BODIES ON THE LINE: Bleed for what matters

Bleed for what matters

To survive, we must tear ourselves free from the system devouring the Earth. Radical commitment to degrowth, self-reliance, and community-building demands more than words—it requires our blood, our bodies, and the willingness to sacrifice everything to survive. Others have been paying this price for centuries.

Photo: Natalia Mroz, UNEA3

A Protest

The air hung heavy, thick with dampness, in the quadrangle of the UN buildings in Nairobi. Each step a press through wet heat, the oppressive weight of the tropical air pushing against my skin. Around me, the lush, vivid greenery a rebellious contrast to the grey, block-work sharpness of the place we had gathered. The world’s contradictions were laid bare in that space, nature vibrating with life in the shadow of a system that was suffocating it.

We had started early, and I was already weary of the negotiation pace, but today held a glimmer of something that stirred my soul. As I walked down the brutalist steps, holding out my hand to receive the black tape that would seal my mouth shut, I knew this wasn’t just a stunt. This was an offering.

A handful of us stood there—no more than thirty people—faces grim, silenced by choice. In front of us stood Professor John Knox, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. This was the first visible protest of the meeting. Secretly planned and meant to communicate louder than the speeches being delivered mere meters away. We were here to bear witness and to voice the names that nobody in power dared to utter.

Rules were being broken, so cameras flashed and journalists scrambled. And then we began—as Professor Knox spokes the names with solemn force, each of us, one by one, cried out in anguish and reverence. These were not just names on a piece of paper. They were women—mothers, sisters, daughters—land defenders murdered in the last twelve months. Bodies torn apart protecting places we are lulled to ignore. Places that multinational corporations trample over, tear down, and lay waste to in the name of profit and consumerism. These women died for the Earth’s pulse, for the waters that run in ancient rivers, for the roots that bind the soil together.

The cries ticked off and tears streamed down my face. When my turn came, my throat closed tight, and my voice broke into a hoarse, strangled call: ‘solidarity’. I had never met the woman I honoured. But I knew her sacrifice was real and the emotion if the moment was overwhelming.

On that day, we were all safe. Sure, we risked our reputations, or perhaps being expelled from the meeting. Some risked imprisonment if their government disapproved. But none of us would be killed for speaking out. None of us would face the violence those we were honouring had endured. Our protest was a gesture—no more. Yet, that day has never left me.

A Reality

A few weeks ago, I was jolted from my lane by something

Geoffrey Deihl

(Sane Thoughts for Insane Times) wrote. He asked his readers, point-blank, if we were prepared to put our bodies on the line. His question lit a flame—so simple, so honestly brutal. Out poured an essay I’ve long wanted to write but, until now, I hadn't felt I had the audience who could stomach it.

Brace yourself. This one is fierce and uncomfortable, and reflects as much on my own world as it does on the world of you, my reader.

We’ve trashed this exquisite, beautiful, precious jewel in our solar system. In some areas beyond repair. Our collective actions are beyond redemption. Each month we hear it’s the hottest ever, and each month we witness the slideshow of death and destruction from wildfires, floods, landslides, heatwaves, cyclones—from climate’s wrath at our hubris. Nature teeters on the edge of collapse, buckling under the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

In 2023, the richest one percent of humanity had siphoned off 47.5 percent of all the world's wealth. That one percent are the roughly 69.4 million adults worldwide who have a net worth of more than one million US dollars, combined with the 2,781 billionaires. To be crystal clear, it’s not just the few thousand billionaires absorbing the world’s riches. Its also the 69.4 million millionaires. The counterpoint: nearly half the world—3.5 billion people—survive on less than $6.85 a day. Around 700 million scrape by in extreme poverty, living on just $2.15. Meanwhile, the global population hurtles towards 9.7 billion by 2050, even as the resources to sustain it evaporate away.

On top of the historical resource feast of beef, palm oil, minerals, trees and anything else we deem we need, the bright, shiny tech-utopia is churning through carbon emissions with unquenchable thirst. The green-utopia, spruiked by the climate moderates, is extracting at the same pace, and with as much callous indifference as its colonial predecessors.

