For a revolution against the technological system

“It is useless to gossip about capitalism: it is not capitalism that creates this world, it is the machine.”

— Jacques Ellul, The Technique or the Challenge of the Century, 1954.

During my discussions about the ongoing environmental disaster, I am regularly asked what “solutions” I am proposing. In this precise use of the term “solution”, it does not mean a “set of decisions and acts that can solve a difficulty” (Le Robert), but rather a “set of decisions and actions carefully planned by scientists, technicians and governments, capable of resolving the socio-ecological crisis without taking risks and maintaining modern material comforts — Wi-Fi, Internet, smartphone, computer, car, refrigerator, microwave, washing machine, microwave, washing machine, oven, oven, oven, stove, stove, kettle, heating, air conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, electricity, hospital, hospital, high speed transport, high speed transport, high speed transport, supermarket, cinema, etc.”

You can't solve anything by keeping most of the elements that make up a problem. It takes 3,000 tons of sand to build a building the size of a hospital, 200 tons for a single-family house and 30,000 tons for a kilometer of highway.^[1]. In 2017, around 44 billion tons of sand, gravel and clay were torn from the Earth's crust, equivalent to more than four million Eiffel Towers^[2]. Replacing this sand with another material only displaces the problem and In fine, create others. Maintaining the addiction to modern comforts based on insane extractivism and submitting blindly to the authority of a bunch of incompetent people is not a solution; it is suicide. The solution is Revolution. Not to establish yet another utopian political project that will fail as miserably as the previous ones. But to abolish technological slavery, put an end to the deadly reign of the machine and restore humanity to its dignity.

The growing popularity of Theodore Kaczynski's ideas

Theodore John Kaczynski alias Unabomber, a gifted mathematician who became famous for his campaign of parcel bombs that seriously shook the United States for nearly two decades, is the author of Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How? (2016) recently translated to Éditions Libre. The main idea defended in this book is that only a complete dismantling of the tech-industrial system can stop the carnage. This article is not intended to excuse the actions of Theodore Kaczynski or to encourage people to imitate him. The interest is to present your diagnosis of the situation and your proposals to remedy the quagmire we have inherited. At no point is Theodore Kaczynski inciting violence; rather, he is proposing a highly strategic treatise that will appeal to those determined to stem the ongoing disaster.

With an IQ of 167, who entered Harvard University at the age of 16, Theodore Kaczynski is nothing crazy as we can see by reading his work and watching the series. Unabomber: His truth broadcasted by Netflix^[3] or by researching his trial^[4]. However, for those most sensitive to the demonization of the media, an eminent professor of psychology recalls that “dehumanized monsters only exist in our simplifying mind” and that “being immoral is never equivalent to an absence of morality.^[5].” In the United States, Theodore Kaczynski's ideas are attracting more and more people with a wide variety of profiles, from anarchists to environmentalists^[6] through curators and editors at Fox News^[7], as well as many teens expressing their rejection of modernity on TikTok.

“With the help of Hashtags #tedpill, #tedk and #tedkazcynski — which collectively total millions of views —, the one that gobbles the Tedpill [“Ted pill”] publishes photographs ofUnabomber in “duets” with other videos, creating a contrast between Kaczynski's opinions and the alleged excesses of influencer culture.

[...]

Swallowing the “Ted Pill” is embracing the romance of a return to a pre-industrial way of life, that of hunter-gatherers. It is to reject modernity, agriculture and civilization^[8].”

If Theodore Kaczynski's ideas span a broad political spectrum and speak to so many people in the United States (and around the world), it's worth taking a look at. People are seduced by certain ideas because they resonate with them; these ideas probably meet their current concerns, expectations, and/or needs. What is unreasonable or illogical in wishing for the collapse of a system that threatens the survival of one's own species? This attitude seems to me to be completely natural, wise and consistent. It is this same survival instinct that allowed Homo sapiens to spread across all continents and to adapt to environments with sometimes very harsh climatic conditions. Without this instinct, our species would have died out quickly and would not be able to live for 300,000 years today. To put things into perspective, the industrial civilization that emerged about two centuries ago lasted less than 0.1% of human history. In this extremely short period of time, the industrial system has inflicted immense damage on living systems, biological diversity and cultural diversity.

