by Joe Kandra and Kathie MM
Tag: environmental degradation
Who are the real environmental terrorists??? Part 1.
Terrorism is bad, right? Anyone labeled a “terrorist” should be avoided at all costs, treated like a pariah, knocked out, locked up for life, right? Well, not necessarily. It depends on who is using the label and why.
People in power, particularly powerfully abusive people, eagerly throw the terrorist designation at anyone who confronts them, however non-violent the confrontation may be.
One blatant misuse of “terrorism” is perpetrated by exploiters, abusers, and destroyers of our environment. This particular group of environmental evil doers revels in its zealous application of the terms “environmental terrorism” and “eco-terrorism” to anyone they don’t like. Do they unleash those epithets to describe:
- The freaky frackers that violate health and safety rules and regulations, poison the atmosphere, pollute the soil, endanger drinking water, and dispose of waste products improperly?
- The coal companies, financed by big banks, that blow off entire mountaintops, clearcut thousands of acres of forest, and pollute drinking water with their waste?
- The industries contributing to the ever-increasing dangers of global warming?
No.
How do members of the military industrial complex and corporate media use the term “environmental terrorism”?
They apply it to groups and individuals such as the following, classified by the FBI as special interest domestic terrorist groups:
- the Earth Liberation Front, which set fire to a Colorado ski resort threating the survival of lynx.
- a man accused of conspiring to bomb government and commercial facilities believed to be harming the environment.
- a Greenpeace member paragliding into and throwing a smoke bomb into a nuclear power plant to demonstrate security risks.
- other members of Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)?.
What do you think? Who are the real environmental terrorists? What groups are threatening our survival?
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
Are you being tricked into abetting criminal negligence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv6LXpkbTQ0&feature=player_detailpage
In legal terms, criminal negligence is “recklessly acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at risk of injury or death (or failing to do something with the same consequences).”
Members of families, communities of color, and indeed the whole planet can be and have been subjected to criminal negligence: children become throwaways, people of color are denied basic human rights, and runaway destruction of the planet proceeds at breakneck speed.
Albert Bandura, whom we often cite, has described how individual mechanisms of moral disengagement enable people to engage in or tolerate various forms of atrocities and still feel like moral human beings.
Bandura also confronts us with the ways in which collective moral disengagement operates to cause immense human harm and degradation of the environment.
Bandura lays some of the blame for the destruction of natural resources and countless species on the tendency of conservatives and mega-corporations to treat nature as a commodity to be ruthlessly mined, harvested, and exploited for profit.
Bandura also places blame on highly consumptive life styles, consumerism, and unfettered self-interest—and the capacity of people to find justifications for harmful ways of living and even make detrimental behaviors seem righteous.
Check out the climate change deniers and you will find countless examples of the ways criminal neglect of the well-being of our globe is distorted and denied, and justifications are advanced for destructive practices enriching the rich and powerful while raping the land, poisoning air and water, and destroying lives and livelihoods.
Then listen to the climate change activists, and consider the ways in which you can help our planet survive for your children and grandchildren. Without moral engagement on behalf of the earth and its inhabitants, they won’t have much of a future.