| Transcript |
- How to start an Earth First! ChapterWhat is Earth First!?
Earth First! is a radical, decentralized, all volunteer
environmental movement. We are not a true organization, as there
is no official membership, but most Earth First!ers subscribe to
the Earth First! Journal. Earth First! was founded in 1980 in
response to an increasingly bureaucratic, human-centred
mainstream environmental movement that was all too willing to
compromise with the despoilers of the planet. We set forth the
hard line position as defined by the needs of all wild species
and ecosystems, as opposed to what we can reasonably expect from
the powers that be.
Philosophy
Earth First! is the activist wing of the deep ecology
movement. The central tenet of the philosophy of deep ecology is
the ecocentric, or nature-centred, world view. Ecocentrism
purports that all species have the right to exist for their own
sake, regardless of their benefits to humanity. Humans, while
important, have no more intrinsic value than any other species,
whether gray wolves or sea lettuce. Perhaps more importantly,
ecocentrism places ecosystems, consisting of the millions of
living species and the non-living components of air, water, and
soil all interacting together, above all else. Thus, the
protection of fully functioning ecosystems, that is, wilderness,
is the central objective of Earth First! activities. Earth First!
stands in defense of all wild ecosystems, from boreal forests to
prairie grasslands, from temperate rain forests to alpine tundra,
from freshwater lakes to marine ecosystems; each natural
ecosystem is just as important as the other.
Earth First! was the first environmental movement in North
America to realize the necessity of vast, contiguous tracts of
wilderness in all ecosystems for the preservation of
biodiversity. Large core protected areas connected by corridors
are necessary to maintain ecosystem processes like wild fire, to
maintain evolutionary viable populations of the widest ranging
species like grizzlies and wolves, and to encompass the full
mosaic of habitats within a given region. Earth First! wilderness
proposals are typically much bigger than those advocated by
mainstream groups, and with the use of conservation biology in
recent years, have become increasingly effective. Too much
wilderness has been destroyed already and Earth First! seeks to
protect all remaining wild habitats and restore degraded lands;
roads must be removed, dams torn down, agricultural lands
revegetated with natural species, and cattle eliminated from
wildlife habitat.
While many Earth First!ers may have left-wing sympathies
when it comes to social issues, Earth First! is not within the
traditional Right to Left political spectrum which is
anthropocentric and assumes the desirability of continuous
economic growth. Earth First! seeks not only to rearrange the
social relations of society, but also to critique, dismantle, and
|
|---|
