The Green Smoke Screen

The Selective Blindness of Modern 'Sustainability'

This morning I was contemplating a discussion with an acquaintance on Twitter (X?) who works in the renewable energy sector. They comprehend that our system has problems, but expressed that they saw hope, because every day they see people striving to find solutions.

"I am fortunate enough to be working on several large renewable projects. There are always challenging technical issues to overcome, but witness innovation and problem solving everyday and a desire to build a better system. Perhaps that's what drives a different perspective?"

Among the many thoughts I considered responding with, one that stood out in memory was the phenomenon Robert Jay Lifton wrote about in The Nazi Doctors. How could men who had taken the Hippocratic Oath lend their skills to concentration camps where inmates were worked to death or killed in assembly lines? I remembered I had read the following in another work. Here's an excerpt:

In The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton explored how it was that men who had taken the Hippocratic Oath could lend their skills to concen­tration camps where inmates were worked to death or killed in assembly lines. He found that many of the doctors honestly cared for their charges, and did everything within their power-which means pathetically little-to make life better for the inmates. If an inmate got sick, they might give the inmate an aspirin to lick. They might put the inmate to bed for a day or two (but not for too long or the inmate might be "selected" for murder). If the patient had a contagious disease, they might kill the patient to keep the disease from spreading. All of this made sense within the confines of Auschwitz. The doctors, once again, did everything they could to help the inmates, except for the most important thing of all: They never questioned the existence of Auschwitz itself. They never questioned working the inmates to death. They never questioned starving them to death. They never questioned imprisoning them. They never questioned torturing them. They never questioned the existence of a culture that would lead to these atrocities. They never questioned the logic that leads inevitably to the electrified fences, the gas chambers, the bullets in the brain.

We as environmentalists do the same. We fight as hard as we can to protect the places we love, using the tools of the system the best that we can. Yet we do not do the most important thing of all: We do not question the existence of this deathly culture. We do not question the existence of an economic and social system that is working the world to death, that is starving it to death, that is imprisoning it, that is torturing it. We never question the logic that leads inevitably to clear-cuts, mur­dered oceans, loss of topsoil, dammed rivers, poisoned aquifers.

And we certainly don't act to stop these horrors.

How do you stop global warming that is caused in great measure by the burning of oil and gas? If you ask any reasonably intelligent seven­ year-old, that child should be able to give you the obvious answer. But if you ask any reasonably intelligent thirty-five-year-old who works for a green high-tech consulting corporation, you'll probably receive an answer that helps the corporation more than the real, physical world.

When most people in this culture ask, "How can we stop global warming?" they aren't really asking what they pretend they're asking. They are instead asking, "How can we stop global warming without stopping the burning of oil and gas, without stopping the industrial infrastructure, without stopping this omnicidal system?" The answer: you can't.

In searching for that reference, I came across another from the same authors. The following delves more into this phenomenon where we are able to tolerate these incoherencies in our lives.

From What We Leave Behind, by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay; chapter "Compartmentalization and its Opposite"

This culture specializes in compartmentalization. If people didn’t blind themselves (and allow this culture to blind them) to the effects of their actions—in other words, if they didn’t put their actions into one compartment and the harmful effects of these actions into another compartment that must never be examined—this culture and its members would not be able to continue a lifestyle based on systematic exploitation and theft. So walls must be erected and maintained. People must be trained to be selectively deaf and blind, sensate only when necessary to perform the task at hand. Do you want to design a “sustainable” truck factory? No problem. Throw some plants on the roof, then just ignore the effects of car culture. Do you want to design an eco-groovy Nike headquarters? No problem. Just make sure you ignore the slave labor. Do you want to manifest your destiny? Great! Just make sure you eliminate everyone who already lives on the continent. Do you want to run an industrial economy? Wonderful! Just make sure you pay little or no heed to the fact that you’re killing the planet you live on.

More or less all of us in this culture—and I am explicitly including myself—are adept at this sort of compartmentalization. It’s what we do.

The training starts early. If familial abuse hasn’t shattered our psyches— forcing us to compartmentalize our experiences, storing trauma in a compartment we will never allow ourselves to look into, and keeping happy feelings and memories where we can hold on to them—then school will surely teach us to compartmentalize. It does this by separating subjects, and even moreso by separating school from home (and school from landbase) and schooltime from playtime. School is school, and play is play, and never the twain shall meet.

The same is true philosophically. Science is science, ethics is ethics, and these two, also, shall never have more than a passing and uncomfortable acquaintance. We can say the same for politics and ethics, and we can say the same for economics and ethics. (Of course politics and economics, handily for those in power, share no such separation from each other, and in fact politics, economics, and science are all united by their mutual raison d’être, which is the raison d’être of this culture: the drive to accumulate and use power over others.)

Compartments. Men and women in different boxes. Humans and nonhumans in different boxes (except when it comes to vivisection: evidently we have enough in common for nonhumans to be models for how toxins will affect us, yet we have little enough in common that nonhumans can’t feel the agony, frustration, despair, sorrow, rage, and helplessness that we would feel were we similarly tormented). Thought goes in one box. Emotion goes in another. One’s job goes in one box. One’s life goes in another.

In The Nazi Doctors Lifton describes what he calls “doubling,” where guards in concentration camps would have one moral code at home, where they might be good parents, and so on; and another at work, where they might torture and murder inmates. In another book he described a similar doubling—which, in some ways, is just another word for compartmentalization—among scientists and technicians working on nuclear weapons. The same applies to all of us, really. We try to be good people while participating in this inherently destructive death-camp culture.

People like [Bill] McDonough claim that actions like putting plants on truck factories—truck factories!—are significant steps toward sustainability, and it should come as no surprise that others in this culture laud this disturbing compartmentalized thinking. So long as you ignore everything but your own particular little action, so long as you ignore every preceding step and every inevitable consequence, that is, so long as you think in a linear, compartmentalized, rationalized way, you, too, can proclaim every one of your actions to be sustainable. You, too, can be praised by Presidents and CEOs alike. You, too, can with a clear conscience continue to assist in this culture’s ultimate consumption of the planet.

In the journey toward genuine sustainability, the allure of quick techno fixes and superficial solutions often leads us astray. While green roofs and eco-friendly facades may offer a semblance of progress, they can also mask the deeper, systemic issues that perpetuate environmental degradation and social injustice. This compartmentalization of sustainability—segregating actions from their broader impacts—serves not only as a barrier to true environmental stewardship but also as a mirror reflecting our collective reluctance to confront uncomfortable truths.

The path forward requires us to dismantle these compartments and face the complexities of our impact on the planet head-on. It demands of us a commitment to holistic solutions that do not merely dress wounds but heal them at their source.

As we peel back the layers of eco-illusions, let us find the courage to confront the contradictions within our environmental efforts and the determination to reformulate our approach to sustainability. Only then can we hope to create a legacy that is truly green, not just on the surface, but deep down where it truly matters.