If we can't save the planet, then ... what?

"For 15 years I have been an environmental campaigner and writer. For two of those three years I was deputy editor of the Ecologist. I campaigned against climate change, deforestation, overfishing, landscape destruction, extinction and all the rest. I wrote about how the global economic system was trashing the global ecosystem. I did all the things that environmentalists do. But after a while, I stopped believing it."

So writes Paul Kingsnorth in the Guardian. No longer a "green" campaigner, Kingsnorth is now co-founder of a new movement, the Dark Mountain Project. This so-called project has taken on a life of its own, attracting disillusioned eco-warriors in droves, all of them, Kingsnorth says, admitting that they no longer believe we can save the world from us.

Dark Mountain members, some of them high profile writers and scholars, will congregate at the end of May in a small northern Welsh town to talk about the future of this earth, what it means to say you don't think we can save it, and what on earth (pun intended) you do instead? 

Want to learn more? Go to The Guardian interview or visit Kingsnorth's The Dark Mountain Project.

Comments

[Dougald Hine]

Hi there -

As one of the founders of the Dark Mountain Project, I wanted to say thanks for picking up on what we're doing. But also to clarify something. Paul and I aren't claiming we "can't save the earth", but that we don't need to. The earth is not, in any fundamental sense, under threat. Yes, we are living through a major extinction event, but before we take too much pride in the human role in bringing it about, we should remember that this is hardly the first episode of its kind. The earth, for better or worse, will almost certainly make it through. What is under threat is our way of living. In the long run, no one benefits from us pretending those are the same thing. We will, most likely, outlive our way of living. Let's try and make the best job we can of doing so.

[LizS]

Hello and thank you for your feedback. It was written so eloquently that we think it serves well as clarification for us and our readers.
Best to you,
Liz