1: Introduction
Welcome to Planetary Biology and the Anti-Capitalist Revolution. I’m Ezra Niesen, and I write science text books for revolutionaries.
Global environmental unsustainability was discovered in 1968. The scientists who discovered it have been saying from the very beginning that if global environmental disaster is going to be prevented, radical social change in humanity’s economic relationship to the environment is necessary. Now with the global Anti-Capitalist Revolution that began with the Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico in 1994, real-life politics has caught up with abstract scientific predictions.
Now with the War on Terror, the American public has been duped into equating radical social change with terrorism. Now a lot of progressive activists, like the SHAC 7 and eight organizers of the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee, are being branded terrorists for supposedly threatening the values America was founded upon. In a sense, they are. But America was founded by people who had never heard of evolution or thermodynamics. In a much bigger sense, the so-called terrorists are putting the concept of secular government of, by, and for the people into practice more effectively than U.S. politicians are.
This isn’t a book about current events. This is a book about how to win. This is a book about where to find the reference sources you need to teach yourself more about environmental science than any U.S. president has ever known, and how to use your self-education to systematically destroy the Capitalists’ stranglehold on the public education system by targeting the scientific falsehoods that are being taught to children. This is how to destroy the empire’s education infrastructure perfectly legally with books you can check out of your local public library.
Let me put it this way. I have extremely few peers when it comes to science. A lot of people, including a lot of the most radical of activists, confuse science for the way Capitalists use science. But the Capitalists pick out the scientific discoveries that help them make money and control people, and ignore the rest. That isn’t science. At best, that’s propoganda. At worst, it’s a form of religious fundamentalism.
Science depends on democracy, and democracy depends on science. Science depends on people being able to talk to each other, being able to disagree with each other, being able to debate with each other, and having access to information and education. Democracy depends on personal empowerment. Personal empowerment depends on people being able to make informed decisions. People being able to make informed decisions depends on their having accurate information. Discovering accurate information is the whole point of science. Manipulated ignorance is not democracy.
Anyone who claims to know for a fact that the universe works in a way no one but he can perceive, doesn’t believe in democracy. That’s even true for people who consider themselves progressive activists. If you claim to know for a fact that the universe works in a way that no one but you can perceive, you are deciding that the universe works in a way requires you to expend no further effort to think about it, and you are trying to discourage anyone from questioning you.
I know that’s hard for a lot of progressive activists to swallow, but if your feelings of personal empowerment depend on your claiming to know for a fact that the universe works in a certain way and discouraging other people from disagreeing with you, you’re trying to sacrifice democracy for the sake of your feelings of personal empowerment.
We all live in the same universe. The universe is the common ground we all share. The universe works the way it works, and as mortal humans, all we can do is to try to figure out how to cooperate with the universe. Scientists have figured out a way to study the universe that doesn’t depend on anyone, at any point, claiming to know something for a fact that no one else is capable of discovering. And some people, like me, are very, very good at it.
The Capitalists are pitting their economic and political system against fundamental laws of the universe. They measure economic success by economic growth. Economies require energy to function. By definition, unending economic growth would depend on an infinite supply of energy. But it was discovered, back in 1868, that it isn’t physically possible for an infinite supply of energy to exist, anywhere in the universe. It’s not like Capitalists haven’t had time to do their homework.
So here’s something the Capitaists don’t tell you about science. People who study real science have been saying for 40 years that world-wide radical social change is necessary. The end result will be Green Anarcho-Socialism. If we are going to survive the environmental crisis, we will have to recognize the environment as our highest prority, and we will all have to work together, free of authoritarian oppression. To you, anti-Capitalism is a revolution. To me it’s just math. Suicidal economic system + oppressed people = revolution.
A lot of anti-Capitalists right now are protesting how corrupt the United States government has become. A lot of them are saying that it’s already gone beyond the point of no return. It’s easy to assume that, because on the surface that is indeed how it appears. But there’s just one little thing you overlooked.
We have a certain group of nine people here in the United States who call themselves the Supreme Court. Other groups of people call themselves the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Administration. Another group of people is called the Shadow Government. Supposedly, these groups decide what people can and can’t do. But despite what they want to believe, it’s the universe, not mortal humans, that decides what people can and can’t do. The laws of physics are the government that rules the world. Unfortunately, a lot of people who can only understand money and power have forgotten that.
The solution to that was simple enough. All I had to do was to compile a reference book to science that any thoughtful person with a partial high school education could read and use to rain scientific hell-fire down upon the heads of government officials. If you can read this book and locate a few expert witnesses, you can walk into the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, or even the Oval Office, and start telling those people what to do. Once you know how to get all the science on your side, it’s against the law for them to disagree with you.
Like I said, democracy depends on people having accurate information. In an anti-democratic political system, learning about science is an act of political insurrection.