Industrial civilization is not just unsustainable, it is a death march. The Earth is dying, and it’s not a mystery why. The engines of destruction are visible all around us: smoking factories, slaughterhouses, pipelines, clearcuts, and corporate boardrooms where decisions are made that trade life for profit.
From a radical green anarchist perspective, the root cause of climate collapse, animal torture, and ecological annihilation is not carbon, nor population, nor even greed, it is the system itself: civilization, particularly industrial civilization. As argued in Derrick Jensen’s *Endgame* and the film *END\:CIV*, if civilization is fundamentally based on violence, hierarchy, and domination, then there is no reforming it.
It must be dismantled, completely.
The Myth of Sustainable SlaveryMainstream environmentalism is a joke. Talk of “green capitalism” or “sustainable development” is as grotesque as discussing ethical slavery or humane genocide. Civilization is built on extraction: of minerals, of fossil fuels, of labor, and of life. The idea that this system can be made compatible with a living planet is pure delusion. As Jensen asserts, the first premise of *Endgame* is that “civilization is not and can never be sustainable.” A system dependent on deforestation, fossil fuel combustion, and endless expansion will always generate ecocide. The Earth is not dying; it is being killed, and those killing it have names and addresses.
Factory Farming: Mechanized Cruelty and Ecological Collapse
One of the most grotesque manifestations of this machine is factory farming: the industrialized torture of billions of nonhuman animals annually. Pigs confined in gestation crates, chickens packed so tightly they cannot spread their wings, cows raped into forced pregnancy, this is not food production; it is mechanized atrocity. From a radical green anarchist perspective, the problem is not just cruelty, it is control. Animals are commodified, turned into units of production, stripped of autonomy, agency, and life itself.
Factory farms are not just moral abominations, they are ecological bombs. They generate massive methane emissions (more potent than CO₂), pollute rivers with animal waste, and consume vast quantities of grain and water. Rainforests are burned to make way for cattle or soy to feed them. The air, land, and water are all poisoned for profit. This is not an accident; it is built into the system. Civilization sees the land not as something sacred, but as something to be used, dominated, and discarded.
Animal Liberation = Earth Liberation
From a radical green anarchist standpoint, animal liberation and Earth liberation are the same struggle. The logic that allows a pig to be tortured in a factory is the same logic that allows a forest to be clearcut or an ocean to be strip-mined. It is the logic of domination, hierarchy, and commodification. As *END\:CIV* demonstrates, this system does not understand “enough,” “sacred,” or “alive.” It only understands “more.” This logic must be destroyed.The liberation of animals is not a side issue, it is central.
We must dismantle not just factory farms but the entire mindset that allows animals to be seen as property. This requires a spiritual and material revolt against civilization itself. No cages, no farms, no slaughterhouses, only wildness, autonomy, and co-existence.
Conclusion: Toward a Future Without Domination
We are not interested in saving civilization, we are interested in saving life. Civilization has shown, for ten thousand years, that it is incompatible with freedom, justice, and the Earth itself. From the cages of factory farms to the prisons of industrial society, it is all one system.The question is no longer whether collapse will come, it is already here. The question is: will we resist, or will we let the machine finish what it started?
Will we reclaim our place in the web of life, or will we die shackled to the myth of progress?
The only future worth fighting for is one without hierarchy, without domination, and without civilization.
Let it fall, Let the wild return.