The Climate Report | Bright Green Lies, with Max Wilbert | 3-7-23

BRIGHT GREEN LIES, WITH MAX WILBERT | HOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT LOST ITS WAY AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

HART HAGAN: My guest is Max Wilbert who, along with co-authors Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen, wrote the book “Bright Green Lies, How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.”

Max, how are you today?

MAX WILBERT: I'm doing good, Hart. Nice to be with you.

HART HAGAN: It's great to be with you. I'm a big fan of your effort to Protect Thacker Pass (Nevada), as well as your book and your movie. Max, what motivated you to write the book “Bright Green Lies, How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.”

MAX WILBERT: Well, in a way, it was a very personal motivation. I started to become an environmentalist at a pretty young age, and I was taught from the very beginning that solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles were going to save us. I'm lucky that I grew up in an environment where I was surrounded by older activists--grassroots environmentalists--who hung on to the older values of the environmental movement, things like moderation, reducing consumption, critiquing consumption and critiquing capitalism and the role of advertising in shaping our so-called needs.

So I never fully bought into the idea that these technologies were going to save us.

At best--or at worst I should say--I only thought of them as stopgap measures to reduce harms as we transition to a sustainable way of life. But what I saw begin to happen very rapidly throughout the last 20 years, is a transition where the environmental movement--which had been once focused on protecting habitat and defending wild places and wild creatures--has shifted almost entirely to focus on global warming and specifically on addressing global warming through technology.

I see this as a huge problem, not because I support fossil fuels--or I believe global warming isn't a problem. It's the exact opposite. It's because I believe these are inadequate solutions to global warming and because I think they're ultimately destructive to the planet as a whole. They're counterproductive to the environmental movement's goals.

But of course, they’ve become very popular--these technological so-called solutions. And I think it's mainly because they're profitable industrial products that you can sell.

There's a lot of money involved. That money has gotten governments on board. It's gotten corporations on board. It's led to a lot of foundation funding and big philanthropy money for nonprofits that promote this type of thing. That has led to the entire environmental movement--the entire climate movement--being focused almost with blinders on this one single approach.

HART HAGAN: I bet the environmental movement has welcomed you with open arms and given you nothing but positive feedback. How has that gone?

MAX WILBERT: It's a mixed bag because I would say that at the grassroots level, there are a lot of environmentalists who understand these issues, and who have never lost sight of the fundamental values of this movement, a love and reverence for the planet and for other beings and creatures around us. There is a real criticism and mistrust--justified mistrust--of technological solutions and especially solutions that are led by corporations and major international institutions.

Those people I think understand somewhat intuitively that the technological solutions to global warming are a farce to some extent.