Eco-Terrorism: There’s No Such Thing
Property Rights Extremists Equate McMansions to 9/11 Victims
The United States should not build housing. Whole neighborhoods in places like Chicago and Dayton and Oakland and Newark and Memphis are dominated by abandoned houses and apartment buildings. Ten percent of our national housing stock–more than 13 million homes, enough to put roofs over the homeless three times over–are vacant year-round. So why do we let developers bulldoze fields and forests to put up soulless monstrosities?
Several “model houses” at a development bearing the typically atrocious name of “Quinn’s Crossing at Yarrowbay Communities” at the edge of Seattle’s creeping suburban sprawl went up in flames, apparently torched by radical environmentalists. I had two reactions. First, I was reminded of my wonder that such things happen so infrequently.
Then I laughed. I wasn’t alone. Time magazine bemoaned “a notable lack of sympathy for the fate of the homes” among residents of Washington state.
Quinn’s Crossing, says its website, was “dedicated to the ethos of putting the earth first.” In this case, putting Mother Earth “first” led the developers in “energy efficient” 4,500-square-feet McMansions. “The houses are out in the middle of nowhere, on land that used to be occupied by beaver dams and environmentally sensitive wetlands; the site sits at the headwaters of Bear Creek, where endangered chinook salmon spawn,” reported Erica C. Barnett for the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger. “The houses, and their polluting septic systems, also sit atop an aquifer, which provides drinking water for the area’s Cross Valley Water District.”
4,500 square feet? My last Manhattan apartment had 725. Visitors (New Yorkers, most of whom live in even tighter quarters) cooed over how big it was. The house in which I grew up had 1,000; it was designed for a nuclear family of four.
What galled ELF was the developers’ attempt to pass off self-indulgent, gargantuan McMansions as ecologically friendly. “The builders heavily promoted the ‘built green’ concept and pointed out that the homes were smaller than the 10,000-square-foot houses on previous Street of Dreams tours,” reported The Los Angeles Times.
Barnett’s story asked: “Were the Terrorists Right?” She noted: “An energy-efficient mansion will never use less energy than even a large urban apartment.”
Right or wrong, they’re not terrorists.
The feds say they are. They call Earth Liberation Front, the loose-knit “group” that took responsibility for the blazes in unincorporated Snohomish County, the biggest threat to mom, freedom, apple pie and three-minute pop songs since the Soviet Union closed shop. Six months before 9/11, shortly before the famous “Bin Laden Wants to Kick Our Ass Six Ways to Sunday” memo, the FBI went so far as to list the ELF as a federally designated terrorist organization. Like Al Qaeda.
Terrorism–you can look it up–involves killing people. Hijacking a plane and flying it into a building is terrorism. Destroying property–property that, for the most part, made the world a worse place–is not.
ELF’s goal of “inflict[ing] maximum economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment” has inspired people to set fire to SUVs at a New Mexico car dealership, Hummers in California, and a Vail ski lodge whose construction threatened the lynx, an endangered species. Damage to the Colorado ski project amounted to $12 million.
ELF members are vandals. They’re arsonists. But they aren’t terrorists.
ELF demands that its adherents “take all necessary precautions against harming any animal–human and non-human.” Although it could happen someday, no one has ever been killed or hurt in an ELF action. Equating the burning of a Hummer to blowing up a child exposes our society’s grotesque overemphasis on the “right” of property owners to do whatever they want. The word “eco-terrorism” is an insult to the human victims of real terrorism, including those of 9/11.
The closest ELF’s critics come to landing a punch is pointing out that fires send crud into the atmosphere. “This is releasing more carbon into the air than they ever would have by building the houses,” the listing agent for one of the destroyed “rural cluster development” houses told The New York Times. Newsweek asked: “If their cause is to save the environment, how does burning houses, and thereby releasing carbon and toxins into the atmosphere, help achieve that goal?”
Eye-roll alert: A house fire releases air pollution once. A family living in a house does it day after day for decades. Anyway, why are builders making houses out of toxins?
