The further humans move from hunters to horticulturists to agriculturists to urbanisation to industrialists, the further the sacred recedes, first to heaven, then condensed to monotheism and finally it dies in irony.
Lierre KeithWhatโs looming in the shadows of our ignorance and denial is a critique of civilization itself.
Lierre KeithThis is the moment when we have to decide: does a world exist outside ourselves and is that world worth fighting for? Another 200 species went extinct today. They were my kin. They were yours, too. If we know them as such, why aren't we fighting to save them with everything we've got?
Lierre KeithUnderstand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems.
Lierre KeithWhat is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.
Lierre KeithIf we took 75% of the worldโs trashed rangeland, we could restore it from agriculture back to functioning prairies โ with their animal cohorts โ in under fifteen years. We could further sequester all of the carbon that has been released since the beginning of the industrial age. So I find that a hopeful thing because, frankly, we just have to get out of the way. Nature will do the work for us. This planet wants to be grassland and forest. It does not want to be an agricultural mono-crop.
Lierre Keith