Where’s Cactus Ed When We Need Him?

I owe my friend Kevin a debt of thanks. He’s the fucker that introduced me to author Edward Abbey. Ed Abbey was an American author, essayist, and environmental activist. He was also known as Cactus Ed and he wrote the seminal book titled “A Desert Solitaire.”

To learn about Catcus Ed was to know that he was one ornery son of a bitch. Yet he loved Nature and he loved protecting it. His book, “A Desert Solitaire” is the reason why I love the Southwest deserts so much and am a staunch defender of the environment.

My God! I am thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our lives — the domestic routine (same old wife every night), the stupid and useless degrading jobs, the insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the business men, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back in the capital, the foul diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and TV machines and telephone! — Ed Abbey

Nowadays we run around with our electronic gadgets that need rare earth minerals to be mined, drink from our recyclable plastic water bottles that never get recycled, and protest about Roe vs Wade and Black Lives Matter.

We’re all social justice warriors now but we’re missing the bigger picture. We can’t see the forest for the trees because we’re playing their game.

The game is rigged.

We’re rats in the maze and we’ll never find a way out. We’ll be placated with cheese, have the occasional rat sex, and sleep in a straw bed as long as we get up in the morning and run the wheel for the overlords in white coats.

All around us, the world is burning, but we have to keep profits up. We can’t help the poor or the environment because it costs too much.

We have to maximize shareholder wealth because that’s the game we’re playing, those are the rules.

I certainly never agreed to those rules, and I’m sure you didn’t either!

Those are the rules that were made up by them, not you or me. We never asked to play this game so why the hell are we?

What would Catcus Ed do? He’d take those rules and cram them up Elon Musk’s ass. Then he’d throw rocks at Jeff Bezos's house, break all the windows, and freak that guy out.

He’d cut the electricity to electronic billboards on highways. He’d shove your plastic bottles up your ass and then he’d roll around in the dirt.

He’d walk dirty and tired up the next mountain ridge and sit at the top of it, watching a hawk ride the thermals in the sky. He’d come back home and fuck your wife, making her scream in delight. He’d get rip-roaring drunk around a fire and listen to foxes yip at night.

He’d teach us to live again. How to get out of the trap we’ve fallen into. He’d tell us to burn it all down and let Nature clean everything up again, with or without us.

Cactus Ed was not without controversy, far from it. He probably would’ve fit in with the America First folks and he loved guns. He embraced a xenophobic and overtly racist version of anti-growth environmentalism.

I certainly don’t worship or deify the man, but I do like his defense of wilderness and the environment.

There’s a lot we can learn from him and his vigor in fighting for environmentalism. We can’t yield an inch. We have to embrace zero-waste initiatives. We have to fight for negative carbon growth.

We have to bicycle more, use cars less, or use public transportation more. We have cut our environmental footprint by more than half.

We have to grow our own food and have to learn to preserve it. Above all, we have to cut the population down. We have to keep getting vasectomies and use birth control. We have to stop buying so much crap AND we have to get politically progressive.

We don’t need any more social justice warriors. What we need are more environmental warriors. Why? Because pretty soon it ain't gonna matter about your rights when you’re starving and burning alive on a planet that’s dying.

I support all rights and freedoms and shit, but it’s not going to matter one bit if the ecosystem collapses.

We are in danger of collapsing because there’s no way to win the game we’ve been playing.

The jig is up.

We’re fucked.

Cactus Ed died in March of 1989, a few short months before I graduated high school and went to Engineering school.

His wish, after he died, was to be buried at some random location in the desert and his friends get rip-roaring drunk, fuck, and party over his grave. Then leave him there to rot for eternity with no one knowing where his final resting place would be.

His wish was granted.