Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It (Politics of the Living)

“This disturbing but very important book makes clear we must dig deeper than the normal solutions we are offered.”―Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Works

"Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Derrick Jensen and his coauthors argue, has been distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy need to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but with the sanctity of the Earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth―we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly. ‘Tell me how you seek, and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies: It asks the questions most refuse to ask, and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”―Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour

Derrick Jensen is the acclaimed author of more than twenty-five books, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. Author, teacher, activist, small farmer, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he has been hailed as the philosopher poet of the environmental movement. Writes Publishers Weekly, “Jensen paints on a huge canvas an emotionally compelling and devastating critique of the intellectual, psychological, emotional and social structure of Western culture.”

His premise is as profound as it is persistent: industrial civilization is inherently unsustainable. It will always require violence to biotic and human communities. And it will create a culture where trauma is normalized, where living beings become objects, and where the only relationship left is one of domination.

Jensen weaves together history, philosophy, environmentalism, economics, literature and psychology to produce a powerful argument and a passionate call for action. He guides us toward concrete solutions by focusing on our most primal human desire: to live on a healthy earth overflowing with uncut forests, clean rivers, and thriving oceans that are not under the constant threat of being destroyed.

Jensen’s writing has been described as “breaking and mending the reader’s heart” (Publishers Weekly). He writes for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, and The Sun, and has a regular column in Orion. He holds a degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, a degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, and has taught at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay State Prison. He has packed university auditoriums, conferences, and bookstores across the nation, stirring them with revolutionary spirit.

Lierre Keith is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of six books including, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.” She is also coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. She’s been arrested six times for acts of political resistance. She lives in northern California where she shares 20 acres with giant trees and giant dogs. (www.lierrekeith.com)

Max Wilbert is a writer, organizer, and wilderness guide. A third-generation dissident, he came of age in a family of anti-war and undoing racism activists in post-WTO Seattle.

Max has been part of grassroots political work for nearly 20 years. He has been involved in fighting the Canadian “tar sands” megaproject and combating tar sands mining in Utah, in resisting industrial-scale water extraction and deforestation in Nevada, in advocating for the last remaining wild buffalo in Yellowstone, in solidarity work with indigenous communities in British Columbia, and in campaigns against police brutality and sexual violence.

Max serves on the Board of Directors of Deep Green Resistance and Fertile Ground Institute for Social and Ecological Justice. He co-founded the Pinyon-Juniper Alliance, a group dedicated to protecting forests in the Intermountain West. He is the editor-in-chief of the Deep Green Resistance News Service, and produces a podcast called The Green Flame.

Max’s essays have been published in Earth Island Journal, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, DGR News Service, and elsewhere, and have been translated into several languages. Bright Green Lies is Max’s second book. His first book, an essay collection called We Choose to Speak, was released in 2018 in Germany by Babylon Apocalypse press as Voices of Resistance Vol. 2. He also wrote the introduction to a French-language translation of the Earth First! Direct Action Manual, published by Editions Libre in 2019.

Max lives near Eugene, Oregon, where he is involved in a communal living project. His website is https://maxwilbert.org.