Property rights extremists raised the same point after ELF set fire to 20 Hummer H2s at a California car dealership in 2004. “There’s a lot more pollutants from the fire than the vehicles would pollute during their lifetime,” said the West Covina fire marshal. Even if that were true, he forgot where those gas guzzlers would have eventually ended up: in landfills, their nasty chemicals seeping into the ground.
“Think of all the resources those fires wasted,” moaned Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large. He explained that lawful means–petitions, politely worded letters to the editor, speaking at public hearings–are the proper way to take a stand against the destruction of the environment. “The development where this latest arson took place, situated atop the area’s water supply, has been challenged by other groups, using negotiation and the law,” he says approvingly. That’s true. The local zoning board heard from hundreds of opponents of Quinn’s Crossing before voting, 4 to 1, in favor.
Challenged, yes. But not successfully.
Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.
© 2008 Ted Rall
This is clearly another transparent attempt to stifle dissent, but let’s face it, ELF is playing right into the hands of the justice department.
Sitting down in front of the buldozers seems to me a much better direct action tactic.
I agree completely with Ted. I wish ELF would come down to Florida. Whats being done is ecolgically criminal.
From the 80s to the present day my kids would ask me “what happens to the animals?” as we would drive and see the developers mow down all flora & fawna, build houses (poorly I might add) shopping centers and then plant trees and call it greenscape development.
George Washington Hayduke for President
Sitting down in front of a bulldozer was a great tactic during the environmentally-friendly 1970s. After Rachel
Corrie’s experience with a Caterpillar in Gaza, I wouldn’t trust that machine’s operator to do the right thing.
Pippilin: Never trust a capitalist or his henchman to do the right thing.
After Rachel Corrie, I think public relations-conscious developers would
want to think twice about mowing someone down. Is this assured? No, but
with homelessness rampant in this country ELF can’t be sure they’re not
unintentionally cremating a homeless person or animal.
I’m standing by my previous statement…and the seventies were less environmentally friendly than the present. I was there.
Well.. let’s keep in mind that some say it may have been an insurance scam. It came right at the time that a jury was deliberating an ELF case against an alleged lookout Briana Waters(the judge wouldnt order the jury to ignore the news which screamed eco-terrorism all over the place–she got convicted and faces 5 -20 years–a mother of a 3 year old). Just like the pet store that got burned down and was blamed on ALF. Alf members dont usually want animals to burn to death. It was an insurance scam.
Also–Southern Poverty Law Center, for publicity sake it has labelled ALF and ELF as a terrorist or hate group. Shame on the SPLC for being human supremacists and stupid.
As for arson–I think it is ethically problematic. For one thing, burning houses is uncontrollable, or small animals may be caught in them. As for the University tree lab fire, killing trees isnt exactly compassionate. The horse slaughterhouse fire might be an exception–it was empty and people wanted it gone, and it has not been rebuilt. But overall, fire isnt a good thing.
But whatever the case, it isnt terrorism. They also went after SHAC claiming that sending a nasty letter to an animal torturer was terrorism.
Pathetic. Take away the peaceful means of protesting and you will lead to more illegal activity.
I can’t shake the sneaking feeling that such highly publicized acts of “eco-terrorism” are either staged entirely by government agents, or are instigated by agent-provocateurs, who make up the majority of such groups. Watch for the response to be the criminalizing of all forms of environmental activism.
Trees 1, Humanity 1, Stinky Developers 0
Sorry Ted, but there are eco-terrorists. They are the developers and transnational agricultural and resource extraction conglomerates.
the timing of the fires is very interesting considering the trial of the woman accused of being a lookout.
that being said, i can’t help but feel that arson is a violent crime. is it terrorism? well, what is the definition of terrorism?
according to the american heritage dictionary terrorism is:
“The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”
i guess we could accuse american heritage of being a tool of the right wing, but that is their definition.
polam,
You got that right. I remember during the Viet Nam protests the people urging violence were COINTELPRO. I remember as a seventeen-year-old having COINTELPRO agents lecturing us on how to make incendiary devices and hinting that they could get us materials if we wanted to do something like that.
