tall grasses that dominated the prairie at one time. ‘We envision an agriculture that not only protects
irreplaceable soil, but lessens our dependence on fossil fuels and damaging synthetic chemicals.’ And it
is beginning to work. When she returned a year later during a severe drought period they were selling
the first batch of flour made from perennial wheatgrass and the Land Institute sorghum field was the
only green patch for miles around.
Klein joined actions around the BP Deep Horizon oil spill, wading knee-deep through the dirty water
trying to remove the oil, and realising that young life such as the poisoned larvae and embryos of
shrimps and oysters and fish are extremely vulnerable: 3 or 4 years from then there would be no fish:
disasters like Deep Sea Horizon are interfering with systems at the heart of the earth’s fertility cycles.
And many species are finding it harder to reproduce and harder still to protect their young from the
harsh new stresses of a changing climate. She gives examples of health problems in fracking areas etc.
And p 429 about Mossville, Louisiana, a historic African-American town, hit by pollution from a nearby
enourmous industrial plant (why was it situated right there, one may ask.) A lot of cancer and
respiratory illnesses occur.
Then Klein got pregnant after all, and took more walks along the salmon river, which appeared to be
fed by a sort of hatchery higher up the river, managed by volunteers, who also cleared the stream of
logging debris and made sure there was enough shade to protect the young fry.There are now 40% less
salmon in the pacific Nothwest, and in many other regions they have disappeared altogether.
Volunteers are doing what they can. She gave birth to a healthy son, in spite of having stood in that
dirty BP water.
Indigenous peoples say: ‘our systems are designed to promote more life’. Reading that struck Klein as
the very antithesis of extractivism, where living systems as well as discarded people looking for jobs
are seen as ‘overburden’. Now in ‘Blockadia’ these indigenous ways of seeing are spreading in a way
that has not occurred for centuries. They have created powerful new legal tools that assert the right of
ecosystems not only to exist but to ‘regenerate’. In 2010 the Pittsburh City council passed such a law,
explicitly banning all natural gas extraction and stating that nature has ‘inalienable and fundamental
rights to flourish’.