A problem of culture and not of human nature

Only a century ago, this world was still full of life: several million Native Americans — up to 18 million individuals according to some estimates^[9] — populated North America before the European invasion and coexisted with 30 to 60 million bison^[10] (in 1890, there were 750 bison left^[11]); in the 19th century, still in North America, gigantic clouds of passenger pies “obscured the sky almost as far as the eye could see” and, by landing, could “break the branches of trees and sometimes overturn them” (the descendants of Europeans exterminated the species in a few decades until its extinction, probably at the beginning of the 20th century).^[12]); in Africa, where the human population was around 140 million in 1820^[13], at the same time, more than 20 million elephants were roaming savannas and forests (a few hundred thousand remain today)^[14]); according to the WWF, “only 150 years ago, African savannas were full of rhinos and other wildlife^[15] ”; more than 85% of wetlands have disappeared since the 18th century, the famous “Enlightenment”, and more than 75% of major rivers have seen their course modified by infrastructures^[16] ; coral has declined by half in less than 200 years^[17] ; seagrass beds declined by 10% per decade during the 20th century^[18] ; the biomass of large predatory fish has been reduced by nearly 70% in a century^[19] ; livestock represents 59% of the total biomass of terrestrial vertebrates, humans 36% and wild vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians) only 5%^[20] ; a million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction in the coming decades, “something that has never happened before in human history^[21] ”.

While many human cultures have coexisted with animal and plant species since ancient times, if today 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity is found on land “owned, occupied or used”^[22] ” by indigenous peoples, the problem is not to be found in human nature, but in the different types of societies that humans establish. Moreover, cultural diversity is disappearing along with biological diversity, and 90% of languages will have died out by the end of this century.^[23]. Since the first city-states and their agriculture, civilizations have systematically ravaged forests, resulting in halving the plant biomass on Earth and reducing its diversity by more than 20% in 11,000 years^[24].

“From Judea to Tunis, to Morocco, and on the other hand from Athens to Genova, all these bald peaks that look up at the Mediterranean from above have lost their crown of culture, of forests. And will she come back? Never. If the ancient gods, the active and strong races under whom these shores flourished, emerged from the tomb today, they would say: “Sad peoples of the Book, of grammar and words, of vain subtleties, of vain subtleties, what have you done with Nature^[25] ?” ”

— Jules Michelet, The Bible of Humanity, 1864.

Non-state peoples are fully capable of damaging their environment (and sometimes do), but that is out of all proportion to the barren deserts left in their wake by ancient civilizations. The first industrial revolution and the power of motorized machines enormously amplified the harmful power of civilization. Moreover, coal mining probably saved Western civilization from collapse due to the scarcity in the 15th and 16th centuries of the main fuel that supplied cities and industries: wood^[26].

We know the rest of it.

Controlling the development of a society is impossible

To return to Theodore Kaczynski, he states in the introduction:

“All of this work — the part published here as well as what currently only exists in draft form — goes well beyond my previous work, Industrial society and its future and Technological Slavery, and pretty much represents the end result of a lifetime of thinking and reading — intensified over the past thirty-five years.”

We want to believe it given the impressive number of references cited during the text. The book is divided into four chapters, and I will focus on the first chapter here.

Based on numerous historical examples, Kaczynski supports the idea that it is impossible to rationally control the evolution of a society.

“In specific contexts where empirical data abound, it is possible to make fairly reliable short-term predictions and to monitor the behavior of a society relatively effectively. Economists, for example, know how to predict the immediate consequences of rising or falling interest rates on modern industrial society. In this way they manage to manipulate variables such as inflation and unemployment levels. Indirect consequences are more difficult to anticipate, and forecasting the effects of complex financial maneuvers is more like speculation. This is why the economic policies of the United States government are subject to controversy: no one is ever certain of their real consequences.

Outside of these contexts where empirical evidence abounds, or where longer-term effects are at play, verified predictions — and thus the successful management of a society's development — are much rarer. In reality, failure is the norm.

[...]

Very simple reasons may explain the obvious inability of humans to control the development of their societies. In order to achieve such a performance, one would have to be able to predict the slightest reaction of society to any action that might be taken; however, such forecasts have generally proved to be very unreliable. Since human societies are complex systems — and especially technologically advanced societies — the prediction of their reactions does not in fact depend on the state of their knowledge or their level of technological development.”