Fortunately, we didn’t go for it. It’s not that violence didn’t appeal to us (we were seventeen) or that we saw through the subterfuge (we were seventeen). But even the dumbass seventeen-year-old I was had to wonder, “If these guys are so smart why don’t they do it themselves rather than trying to get seventeen-year-old kids to do it for them.”
I did make a molotov cocktail once but I couldn’t get it to light. They weren’t real explicit about how much detergent to add.
Actually, couldn’t agree more!!
The happiest day of my life will be when I am forced by government gunpoint from my small ranch home that I scrimped, saved, am and paying for (which I guess makes me among the “super rich”) and into some nice federal housing project where I can dodge bullets from the drug pushers as I walk down to the government canteens for my daily ration of government cheese!
Hey, Ted…maybe you will let me visit you sometime in your gated home in the Hamptons!
Elitist, progressive shithead!
“Terrorism–you can look it up–involves killing people.” So if someone had burned to death in the fire, say possibly a fireman, that would mean ELF (or whatever bunch did this) really are terrorists. Or do they get a pass because such a death would have been accidental (read: collateral damage).
A little less passion, a bit more reason, Ted.
Calling property crimes “terrorism” means that property is just as important as lives. The people who do that, and I mean the FBI and the judges who go along with them, reveal their own moral defect.
I suggest focussing your letters especially on the judges. FBI agents and federal attorneys should get them too, but they probably really are morally defective.
Social pressure really does work, you know. It’s the reason a lot fewer people smoke.
So wait a minute… Some people burned down unoccupied houses in a bulldozed-and-paved development in an ecologically sensitive area that served absolutely no purpose but to let rich people experience “country living” and enormous commutes, and the government and corporate media have called it terrorism?
And then some self-proclaimed environmentalists criticized the action for being “violent” or “destructive” and “ethically problematic” and suggested that using the same old tactics that didn’t prevent the houses from being built in the first place would now work to un-build them and restore the area to its previous ecologically intact state?
And a satirist pointed out that equating property destruction with terrorism is disingenuous and intentionally clouds the discussion of whether this was an appropriate response to private property rights extremism, noting that the public at large doesn’t seem to mind if the wealthy encounter meaningful resistance to their goal of paving the earth and building obscenely large houses?
Didn’t we go through this in the 90s or something?
So some people decided to take things into their own hands when they saw that the law is bought and paid for and that they’d have to work around it to make a symbolic statement about what they see as right an wrong… No one - human or not - was hurt. What’s the big fuss about?
> Calling property crimes “terrorism” means that property is just as important as lives.
Arguably burning a cross is just arson.
ELF was doing more then just arson when it torched the UW Horticultural center. It destroyed and prevented academic research. The message it sends is that ELF is the final arbiter of what is permitted to be researched. If they don’t like what you do, they’ll not only burn your work but the work of everyone else around you.
If the KKK burns down a home of a civil rights activist (who isn’t home) is it just arson or is it terrorism? If a pro-war group torches anti-war churches, is it just arson?
unkanny:
You make a false analogy. The burning cross refers to a long history of actual terrorism, which means killing people for political reasons. Hence, it’s a death threat. So is burning an OCCUPIED house.
In fact, the ELF’s actions have never hurt anybody, and have been obviously designed not to.
I understand your qualms about blocking research, but in this case it posed a direct threat to the ecology OUTSIDE the research area, because pollen does not respect human boundaries.
I think the arsonists took unusual risks in that case; it is probably the most questionable of their actions (they also missed the target a couple times).
And incidentally, I’m not supporting arson. I’m defending our moral language. So was Ted Rall.
Although I don’t condone arson or terrorism, its good to see Seattle Times reporter Jerry Large address the resource issue.
