Environmentalist: "The industrial economy needs to be stopped"

Christine G.K. LaPado
News Review
Friday, Nov 13th, 2009

Derrick Jensen likes the word “fuck.”

A widely known Northern California environmentalist and author of the provocative 2006 book-in-two-volumes Endgame, as well as the earlier, critically acclaimed A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make-Believe—Jensen was a Saturday (Nov. 7) afternoon keynote speaker at Chico State’s recent This Way to Sustainability V conference.

He was there in the BMU Auditorium to deliver a two-hour lecture reiterating and elaborating upon the 20 premises of Endgame, starting with Premise One: “Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.”

Jensen wasn’t there to impress upon his audience how much he likes the F-word, but unfortunately that’s what some people may have taken away from his talk.

From using the word “motherfucker” in a opening comment about the intentions of God, to telling a joke about how many environmentalists it takes to change a light bulb (that included a reference to “the fuckin’ light bulb”), to his assertive announcement about an hour into his talk that, “I think the word ‘fuck’ is the most amazing word in the English language,” Jensen used language—in a lecture open to the public, of all ages—that caused some people to get up and leave.

It’s unfortunate, because Jensen is a brilliant thinker with a lot to say about the “apocalyptic” state of the world and how he’d like to see things change before it’s too late.

Full article here

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