This inability to control the development of a society increases with complexity. This explains, among other things, why complex societies — civilizations — have a ridiculous average life expectancy of 336 years.^[27] compared to countless other cultures that have been maintained for several millennia (Bayaka, San, Hadza, Maasai, Australian Aboriginals, etc.). But that does not mean that multi-millennial non-state societies control their development. The more complex a society becomes — a rapidly growing population, the emergence of cities and the state, the emergence of cities and the state, the development of bureaucracy, modern technologies, a market system replacing traditional systems for the distribution of resources — the more the risk of collapse increases. However, technical progress could come to the rescue of the lost Leviathan.

“Studies on urban development conducted by Luis Bettencourt of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico support this thesis [of diminishing returns from innovation]. The work of his research team suggests that an ever higher rate of innovation is needed to maintain the growth of cities and prevent stagnation or collapse, and in the long term this cannot be sustainable.^[28].”

The phenomenal power of artificial intelligence—especially with the development of artificial general intelligence (GAI) or strong AI—could considerably increase this rate of innovation, and logically delay the collapse of industrial civilization. Such a scenario cannot be ruled out, especially as global AI specialists such as Jürgen Schmidhuber or Ilya Sutskever seem very confident in the advent of “this new form of life that will make us obsolete.^[29].” But according to Kaczynski, there is no point in coming to this, it would be enough for AI to surpass humans only in certain specific technical areas for the work of the muscles and the brain to be rendered definitively useless for maintaining and expanding the technological system. What will happen to humans in this scenario? Nobody knows that.

Kaczynski then quotes a passage from an op-ed published in 2000 in the magazine Wired by Bill Joy, co-founder and former chief scientific officer of the computer firm Sun Microsystems, who is worried about the potentially cataclysmic consequences of developing extraordinarily powerful technologies, in particular nanotechnology.

“Unintended consequences [are] a well-known problem when it comes to the design and use of technology [...]. The cause of many [unexpected repercussions] seems clear: the systems involved are complex, they involve interaction and feedback between numerous parties. Thus, any change made to such a system will cascade in a way that is difficult to predict; even more so when human actions are taken into account.”

Later in the same article, he wrote:

“Obtaining the great power of nanotechnology is a Faustian bargain that puts us at great risk — that of destroying the biosphere that supports life.^[30].”

He is far from being the only one to share this observation^[31].

With the increase in inequality, unemployment, poverty, and the resulting anger, tensions are reaching new heights in industrial society. Instability is growing, and in response people are turning to authoritarian leaders who claim to have the ability to restore order, prosperity, and honor. What was true in the 20th century is just as true in the 21st. But the power of the great ancient emperors, of absolute monarchs from the 15th century and of the dictators of the 20th century fantasized in the collective imagination is in reality much more limited than we think.

“The revolutionary dictators of the 20th century, such as Hitler and Stalin, were arguably more powerful than the classical “absolute” monarchs, since the revolutionary nature of their regimes eliminated many of the traditional social structures — formal or informal — and of the customary constraints limiting the “legitimate” exercise of power by monarchs. But even the power of revolutionary dictators, in practice, was far from absolute.”

Under Stalin, the Soviet Union “was unable to regulate its own workforce,” for example to prevent the untimely movement of workers who changed jobs at a high rate. The “Great Terror”^[32] ” of the years 1937 and 1938, which, with one and a half million people arrested and 750,000 of them executed, was “the largest state massacre ever carried out in Europe in peacetime”, was by no means a process perfectly planned and masterfully orchestrated by Stalin. He was certainly the instigator, but “it was a process precipitously triggered by a frightened dictator, who quickly lost control of it.” Proof of the inconsistency of the Terror, it led to the elimination of “almost all trained and experienced officers from the upper ranks of the Soviet Army and Navy.” Weakened by Terror, the Soviet military apparatus was unable to withstand the onslaught of German forces. in 1941.

Kaczynski makes a similar analysis for the Nazi regime. During the 1930s, opposing the war effort and rearmament, the German working class prevented the reduction in the production of consumer goods required by the regime (the manufacture of everyday products hampered the production of weapons). In 1936, in the Münster region, popular resistance forced “the Nazis to put back in place the crucifixes they had removed from school buildings.” Moreover, many Wehrmacht generals probably felt that Hitler's crazy plans would bring Germany to ruin, and some of them went so far as to attempt to assassinate him, in particular by organizing a spectacular attack on July 20, 1944. Again and again, between 1938 and 1944, attempts were made to assassinate the Fuhrer. The latter would have had an “insolent chance” allowing him to be “always saved at the last moment by some fortuitous circumstance.”