If, however, Jerry is truly concerned about the resources the fire consumed, he should pay ten times more attention to the resources that are being wasted when buyers in the silicon valley, the silicon forest and elsewhere buy McMansions (that in many cases are not very old, and in some cases have never been occupied)and demolish them to build an even larger McMansion.
At least the fires reduce the amount of material that needs to be hauled by diesel burning trucks to a landfill.
In San Jose, any historic building involved in a development dispute (4 in last 18 months)seems to mysteriously burn down. Nobody’s calling the perpetrators ‘terrorists.’ Maybe they are just the developer’s ‘freedom fighters’.
You want eco-terrorists? Go find some “developers.” There are scores of houses for sale in my neighborhood in Florida, just outside my neighborhood (within a few feet up to less than half a mile) are three “developments” in progress–no houses on them yet, but they have walls going up, infrastructure almost ready, etc. Who’s gonna buy ‘em?
Oh, by the way, in Florida, energy-efficient development is practically illegal. We have so much sunshine, I’m waiting for the first development with a solar plant in the middle of it capable of powering the whole thing. Better not hold my breath. Most homeowner’s associations forbid (legallly unenforceably, by the way) solar panels.
unkanny wrote: ELF was doing more then just arson when it torched the UW Horticultural center. It destroyed and prevented academic research.
Would you then suggest that the ELF firebombing of the Michigan State Univ. Agricultural Hall and Mink Research Building on 12/31/1999 deserve their 40 years in prison?
Mink research? How to build a better fur coat? There is some research that should never be conducted.
Burning buildings for political purposes is sabotage. It is not terrorism. Terrorist acts kill or cause grave bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants. (Kofi Annan came up with a great definition of terrorism just before he left his office.) The problem I have with fires as a means of property damage is that fires are unpredictable. What if a firefighter is hurt or killed? What if it spreads? In the American context sabotage is counter-productive. I don’t think it persuades our adversaries sustainability policy. Other forms of protest and disruption of the non-violent variety are better.
Wrong, Ted. There are plenty of eco-terrorists. Like Monsanto, for example.
Buy our genetically mutant organisms, and our Round Up they’ve been mutated to resist (for now,) or NO FARMING FOR YOU.
And, when Mr. Farmer is forced to sign a Monsanto contract, he’s prohibited from maintaining a seed bank. Just in case he tries to save some seeds, he’ll find that they have been zombified, and require a Monsanto wake-up pill in order to sprout.
Meanwhile, mutant transgenic organisms spread throughout the land, altering our fragile food chain at the fundamental level in ways that are neither predictable nor reversible.
What could be more eco-terrifying than that?
I’m inclined to think this situation is as likely or more likely to be insurance fraud as it is vandalism. I’ve known a lot more people that have no problem with insurance fraud than I’ve know vandals.
The eco-terrorists are cheney/bush, hiding behind the BS clear skies, healthy forests, etc.
Oh, all this jibber-jabbering about “ecoterrorists” is just a bunch of hoo-hah. It’s simply a way to make people more afraid, and give judges the justification for sending people to prison for inordinately long terms, completely disproportionate to the “crimes.” Like Jeffrey “Free” Luers’ 22 years for torching some SUVs.
As many here have pointed out, developers are criminals. There is no justification whatsoever for destroying more undeveloped land, because there is already a surplus of housing. New development is just a crime, even if the “laws” don’t reflect that reality at the moment.
With the US government busily killing people left and right in Iraq, these kinds of stories about “ecoterrorism” are just a joke. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. And in Iraq they are really committing terrorism, not some newspeak version of it. Frankly, I’m surprised there isn’t more of this going on, with the extent of environmental degradation going on.
Just like thinning out the deer herd that lacks reliable predators prevents deer overpopulation, so does eco-arsonists “thinning out” mindless capitalist developments, help to preserve the health of the economy/ecology. The capitalists have brains but they don’t use them. So maybe some birth control for them is also in order.
The mass producing profiteers still think that size sells, and are not obviously into quality, affordability, frugality. When the environment is demolished for next to nothing, and monstrosities are put in its place, who are the real eco-terrorists?
