Extractive

For centuries human societies have been programming new ways to claim the Earth for ourselves. As we do, we find some hot-button issue to rally around - a kind of distraction from the next phase of extraction.

🐋WHALE oil was a clean-burning alternative to animal fat (i.e., tallow) candles. That was a good excuse to go hunt them to the brink of extinction.

⚫PETROLEUM advocates tried to claim they were saving the whales as the industry boomed in the late 1800s. We subsequently dumped all that carbon in the ocean - the whales' one and only home.

💧WATER was next. The damming of most major rivers in the US was justified by rural electrification and nuclear research projects; part of the New Deal and World War II efforts.

🪨And now all we have left to exploit are the ROCKS. Not as easy as the other stuff to extract and transform, but we will have them too! ... under the banner of clean and renewable energy.

The Cloud

Regenerative