On the inability of civilizations to control their development, Kaczynski reports the words of an influential German writer and sociologist in the 20th century, Norbert Elias. The latter wrote that:

““The current course of [...] historic change understood as a whole is not wanted or planned by anyone.” But also that: “Civilization [...] walks blindly and keeps moving through the autonomous dynamic of a network of connections [...].””

Further:

“[C] o how the interplay of innumerable individual ambitions and interests — whether converging or opposing — can give rise to a phenomenon that no one has explicitly wanted or programmed, but which nevertheless derives from the ambitions and actions of a large number of individuals [...].”

Considered one of the greatest historians of the 20th century, Fernand Braudel made a similar observation.

“Civilizations are collective mentalities

[...]

In each era, a certain representation of the world and things, a dominant collective mentality animates, penetrates the entire mass of society. This mentality, which dictates attitudes, guides choices, entrenches prejudices, and inclines the movements of a society, is eminently a fact of civilization. Much more than accidents or the historical and social circumstances of an era, it is the fruit of distant legacies, beliefs, fears, ancient worries that are often almost unconscious, in fact the fruit of an immense contamination whose germs are lost in the past and transmitted through generations and generations of men. The reactions of a society to the events of the hour, to the pressures they exert on it, to the decisions they require of it obey less logic, or even selfish interest, than to this informal command, which can often be informalized and which springs from the collective unconscious.

These fundamental values, these psychological structures are definitely what civilizations Have less communicable one from the other, which is what best isolates and distinguishes them. And these mentalities are also not very sensitive to the effects of time. They vary slowly, only transform after long incubations, which are also not very conscious.^[33].”

In his text, Kaczynski mentions several political leaders and bureaucrats (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Henry Kissinger, etc.) who themselves admitted that they did not have the power they are usually given. Henry Kissinger, a very influential American consultant and diplomat in the 20th century, said:

“The story is a story of efforts that failed, of aspirations that were not fulfilled, of wishes that were fulfilled, but that resulted in results that were different from those expected.”

For his part, Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt's successor to the presidency of the United States in 1945, said:

“The President may have great powers granted to him by the Constitution, or under certain laws passed by the United States Congress; but the President's main power is to summon people, and to try to convince them to do what they should normally do without having to be persuaded. That's what I spend most of my time doing. That's what the president's powers come down to.”

Even those who govern seem to be fully aware of their powerlessness in giving precise and desired direction to the evolution of society. So why do politicians covet the throne if the inability of a government to control the development of a society is a consensus among elites? What legitimacy can we still give to a government in this case? This should seriously question us about the true role of the state and international institutions. What are their real goals? Is their power used to ensure the safety and improve the well-being of the people in the long term? Do they really have the means to achieve this goal? Isn't the effective range of this power limited to defending the short-term interests of the elites at the top of the hierarchy?

“It's important to understand that many of the reductions in inequality during the 20th century were caused either by wars or by political reactions to wars that were fought in a bit of an emergency. Reducing inequalities is not a quiet consequence of the parliamentary democratic process.^[34].”

— Thomas Piketty, French economist.

Historian Walter Scheidel agrees with Piketty.^[35].

Later in the first chapter, Kaczynski lashes out at techies who believe that technical power and the possibility of control (to improve society) follow the same upward curve. However, their discourse is not based on any serious factual demonstration, but on a simple belief — technology would be intrinsically good (for the most bewildered among them), like Kevin Kelly, the founder of the magazine. Wired); or the technology would be neutral (for most others). During his work to anatomize industrial society, the sociologist and historian Jacques Ellul demonstrated that technology was not neutral.^[36].

Kaczynski continues:

“Until now (2013), people who we would have hoped for better continue to ignore the fact that the development of societies can never be controlled rationally. So we often see techies declaring things as absurd as: “Humanity controls its own destiny”; “[we are going to] take charge of our own evolution”; or even, “people [are going to] take over the evolutionary process.” Technophiles want to “guide research so that new technologies improve society”; they have created a “Singularity University” and a “Singularity Institute” that are supposed to “determine advances and help society deal with the ramifications of technological progress, and to “ensure [...] that artificial intelligence [...] remains favorable” to humans.