I was there in the 70s, too, and in some ways, at least, the public was more environmentally conscious than today, since it was before Reagan introduced blatant anti-environmental attitudes, ironically referring to such a destructive stance as “conservative.” It was not considered gauche in the 70s to be sentimentally and actively pro-environment, the way it often is now in the US. Being an environmental activist was not considered “controversial;” that descriptor was another Reagan innovation, a word he applied to positions that were considered commonsense and normal during the 70s, feminism and anti-war positions among them. Another way in which the public was more pro-environment during the 70s is that Christian fundamentalists hadn’t yet been given the big boost into public prominence that Reagan gave them, both by direct endorsement and by defunding education and social services, a lack of which often causes people to turn to religion. With the rise of Christian fundamentalists in the 80s, the very idea of rational thought and scientific evidence began to be aggressively questioned, leaving scads of people believing that scientists should be opposed and others confused about the very importance of preserving the environment. In the 70s, too, the blatant conscpicuous consumption that Reagan would unabashedly encourage in the 80s and that is now considered eternally typical of the US was largely considered crass, something to be self-conscious about. At least, that was my impression living in a Dallas suburb. Such an ethical public attitude went hand-in-hand with a more attentive attitude toward our effects on the natural world, among other things. The 70s also was a time when there was still an active back-to-the-land movement of living on the earth in as non-destructive a way as possible, often without electricity at all, and that movement got publicity and influenced the way people in the broader society thought, resulting in a push toward natural fibers, organic food, local sources of produce, vegetarianism, reduced waste, etc., all things we consider “innovative” today, but they have their modern roots in the 70s. In fact, though these trends are still with us now, there’s been some regression since the 70s in that what was then considered healthy and a return to past “natural” ways is now packaged as “upscale” and “high end” and priced out of most people’s reach. So, yes, while our knowledge of the extent of the damage done to the environment might be higher today, and while more environmental strategies have been tried by this point, the 70s were free of some 80s-rooted societal attitudes so people were less self-conscious about being openly concerned and involved and could thus accomplish more. This was reversed by Reagan, who employed multiple propaganda coups to bring US society to the largely anti-environmental state it’s in today.
Whatever you call it, it is wrong. I see no excuse for this destructive behavior.
I agree with lizard-arson is the wrong approach. My husband was a volunteer fireman for years. The idea that someone would purposely put his life in danger is tough to stomach.
That said, We do NOT need more new homes being built. Here in Wisconsin, we’re losing farmland daily to developers. Then more framland to highways to transport the people from the exurbs. No matter how “eco-friendly” a new home is purported to be, it’s still new. Everyone does not need a patch of lawn and 2500 sq feet of living space. And if you are one who has a lawn-grow edibles and if you have the square footage, make sure you use all of it-most folks don’t.
The Justice Dept likely designated ELF a terrorist group so it could use alternative means to combat it. It reveals the priorities of this administration.
In hyper-Capitalist U.S., wealth is power. There are very few effective ways to obtain justice under such a system, though it appears ELF has found one.
Propery is more important to Capitolists than human lives, hence the excitement over a few rich people’s homes going up in smoke. Cry me a river. Entire areas of New Orleans drowned a few years back without that much excitement, but it was poor people so they got concentration camps to live in. When the rich got burned out in California, the response was somewhat different. Compassion ain’t part of our government any more, Alice.
> You make a false analogy. The burning cross refers to a long history of actual terrorism,
> which means killing people for political reasons.
I’m not sold on the narrow definition that it means only killing people for political reasons.
Kristalinacht would be just a really large case of vandalism then.
And no, I’m not claiming ELF reaches that scale. I’m saying the definition is too narrow.
> I understand your qualms about blocking research, but in this case it posed a
> direct threat to the ecology OUTSIDE the research area,
THe fire destroyed research OUTSIDE of the targeted research. According to their target, his research was the least affected. They did however succeed in wiping out a quarter of the world’s supply of an endangered plant.
