Borderland

Borderland is an Alaskan blog that has been vaguely in my consciousness and deserves more of my attention.  There's thought provoking stuff on there.   Here's an appetizer from Monday, November 15, 2010.

Derrick Jensen was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! today. I’ve been reading Jensen’s Endgame, and was interested to hear him speak. Just a taste here:
DERRICK JENSEN: You know, the Tolowa lived there for 12,500 years, which is sustainable by any realistic measurement. And they didn’t do it because they were too stupid to invent backhoes. You know, why? Why? How did they look at the world differently that allowed them to live? It wasn’t because they were primitives. It wasn’t because they were savages. What did they have? They had social strictures in place.
AMY GOODMAN: Derrick, you’ve written, “Civilization is not and can never be sustainable.”
DERRICK JENSEN: Yeah. Several years ago, I was riding around in a car with a friend of mine, George Draffan, with whom I’ve written a couple books. And I was just making conversation. I said, “So, George, if you could live at any level of technology that you want to, what would it be?” And he was not in a very good mood that day, and he said, “That’s a really stupid question, Derrick, because we can fantasize whatever we want, but the truth is there’s only one level of technology that’s sustainable. And that’s the Stone Age. And we’ll be there again some day. And the only question really is, what’s left of the world when we get there?”