Environmentalist Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame and, most recently, As the World Burns, is the closest thing today’s green movement has to Ed Abbey, dispensing unvarnished and often inconvenient truths with a daggerlike delivery. A Q&A with Jensen in the spring issue of Northern California’s Terrain magazine is notable for prompting zinger after zinger sure to either inflame or inspire. A few of my favorites:
- “I got an email from a woman who told me I just seemed angry. I wanted to say how sad it is that I feel wounded at the death of the planet. There’s a tremendous fear of anger at the hands of the so-called resistance. She wanted me to meditate. The salmon don’t give a shit about whether we meditate–they care about the dams.”
- “I heard a radio show about the world-saving machine that can convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. The guy who runs Virgin airlines is going to give millions to develop this technology. We have it already. They’re called trees.”
- “Any social construct, including industrial capitalism, is simply that–a social construct. What’s real are these huckleberries and redwood trees.”
