We at Greeniacs love the natural world. We work everyday to uphold our environmental values and protect Mother Earth. We are outraged when the environment suffers because of corporate irresponsibility, as is currently the case with BP’s oil spill crisis in the Gulf. Still, there is a line between passion for the environment and zealotry that we don’t cross. Those who do cross this line, and commit violent acts in the name of the environment, are called eco-terrorists. The FBI defines eco-terrorism as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally-oriented, sub-national group for environmental-political reasons.”1 Car bombs, letter bombs, beatings, and arson—the last 30 years have experienced plenty of violence in the name of the environment. Here is a concise history of eco-terrorism…
The eco-terrorist believes that acts detrimental to the natural world—logging, property development, coal mining, GMO crops, to name a few—demand a radical response. At various times, this response has included arson, property destruction, bombings, and tree spiking, which is the act of putting metal rods in trees to damage logging equipment and a federal offense under United States law. Together, these acts of sabotage are termed “ecotage” or “monkeywrenching,” a reference to Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which follows four characters and their plot to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. For more on this book, check out this GreeniacArticle.
In addition to originating the term “monkeywrenching,” The Monkey Wrench Gang was the inspiration for the radical environmental group Earth First; Abbey himself was present at many of Earth First’s early meetings. Later, Dave Foreman’s 1985 Ecodefense: a Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, became influential in the eco-terrorism movement. The first Earth First meetings were held in 1979. Through the 80’s, Earth First mostly just continued the civil disobedience of the 60’s and 70’s, with a 1985 tree sitting campaign (staying in a tree to prevent it from being cut down by loggers) in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest being its most notable act of disruption. From 1990 on, however, anarchist political philosophy began to influence some of Earth First’s founders and early members, leading to a rift within the organization.
While Earth First retained some of its radicalism, later claiming responsibility for acts of vandalism in the United Kingdom against German banks holding shares in UK Coal,2 its most extreme members formed splinter groups of their own. The biggest of these splinter groups, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), was founded in 1992 with the mission of defending and protecting “the Earth for future generations by means of direct action.”3 ELF’s website traces its ideological beginnings to 1977, when John Hanna was convicted of “placing fire bombs on seven crop dusters”4 in Santa Cruz, California.
In 1998, the ELF claimed responsibility for a fire in Vale, Colorado that caused $12 million in damages—the most costly act of eco-terrorism in American history to that point.5 On August 1, 2003, it set a new record when arsonists “burned down a housing complex under construction in San Diego; losses were estimated at $50 million.”6 A banner found at the site read “If you build it, we will burn it,”7 followed by the ELF acronym. Today, the ELF’s website espouses a moderate stance by denouncing acts of arson and other acts of terrorism traditionally associated with the group, but this seems to be for plausible deniability as much as it is a genuine renunciation of these tactics.
The ELF’s sister group is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), who says that “any act that furthers the cause of animal liberation, where all reasonable precautions are taken not to harm human or non-human life, may be claimed as an ALF action.” Since its founding as the Band of Mercy in 1971 (it became the ALF five years later), the ALF has been involved in a number of high-profile ecotage cases in the U.S. and England. In 1984, it claimed to have contaminated Mars candy bars in protest of Mars’ tooth decay experiments on monkeys. After pulling bars from shelves across England, the total cost to Mars came to 4.5 million dollars. Since then, protests, bombings, raids of animal testing facilities, and violent attacks have all been claimed by or tracked to the ALF. In the financial year 1991-1992 alone “around 100 refrigerated meat trucks” were destroyed by incendiary devices in the UK, with most of these attacks attributed to the ALF. Such radical acts earned the ALF and its splinter group the Animal Rights Militia (ARM) the designation of “the most serious terrorism threat in the United Kingdom in 1998.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security designated the ALF a terrorist threat in 2005 and currently considers it more of a domestic security threat than Al Qaeda.
One of the most infamous terrorists in American history was actually an eco-terrorist. Ted Kaczynski, more popularly known as the Unabomber, carried out a spate of letter bombings over the course of nearly two decades because of his disenchantment with industrialized society and its effect on the natural world. In 1971, Kaczynski left his position as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley for the great outdoors. Living in a remote cabin in Lincoln, Nebraska, Kaczynski intended to live self-sufficiently and in harmony with nature. After witnessing urban development spread around him, Kaczynski began a letter bombing campaign in May of 1978. This campaign lasted for 17 years, injured 23 people, and killed three.
Eco-terrorists, like everyday environmentalists, are interested in alternatives—alternative energy, alternative ways of transportation, alternative ways of developing urban areas, and many other alternative lifestyle options. However, their views are as myopic and selfish as those of the corporate interests they rail against. Perhaps they need a reminder that alternative energy is not the only alternative; alternative forms of protest exist as well. Once they stop jeopardizing the safety of others and the credibility of the environmental movement in general, we as a society will be better off. Logging old growth redwoods is not cool, but then again, neither is a letter bomb that injures a postal worker who has never touched a chainsaw in his life.
