The first time the individual can witness someone dying in a hospital bed is often one of wonder at how little is actually destroyed in the individual. In most cases, the face remains intact, and most of the body, except whatever organs out of sight have failed. For all purposes, what lies there in the bed is a whole human being, perhaps somewhat thinner and paler, but one that can be imagined walking down the street or sitting watching TV.

We live in a time when most people exist in a schizophrenic state, caught between a public reality created by social attitudes and the news-entertainment media, and a more realistic assessment of what is real based on our experiences in the physical, practical world. We're accustomed to going to war in the name of "democracy," yet realising that, when all is said and done and the money is in the bank, the war is being fought to preserve our oil supply so we can remain a first-world power. This schizophrenia makes it difficult to recognise any truth other than the obvious.

Perhaps the most shocking example of this is that there is debate, at all, over humanity's consumption of its environment. Consumption is the only appropriate word, since our land and natural resources and the ecosystems upon them are finite resources, in that when they have limited quantity - while humanity keeps steadily expanding, in population and use of space and resources. Yet this is not widely acknowledged, and debate instead centres on specific details of possible scenarios of environmental doom. The most obvious truth is ignored, in exchange for argument over tangential possibilities.

Much like the dying person in a hospital, our environment is right now, mostly whole. Over the last 200 years it has come under intense assault from humanity as our technology has increased, and with it, our numbers, rising from a few hundred million to seven billion in a handful of generations. In the last thirty years, the first observable signs of decline have been seen, and like nervous doctors, we flutter near the patient, wondering aloud what we must do.

These signals of decline are not as obvious as that which is required to convince most people of environmental decline, namely another ice age, or a planetary assault by storms, or an epidemic our science cannot begin to handle. Like most things in life, such as a shortness of breath or a dull throb in the forehead, these are subtle indicators that problems persist and will steadily get worse. Since the patient is mostly whole, and as of yet not bedridden, we can comfortably go into denial and confuse the telltale signs of imminent death with those of a stomach-ache, allergies, or constipation.

If for a moment we can become the one clear-headed doctor at the bedside, the one most likely to walk down the hall shaking her head in small, resigned motions, we can see what will transpire with clarity. One of the first warnings was melting of polar ice; another was the sudden drop in our fish supply; yet another was a burning away of the ozone layer, and an accumulation of residual pollution. Still others were so perplexingly esoteric as to pass unnoticed, such as the mutation of amphibians, the failure of butterfly populations, and the drop of most large wild animal groups to the point of being inbred.

These are not the kind of signal that demands immediate attention to our minds. They are not as simple as a house on fire, or an invading army, or a zero in the budget. Yet the signs of death are not obvious either, and culminate with the patient consumed not by sound and fury but by silence and a slow, steady, invisible decline. If our reader does not mind playing along with our theory for a moment, and supposing the environment is the patient, the question of who is dying raises itself from the mire.

We like to think of "the environment" as all of the natural stuff beyond our comfortable concrete cities, our apartment and house walls, and the rigid divisions of roads, fences, signs, railroads and waterways. It is all the unregulated, non-human order in our world, although none of it remains untouched by human influence. Thinking of "the environment" as something distant lets us distance ourselves from it, pretending we are not part of it. Think again: we depend on it for air, water, climate and uncountable food sources.

Yes, we could opt to exist entirely dependent on our energy sources, letting the steel and concrete encase the world save a few remote and abandoned desert wastelands. We could grow our genetically-modified food under lamps, and generate our oxygen from machines, just as our water. We could live entirely under the glow of fluorescent lights, and build little parks that would approximate an environment. Something in us might rebel against this, much as we leave early from the parties where conversation is too stilted from fear of offense. This is our natural drive toward reality, toward what is living and what resembles most, ourselves - not only created by our environment, but thinking like it, and when we think most deeply, appreciating it and feeling ourselves alienated when outside of it.

The environment is us, and we are the environment. Those equalities are not pure and linear, in that we are part of the environment, and in our thoughts, there is more than that which occurs in nature, but nonetheless the two are inextricable; we and our world are one. Doctor, the patient lies before you, and while this seems a healthy body that could otherwise be walking our streets or dancing to the music of our new order, the signs from within point to imminent death, unless something changes. To use a fancy word for the obvious, we call this ecocide: destruction of the lattice of ecosystems that together comprise the natural environment that is the living part of our world.

When it is gone, we cannot recreate it; reconcile yourself to life under fluorescents, eating packaged food and touching plastic. When it is gone, there is no turning back from a future of living within the machine, and being wholly dependent upon it as we once were on nature. We will commit ecocide, and replace our natural world with things that are not alive. Doctor, what can we do for the patient -- so much of us is in this frail body, this steady pace of breath, this heartbeat -- how do we reverse this decline? Something as vast as ecocide can only be stopped by resolve, and a diligent plan.

The answer is surprisingly simple, and it begins with eliminating doubt in our minds. When we realise that our current path leads to ecocide, and that it must change to avoid that outcome, we have a new purpose in life, and a reason to forget some things in order to focus on others. Every change requires sacrifice, but when this sacrifice comes for a greater good, who remembers what is lost? Ask the question: is ecocide inevitable? When you are sure that the answer is yes, you are ready to act. You will then act without doubt, without neurosis, and without fear, for you know that death waits if you do not succeed, so there is no sacrifice too great for you to make.

Right now we are divided, not only on the question of whether ecocide is incoming, but on a myriad of political issues that make us feel like we are empowered agents of change doing what is right. We feel our souls are higher than reality. This is what we must sacrifice: parts of ourselves, and our self-image, in order to look reality in the eye and make the practical changes required to avert ecocide. Of course, there are other issues, and these are important too, and will come about naturally as we change our system of thought to include nature instead of exiling it to distant mental concepts like "the environment." Our attitudes must change, and then we must take action, discarding our previous disagreements and hatreds, our antipathies and identities. When we put our hands together, nothing can stop us.

The Integralist Party embraces the concept of Corporatisation, and of individual as character: you are not what you own, or who you are in society, but who you are - what braveries you have, what truths you'd die for, what things you love and what you are wise enough to fear. In the corporate societies, we can care for our environment as part of ourselves and our heritage, an unchanging line stretching through history, specialising not in what positions or wealth we have, but in what ideals we hold most sacred. The Integralist Party´s policy allows each guild to govern themselves within a state sponsored, monitored infrastructure, and reduces our distance from our natural origins. It is not an exclusive ideal, but a natural one, and one that can embrace our previous enemies.

No man is not your brother; no woman is not your sister. Some people may detest other ethnic groups for being among them, but what they detest is their influence or presence, not who they are in most cases. Their interests coincide with ours. So do those of oppositional political groups, even the genders have a shared interest in a sane world, a non-ecocidal world. So as Integralists we have a duty to stand with those who do not want to see the slow destruction of our ecosystem. Join hands, for only in this do we have a future: all of us working together to avoid the death that now strokes our cheeks.

It is said that there are unforgivable crimes, but the question arises, who will be left to forgive us if we commit ecocide? Dependent on our machines, our futures will be entirely tied to our politics, and our battles for wealth, and as all previous orders of this sort have collapsed, we will then collapse - and have nowhere to run. Ecocide is the one crime for which there is no forgiveness, only a judgment passed in the form of a beautiful, living planet converted into a dark wasteland, and an inexorable hell for its occupants. The time to act is now. As Integralists, our belief is that our system can prevent ecocide; we welcome all who share that goal, and pledge our support to work with them. Ecocide is death; cooperation is life. There is no higher truth than this, and no greater reality.