[NoScans] What You Can Do, Now, Instead Of Reading/Arguing About "X-Men Green"

[numeronone]

Just throwing in my two cents. Do not expect to have a debate with me on this one, because you will not. As an IRL environmental activist, and feeling frustrated about recent...discourse...I just wanted to get this off my chest.

Stories like "X-Men Green" are not only bad, they are a distraction - a "Greenwash" - and worse, a very obvious gateway into Ecofascism.



If you want an in-depth definition of Ecofascism, I'd suggest looking here, but I'll summarise: Marvel's "X-Men Green" plays to the movement's playbook, pushing the idea that ordinary people are the ones "poisoning the planet" and that a violent, ends-justify-the-means strategy is needed in order to save it. The story literally ends with Krakoa, a representation of nature, tacitly endorsing Nature Girl's violent agenda...and arming her.

But then again, why be surprised? Marvel is a large corporation owned by a megacorporation, one which no real interest in environmental protection. . But a very big vested interested in making it look like they do.

(In fact, given that it's not a gigantic secret that Marvel studios benefits from military contracts - just as most big movie studios do, and just as Marvel/Timely comics was doing when they were founded - the arc of Nature Girl going from innocent teenage naif to violent fascist in a green uniform makes a lot of sense. But I digress.)

Let me tell you: no-one seriously working in environmental activism sees the world's population of human beings as "the problem"/"the virus"/etc., and none of us think it's advisable, nor justifiable, to stab snippy grocery clerks whose employers manufacture plastic bags. Eco-terrorism is not the way forward.

There's a lot of real, tangible things that can be done right now, and one of the most effective is supporting Indigenous stewardship of ancestral land. How do we know? It's already working: Indigenous resistance in 2020 stopped or delayed greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 25% of the combined output of the U.S. and Canada.

And right now - right NOW, as you read this - the Wet'suwet'en nation is staging active resistance against the Coastal GasLink project. It's yet another of several pipeline projects violating the sovereign land of the people who have lived there for centuries before colonialism. The people in whose hands the land is, unarguably, better kept.

The time to act is now. It's crucial. We can all help.

https://www.yintahaccess.com <--- Website of the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, who have closed off the road into their territory and who are raising a legal defence fund against the RCMP

http://twitter.com/Gidimten <--- Their Twitter

https://raventrust.com/campaigns/wetsuweten-2-2-2/ <--- Raven Trust's action toolkit and donation page.

Thank you for reading.

Comments

[deh_tommy]

Thank you for the links! I’ll try to see what I can do. Is this allowed here, though, given that’s only loosely connected to comics?

[icon_uk]

The Mods discussed this when we saw it posted, and this is defintiely a borderline case, but it does address issues raised by X-Men Green and it's depiction of eco-activism, which is a relevant topic.

So we are, cautiously, allowing it, but we do not expect this to become a trend.

[mastermahan]

Thank you for the constructive information!

[chalicother]

I really appreciate you doing this and giving the links.

[acyl]

The problem with tackling climate action themes in comics is that, well, these issues are complex. It's not surprising to me that fiction goes straight to emotive illustrations of environmental topics.

I work in sustainability, and if I wanna talk to regular people about... I don't know, deforestation and community land rights in Southeast Asia, I'm not gonna begin with telling you about the relevant laws and regulations, mapping, or whatever. I'm gonna talk about that volunteer for Walhi, an Indonesian NGO, who flat out got murdered by the security team from a corporate plantation near his village.

At the same time, it's not like I have a massive hateboner for every single private sector company that produces commodities, because these things are complicated. Or to put it another way, for every group of Greenpeace volunteers swarming over a vegetable oil tanker ship and hanging banners off crap, for every Greenpeace boat shooting water cannons at whalers... there's a bunch of Greenpeace researchers sitting in an office toggling layers on GIS software, or having perfectly civil conversations with government lawyers.

I attended a talk by Jane Goodall a few months before COVID, back when we could go to such things. Anyway, you know, Goodall. Prominent female environmentalist, conservationist, role model, and all that. Someone asked her what she thought about Greta Thunberg. I think the college student that asked the question was expecting Goodall to say something nice or complimentary about Thunberg. Yeah, no, that's not what happened. Goodall said she didn't approve of Thunberg. Goodall was quite critical, really - she said Thunberg's far too confrontational, that Thunberg goes way too far, and ultimately those climate protests aren't constructive.

All that being said, I unironically kind of appreciated what little I've read of X-Men Green? I think it's possible to appreciate an attempt by Marvel writers to tackle such issues, even if it's a deeply flawed take.