Of course, techies will not be able to “determine the advances” of technical progress or to ensure that they “improve society” and remain favorable to humans. In the longer term, technological improvements will be “determined” by unpredictable and uncontrollable struggles between rival groups, who will develop and use technology for the sole purpose of maximizing their advantages at the expense of their competitors.”

The cult of technology leads irretrievably to the production of biased judgments on these issues. Jacques Ellul wrote that “man cannot live without the sacred”, which is why “he transfers his sense of the sacred to the very thing that destroyed everything that was its object: on the technique^[37].”

In the second chapter, Kaczynski further develops his theory providing a convincing explanation for the impossibility of rationally controlling the development of a society. The “rival groups” they refer to as “self-propagating systems” are “nations, businesses, businesses, unions, churches, and political parties, as well as groups that lack clear boundaries and formal organization (schools of thought, social networks, subcultures).” These “self-propagating systems” struggle among themselves to continuously increase their power and size, which is a guarantee of short-term survival. This is the reason why self-propagating systems cannot worry about their long-term survival and thus plunge into a suicidal spiral, dragging all of humanity into the abyss.

“The world's major self-propagating human systems are exploiting every opportunity, using every resource, and invading every place where they can find anything that assists them in their relentless pursuit of power. As highly technological development progresses, more and more resources, which once seemed useless, are ultimately useful, and more and more places are invaded, and more and more destructive consequences ensue.

[...] if the development of the technological world-system continues unhindered to its logical conclusion, in all probability, Earth will only be left with a desolate pebble — a planet without life, with the exception, perhaps, of some of the simplest organisms — some bacteria, algae, etc. — capable of surviving in these extreme conditions.”

Many still don't understand the seriousness of the situation — or don't give a shit about it, for a variety of reasons. Some dismiss the possibility of humanity's suicide by technology out of the blue by considering it too extreme, radical, even comical. Recently, by talking about the consequences of climate change and the coming global “apocalypse”, the 27-year-old journalist Salomé Saqué was ridiculed by several middle-aged editorialists who left in a fit of laughter on the set of the show. 28 minutes D'Arte^[38]. Journalists are joking because in reality the apocalypse is already here, it is called industrial civilization, and they are among the first beneficiaries of it on Earth. The only thing that can be criticized in Salomé Saqué's intervention is that she does not seem to realize, like many others, that the industrial revolution is the trigger for the vertiginous intensification of climate change. Accelerating climate change is a symptom, not the root of the problem. As fossil energy created the techno-industrial system, it is so vital for him that he will never be able to do without it. Recall that according to the Australian physicist Derek Abbott, at least 15,000 nuclear power plants should be built in addition to the 445^[39] already in service to obtain an industrial civilization operating on 100% nuclear electricity^[40]. This is unlikely to happen before the climate crisis escalates (and so much the better). For its part, the renewable industry will continue to develop, which makes Ilya Sutskever, scientific director of the OpenAI research laboratory founded by Elon Musk, say this:

“It is very likely that the Earth's surface will one day be covered by solar panels and datacenters^[41].”

Nice perspective, isn't it?

But Kaczynski is not only critical of technolaters, he highlights the credulity of some renowned technocritical thinkers, including Ivan Illich.

“Several decades ago, during a particularly confusing excursion into the realm of the imaginary, the famous critic of technological society Ivan Illich wrote: “I think it is necessary to reverse radically industrial institutions, rebuilding society from top to bottom.” He argued that we should seize “the opportunity to build a friendly society, in continuous transformation within a material framework defined by rational and political proscriptions.” That it was “not only necessary, but possible to establish a friendly society, provided that one consciously used a regulated procedure” — as if one could rationally “rebuild”, “build” or “establish” a society.”

The aim here is not to throw Illich's critical work on industrial society into the trash, but rather to highlight the utopian ideas of many intellectuals and scientists when proposing realistic solutions to the problems of their time.

For all these reasons, and to avoid irreversible damage to the biosphere with disastrous consequences for the human race, Kaczynski argues that there is no other realistic way out than to deconstruct the techno-industrial system. Achieving this goal must necessarily involve a revolution against technology. He then explains in more detail in the third and fourth chapters “how to transform a society”, the “mistakes to avoid” as well as the “strategic directions for an anti-technology movement”. These topics will not be covered here.