After decades of half-truths, delusion, and outright lies from those in positions of power—and often from their advisors as well—we now find ourselves facing severe risks of disastrous [climate change] outcomes. Whether we align with the more conservative forecasts of the IPCC or the more challenging warnings of Jim Hansen, the policy implications are strikingly similar. We are rapidly blasting through the 1.5°C commitment, and even staying “well below 2°C” now demands global emission cuts of around 7% annually, starting this year—a rate nearly 2 percentage points higher than we saw during the most stringent COVID lockdowns, and that was for just one year (Kevin Anderson, Has Global Warming Accelerated – a short response to Hansen et al, 13 February 2025)

It's the same ruthless system, just wearing new clothes. Nothing has changed. Both are aimed squarely to feed consumption in the wealthy west.

And still, we, in this affluent half of the world, casually sip our coffee, browse our apps, and play at being outraged about the latest political insults thrown at our society.

We are right to burn with fury at the excesses of the billionaires. We are right to fear the dramatic collapse of the world order (not that it wasn't without significant problems) and the functioning of our societies (those are broken, too). We are right to fear the sickening lurch into a less humane, authoritarian political future. The violence directed at the biosphere of Earth by the uber-rich and -powerful is truly heinous. But let’s face it—are we, the also wealthy, privileged middle class of the western world, fully absolved of blame?

Since the abrupt changes to the US political system, it’s become fashionable to point at the exclusive responsibility at the new feudalists seizing power. I’ll admit, I’ve done exactly that in recent posts. And, I stand by the charge that their gross appetites are crimes against Earth and humanity. But, truthfully, are we doing enough ourselves, or does casting them as a scapegoat salve our conscience? Let’s be honest for a moment. While the profits collect at the top, most of the rapacious consumption is actually ours. Nature weeps and land defenders bleed. Their sacrifices prop up the very comforts we consume while, impotent by choice, we rage against chaos on our phones. Are we prepared to truly face the blood that is spilled, every day, to maintain the lifestyle we carelessly enjoy?

In the past 10 years, over 2,000 land defenders have been murdered—silenced by the greed of corporations, governments, and the forces that prop up this system to ensure the stead stream of resources to be consumed by the unthinking hoards. This is not random violence. It’s not incidental. It’s deliberate and tied directly to the neo-colonial plunder—for mining, industrial agriculture, biofuels—to feed and fuel and cajole us, the wealthy west. The most valuable land on the planet is the land that Indigenous People have fought to protect for centuries. And when the extraction industries come for it, they come with annihilation—military-grade intimidation and the threat of death to nature and the brave humans who fight for its protection. This has been going on for centuries. Our softer, nicer, safer, cleaner, healthier lifestyle has been built on the bones and blood of land defenders and the nature they have loved more than life itself.

A Radical Commitment

So, here we are. You and I. If you have the privilege and good fortune to live in the wealthier half of the world—downloading yoga apps, while drinking dirty chai with your vegan burger and avocado salad—you are every bit a part of the problem as the corporate overlords. And so am I.

This world will not change with small gestures, tokenistic protests, or temporary shopping bans. It won’t change with polite, incremental reforms. The only way out of this mess is radical, all-in commitment to the only cause that matters now: survival through degrowth.

The system we’ve built—the one that feeds us, clothes us, powers our devices—is a death machine. But, degrowth is its counter point—deliberately pulling back on production and consumption to restore ecological balance, strengthen communities, and reclaim self-sufficiency from the grip of endless economic expansion. Degrowth doesn’t see political colour. It doesn’t lean left or right. It’s simply another path.

But, it’s now a path with a high cost. The hour is too late for niceties. Unless we are willing to tear ourselves free, willing to rip the brakes off the global economic monster that’s chewing up the planet, we will burn alongside it. Our increasingly corrupt governments and the obscenely wealthy will fight to keep their grip. There will be no gentle transition; it’s a reckoning, and we must be ready to bleed for it.

