Editor’s note: The Extraction Economy and o_il pipelines are everywhere, and they affect everyone.  If you are white enough, rich enough, and/or lucky enough, the pipelines might not be built in your backyard, but no matter who you are, they contaminate the water, air, and land upon which you depend for your life.  The distance does not keep you safe, it only delays alarm.  There are no safe places to hide from a culture and economy based on extraction, drawdown, theft, genocide, and ecocide; this culture eats beautiful forested lands, rich seas, and clear skies and leaves behind wasteland, toxic dead zones, and, possibly in the near future, an inhabitable planet.  If it doesn’t seem like this culture and its economy steals wealth of all sorts for the benefit of a few, it’s very likely that you live in an exclusion zone rather than a sacrifice zone.  The exclusion zones are where resources are sent, where power is concentrated, where the in-group is nourished.  Sacrifice zones are where resources are extracted, where power is enforced to maintain subjugation, where the out-group is impoverished.  Even if you recognize the material problems this culture produces, its strong tradition of silencing dissent, erasing indigenous cultures and knowledge, and spreading self-serving disinformation obscure the root cause of these problems.  For thousands of years, the dynamic of the haves and the have-nots has been at the core of an evolving culture that dominates and erases other cultures.  It has taken many forms, including city-states, empires, kingdoms, feudalism, mercantilism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and fascism.  The common denominator is a selfish urge to profit at the expense of others, beginning about 10,000 years ago with the advent of_ agriculture and male subjugation of women.  This developed into various socioeconomic structures that depend on and thus facilitate the destruction of life.  The dominant culture abuses the earth just as it abuses women. “When it comes to protecting the planet, stopping pipelines needs to be one of our first priorities. And like other Earth-destroying machinery, pipelines are very vulnerable. They stretch on for miles with no guards, no fences, and no protection.” - Max Wilbert

By Will Falk

(I recognize that I am a man. I will never confront a decision about abortion. I am not trying to tell women what to do with the following. I am, however, humbly trying to offer an argument for enforcing women’s rights to full reproductive freedom that is rooted in neither political or religious ideology, but in ecological reality.)

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” - Aldo Leopod, A Sand County Almanac

Editor’s note: This excerpt comes from the book Endgame by Derrick Jensen, a two-volume book consisting of Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization and Volume 2: Resistance . These premises serve as a starting point for Endgame and are explored in detail in the book, which may be Jensen’s magnum opus. If you are confused by these premises, we highly recommend reading the book. See here for a definition of civilization.

PREMISE ONE: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.