the consequences that there's nothing
Speaker 1: that any individual can do. It feels like no change
Speaker 1: can occur, and he just we all know that it's coming,
Speaker 1: and the people who are in charge, who could you know,
Speaker 1: possibly make changes, can't make changes because their hands are tied,
Speaker 1: or they decide not to because it's not politically a
Speaker 1: good thing for them to do. And he turned it
Speaker 1: into a movie about an asteroid heading towards Earth rather
Speaker 1: than just the you know, slow death of life on
Speaker 1: the planet. Uh. I would just recommend everybody go and
Speaker 1: listen to that, just if you really want a good downer.
Speaker 1: But it lets you. But it really speaks to the
Speaker 1: desperation we're talking about here of why somebody would throw
Speaker 1: up their hands and say, well, I'm going to set
Speaker 1: fire to some of these freaking buildings. Maybe that will
Speaker 1: change something. Yeah, I mean the other the other alternative
Speaker 1: is to try to go rage against the machine, right
Speaker 1: the g ride. I want the machines that are making
Speaker 1: them right to the difference companies that create the problems.
Speaker 1: But that is simply not possible for the majority of humanity.
Speaker 1: People can't just buy companies. It's the riot versus protest distinction,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Where it's like people are
Speaker 1: protesting and you know, some things get destroyed. Is that
Speaker 1: protesting or is that being cast as a riot as
Speaker 1: a political way of framing it to to make it,
Speaker 1: to spin it in a way that makes the protesters
Speaker 1: look like criminals. Yeah, I think there's shades of that
Speaker 1: in this right. That's all agreed. Yeah, And these are
Speaker 1: these are excellent points, and this is this is something
Speaker 1: that's mission critical to human civilization. It's unprecedented. People aren't
Speaker 1: sure what the right answers are, what the order of
Speaker 1: operations are, and so that's where we lean on you,
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realists. What do you think? Do you agree
Speaker 1: with groups that advocate direct action to disrupt damage to
Speaker 1: the environment or are these groups, with the best of intentions,
Speaker 1: ultimately giving more power to the same forces they're attempting
Speaker 1: to fight. Should law enforcement be monitoring activists and if so,
Speaker 1: to what degree? We cannot wait to hear your thoughts.
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