To genuinely embrace degrowth is to abandon convenience and sever every thread tying you to the system, knowing the cost will be high. It means refusing to participate in consumer capitalism—to stop buying anything unnecessary, repair what breaks, scavenge from waste, and barter with those around you. It means bleeding for self-reliance—your knuckles split, hands torn, feet blistered doing real work in the real world. It means withdrawing from the digital panopticon—ditching the smartphone, scrubbing your online presence, refusing to be tracked, catalogued, and sold as data. It means cutting off corporate food chains—boycotting supermarkets, sourcing directly from farmers, resurrecting lost food networks. It means yanking your wealth from the banks funding ecocide—holding it in land, tools, barterable goods, and then sharing those resources. It means recognising that the financial system is a con designed to keep you docile while the world is stripped bare, and then choosing to step outside of it. And it means taking direct action—not performative protests, not online petitions, but dismantling the machinery that grinds the world to dust, knowing that sometimes, the cost of resistance is blood. And all of this forever. Not just a day or week, to make pointless gesture.

And cutting ties isn’t enough—you also have to build. It means learning forgotten skills: blacksmithing, metal working, foraging, growing, hunting, water purification, herbal medicine—practical knowledge that keeps you alive without the crutch of industry. And these skills will mark you—burns from the forge, thorn-pricked fingers from harvesting food, calloused hands from wielding tools. It means establishing food independence: tearing up your lawn, reclaiming abandoned land, guerrilla gardening in dead spaces, planting perennials that will outlast the chaos. You will bleed in the soil, as all things do—scraped knees from turning the earth, sun-split lips from days spent under a punishing sky. It means breaking energy dependence—building rocket stoves, digging root cellars, slashing the use of fossil fuel machinery, collecting rainwater, and harnessing power however you can, knowing that every callus, every bruise, every aching muscle is proof that you are no longer helpless.

And most critically, it means rebuilding the village—creating a network of interdependence outside the system, where survival is a collective effort. You will bleed for others, and they will bleed for you. It's about forging deep, unshakeable ties with those physically around you, trading skills, resources, protection. It’s about reviving the old ways of mutual aid—barn-raising, water-sharing, defending land and people as one. A village built this way is bound not by contracts or ideologies but by shared struggle—by skin in the game, by blood on the land, by the knowledge that none of us survives alone.

Degrowth isn’t just about consuming less; it’s about building something stronger in the ashes of a dying system, reclaiming land, water, and power from those who have hoarded it, and standing together no matter what it costs.

It’s tough. And it’s frightening. But its real.

So, now my story returns to where we began—to the protest in Nairobi.

On that day, ten years ago, the tape ripped from my mouth, the names all read, the tears now shed, our group stood in silence. Everyone in our protest and the crowd around was utterly still as we stared at the building where the politicians continued their posturing.

Thinking. Feeling. Keening inside.

Then, from the quiet, we heard the Earth. It whispered solidarity in the trill of birds and in the hum of insects. A calling carried by a gentle cooling breeze. Its voice was the most beautiful tribute of all, for the women who had lost their lives fighting for this place—Gaia, Tellus, Terra—that is more precious than life itself.

And, for us and the future we must face.

It’s time to bleed.

Solidarity and soil

---

I walked away from the algorithm’s chokehold to work where it counts: hands in soil, words on the page, shoulder to shoulder with those adapting to climate collapse. This means fire-and-flood writing—scorched, storm-beaten, and stubborn. If this piece moved you, pass it on like a sandbag in rising water. I rely on readers to carry this work to those still trapped in the algorithm’s distortion field.

There’ll be no paywalls, ever—climate collapse is brutal enough. But, if you’ve got coin to spare, become a paid subscriber. Every dime fuels the Resilient Roots Grower Collective, where we’re seeding hard-won knowledge and trial-by-fire systems—because the storm isn’t coming, it’s already here.