> Would you then suggest that the ELF firebombing of the Michigan State Univ.
> Agricultural Hall and Mink Research Building on 12/31/1999 deserve their 40 years
> in prison?
Dunno. Are we talking 80 people serving 6 month sentences?
Are the 6 month sentences for jaywalking?
> There are very few effective ways to obtain justice under such a system,
> though it appears ELF has found one.
The houses will be built twice. The Urban Horticulture Center had to be built twice. And being in jail, how effective can one be there?
> Propery is more important to Capitolists than human lives, hence the excitement
> over a few rich people’s homes going up in smoke.
A house sitting in water isn’t very interesting. You see it for 2 seconds and you’ve seen all there is to see. Watching a house burn can take minutes and is way more interesting.
> …. Cry me a river. … Compassion ain’t part of our government
Many people lack compassion.
Using force when reason or the law does not get you what you want is exactly what is wrong with our societies. How is this behavior different from Bush’s behavior? Isn’t it the same formula and mentality? Life is not a video game or an American sports game, where violence seems to be the pleasure.
Has no one have mercy on on those poor developers who put their blood sweat and tears in just providing some family a place to live, only to have the economy take a downturn and have these humble abodes sit vacant since last year now they have nothing but their insurance settlements.(Maybe someone should look into ELF’s finances for a sudden big donation)
Earth Liberation Front - YES! “ABOLITION OF PROPERTY IN LAND AND APPLICATION OF ALL RENTS OF LAND TO PUBLIC PURPOSES!” First tenet of the Communist Manifesto. . . United Socialist States of America! It works in Cuba!
The legend goes like this:
I was hiking in the Trinity Alps solo when I came across a group of three other hikers on the trail. After a shared dinner of hummus and elk jerky a spliff the size of a leek was produced and enjoyed by all. That night I was treated to a three-way with both the lady and one of the guys “sampling my salami.” The next morning in conversation about how to save all of this they mention that they are an Earth Liberation Front cell. I immediately put my pack back on and hiked back to the trailhead and drove straight to my lawyers office.”- A month later the some poor sap is arrested on terrorism conspiracy charges and tells the exact same story except for the part where he hikes out.
If you just got stoned and a hummer from two fine earth mama’s who claim to be from ELF or ALF one is from the FBI and the other is from the ATF. Hiking around the hills is way easier than playing tag with armed meth freaks and they know it. Plus Washington LOVES it when they nail a green and it’s an easy promotion.
Which is why there is NO ORGANIZED GROUP CALLED THE Earth Liberation Front. It’s like Pave the Planet or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a fiction designed to spark imagination. Actual green activists will walk away from you if you even mention it in a positive tone of voice.
Those houses were burned because they had been sitting there for a year and they couldn’t sell. They were overpriced spec houses and it was probably burn them or bankruptcy for the developer.
Environmental activism today is maintained by aged greens from the 90’s and a few fanatical kids. The planet’s doomed so college kids are expressing a severe, get grades, get toasted, get laid attitude. Nothing really matters, any one can see…..
I drive into the local metropolis on a road that goes through a county that adjoins mine. Over the 10+ years I’ve been here, I’ve seen the farmland sold to developers (one in particular) and made into gated communities of huge houses on one or five acre lots. 3 car garages or two regular and tall one for the boat or RV. It’s sickening. Equestrian Estates, Colonial Estates, Renaissance Run, that sort of bull****.
Lately though, there are a lot of empty lots with For Sale signs and I’ve seen the odd McMansion started and then left to decay. Even an economic downturn may have a bright side.
Well what about corporate terrorism?
Love the arguments made here. I wonder what you would call it if some group decided your house did not fit in with their philosophy and burnt it down? Somehow I think that terrorist might be your kindest word for these well-meaning folks. Glad the US Constitution gives me the right to bare arms. I’d call them dead if they threatened my family. If folks take the law into their own hands, some will still fight for their freedoms. I support the Nature Conservancy; If you want it, buy it. Put your back and money into your convictions rather than your mouth.