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Touching the Earth Collective: April 2021

April 2021 Newsletter

Persisting on the Dark Mountain

An interview with Nick Hunt and Charlotte Du Cann, by Greg Webster

Back in the late 2000s two young writers, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, emerging from environmental activism in the UK, were troubled by the direction of travel they saw around them. As Kingsnorth said later, “The purpose of environmentalism is no longer about anything as naïve as saving the actual environment, it is now about threats to our way of life.” The green movement, in their view, had fallen prey to the siren voices of big business, with the prospect of saving our lifestyles through the new holy grail of renewable energy. Landscapes and intact ecosystems had become fodder for a new industrial revolution, rather than sacred places to protect. This narrative has since played out dramatically around the world. From the Highlands of Scotland to the Mojave Desert, ancient vistas have been sacrificed and iconic species, such as the Joshua Tree, have become acceptable collateral casualties in the rush for decarbonization.

Kingsnorth and Hine decided a cultural response was necessary. In 2009 they launched a manifesto, Uncivilisation, and the Dark Mountain Project was born. The manifesto argued that our civilization has been telling itself the wrong stories – the myth of progress, the myth of endless economic growth, the myth of human supremacy. We needed to tell ourselves stories that reflected the realities of the world around us, of environmental collapse, failing financial systems. We needed to rediscover our proper relationship within nature – to write ‘with dirt under our fingernails.’

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