There are key similarities between what has been called "radical environmentalism" — which includes , , , , and — and what we term "revolutionary env… - Steven Best

In a global setting, contextualism asks this question: How can we best defend all life and the entire planet from the massive and unrelenting assault of global capitalism, centralized political rule, militarism, and the metastasizing growth of the human empire colonizing the earth and monopolizing its resources? Questions concerning the legitimacy and efficacy of physical force cannot be answered in the abstract, but only in specific contexts. Whereas partisans on both sides want to read the history of moral progress as driven exclusively by nonviolence or violence, the fact is that social change unfolds through the entire arsenal of pressure tactics, which include strikes, protests, demonstrations, boycotts, sabotage, liberation, education, legislation or even armed struggle.

There is a tremendous irony, hypocrisy, and disabling contradiction at the heart of movement, for, with regards to oppressed nonhuman animals, social justice activists are exclusive, not inclusive; homogenous, not pluralistic; and discriminatory, not "progressive," or "enlightened" in any deep or consistent way. The climate justice movement represents only one animal species – Homo sapiens -- to the systematic exclusion of millions of others, known and unknown. The overwhelming majority of living species on this planet are gravely affected by capitalist domination, expansionism, climate change, and human exploitation generally -- including “radicals” and “progressives” who believe the proper place for many animals is on their dinner plate or a fast-food menu. Not surprisingly, moreover, in social justice writings generally one finds little mention of the rapid acceleration of a , this one caused by humans, not natural forces. This mass extinction event, along with runaway climate change, defines a rupture in Earth and human history. It is a fundamental defining aspect of the Anthropocene epoch, a key cause of system ecological breakdown today, and fundamental to the "existential crisis" threatening all humanity.

Without understanding the co-evolution of human and other animals, and the systemic psychological, social, and ecological crises brought about by speciesism, animal domestication, the rise of agricultural society, and the "Might is Right" psychosis of civilization, we cannot formulate a viable theory of history, hierarchy and power, or of social organization and change. Without the animal standpoint, we cannot adequately understand human conflict, the dynamics of warfare, the pathology of violence and genocide, the alienation of humans from one another and the natural world, and the dynamics driving the current ecological crisis, such as stem principally from corporate agriculture and the global livestock industry. And if we cannot understand the key causes of our current crisis, then we surely cannot solve them, nor forge a better culture, humanity, and future for ourselves and all life forms on this planet.