Theodore Kaczynski's proposal may seem too extreme or radical at first, but keep in mind that we are probably facing the biggest challenge in history. The situation is in many ways similar to the Occupation period during the Second World War; the tyranny of the machines replaced that of the Nazis. Technological slavery is the legacy of the scientific and technical revolutions of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment that desacralized nature (human included) and sacred technical progress. The resulting technological system is a blind, colonizing, and genocidal force. In this case, we are talking about the possible extinction of the human species and of all the complex forms of life on Earth. While we procrastinate in considering all the issues at our disposal by invoking dogmatic beliefs, the technological system is inflicting ever more damage on the biosphere. The greater this damage, the fewer living beings — humans included — the Earth will be able to support once the technological system collapses. Refusing efficiency by invoking extravagant philosophical or moral rationalizations is not a dignified and responsible attitude in the face of the gravity of the situation.

The mining industry is doing a lobbying intensive to go and mine the Pacific ocean floor in search of metals essential for disruptive technologies and so-called “green” technologies. This is yet another aberration, as marine sediments play an essential role in regulating carbon and oxygen cycles.^[42]. The NBIC convergence (Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Computing and Cognitive Sciences), a “transhumanist” society project aimed at improving the performance of human beings and nature, is being imposed in the United States, Europe, Japan or China by governments, international institutions and China by governments, international institutions and transnational firms without any democratic consultation^[43]. Scientists are hard at work looking for ways to produce alternative fuels from industrial plantations of various plant species.^[44]. Entrepreneurs and scientists want to use geoengineering to domesticate the climate, without any consideration for the chain reactions that such an intervention could cause. In addition, carbon capture and storage techniques known as “negative emissions” are presented as a softened version of climate engineering.^[45]. But how could the application of the same deadly technical logic — replacing living systems deemed inefficient by artificial systems to meet the growing needs of technological civilization — that has trapped us in an industrial impasse for two centuries — prove effective in freeing us from it?

When you think about it, stopping and dismantling the technological system is a relatively simple undertaking from a technical point of view. It's infinitely less complex than sending humans to the Moon and sending robots to Mars; it's also nothing like designing a nuclear power plant, a cell phone, a computer, or even a car. What is lacking is the will, the desire to resist and to fight for a just and noble cause. What could be more stimulating, at this time when the techno-industrial system condemns us to Bullshit Jobs each more degrading than the other, than to embrace the revolutionary ideal of a world free from the embrace of machines?

Ernesto Che Guevara, who used the right method—the revolution—in the service of the wrong objective—establishing socialism in Cuba—wrote:

“The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to imagine a genuine revolutionary without this quality.^[46].”

Do you like life? Do you love this world, its forests and oceans, its lakes and rivers, its meadows and its mountains? Do you like their people? If you answer in the positive, then you should read Anti-Tech Revolution, because the technological system will destroy everything. I leave the last word to Theodore Kaczynski with other quotations from his book.

“Anyone who thinks that the technological system will one day stop consuming fossil fuels is daydreaming. Whether or not the system gives up such resources, other destructive energies will be used. Nuclear power plants generate radioactive waste; no healthy solution to dispose of it has yet been discovered, and the dominant self-propagating systems do not even attempt to find a permanent storage place for this accumulating waste.

As noted, natural selection favors self-propagating systems that prioritize immediate power, regardless of long-term consequences. Nuclear power plants therefore continue to be built, while waste management remains a neglected problem. In reality, this waste issue is becoming completely unmanageable because, in addition to the few large old-fashioned reactors, a number of small reactors will soon be built so that each small town has its own power plant. The large reactors at least ensured the concentration of radioactive waste on a few sites, while the new mini-power plants will scatter it absolutely everywhere. You have to be extremely naive to believe that each small town will treat its own waste in a responsible manner. In practice, most radioactive material will escape into nature.

So-called “green” energies will not wean the system from its dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. And even if they succeed, these energy sources are, on examination, nothing very green.”

“Those of us who consider the technological system to be an evil are often tempted to address the secondary ills associated with it. [...] We must know how to resist this temptation. [...] An attempt to eliminate capitalism, globalization, centralization, or any other secondary evil can only distract from the need to eliminate the entire technological system.”

“You have to make a decision: does the elimination of the technological system justify all the desperate risks and terrifying disasters that it potentially involves? If you don't have the guts to answer “yes” to this question, then you should stop complaining about the ills and difficulties of the modern world, and simply adapt to them as best you can, because only the collapse of the system could put an end to the inexorable ongoing disaster.”