Eco-Terrorism's War on Man

The good news: a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon, has indicted 11 people on charges that they committed acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, now one of the FBI's "highest domestic terrorism priorities," according to director Robert S. Mueller III, is to prosecute people who commit crimes "in the name of animal rights or the environment."

Nevertheless, it remains worrisome that we still dismiss such terrorists as deranged individuals who pervert the ideology of environmentalism. Even more worrisome is that few of us intellectually grasp, and then rise to defend, the irreplaceable values under attack by environmental terrorists. Their targets are not, fundamentally, a particular ski resort, logging company, meatpacking center, or medical research project, but what these represent: human technology, human progress, human life.

Man's life is sustained -- and made longer, healthier, happier -- by industrial development and technological progress:

The hospitals, antibiotics and chemotherapy treatments which keep our bodies free from disease. The pesticides, bioengineering and shopping malls which make possible our consumption of almost any food imaginable. The oil rigs, dams, and nuclear power plants which keep our lights on and washing-machines running. The trucks, telephones, and computers which make an hour of our time vastly more productive. The large homes, MP3 players, and ski resorts which make our newfound recreational hours more enjoyable. It is these products of industrial civilization that are responsible for the vast increase in the quantity and quality of life that we enjoy today.

Imagine for a moment being transported back to Western Europe nine hundred years ago (or parts of Africa today). Imagine the daily, excruciating physical labor required to grow meager crops or to haul water from miles away -- assuming there is no drought. Imagine the filth and disease, because there are no sewage systems. Imagine the pain and misery as rotting teeth go untreated, broken bones go untended, failing eyesight goes uncorrected. This is a glimpse of life without industry.

The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists -- namely, scientists, inventors, and businessmen -- are the creators of industrial civilization. As heirs of Newton, scientists discover truths about the workings of nature. As heirs of Edison, inventors use these truths to create new products which improve human life. As heirs of Ford, businessmen figure out ways to perfect and mass manufacture these products profitably.

These three categories of individuals represent the exploiters of nature, those who transform wilderness to support man's life. They find plains and forests, dangerous jungles and insect-infested swamps, in which man's life is precarious, and they build a human environment by creating houses, electric heaters, and chemical pesticides. They teach man his method of survival: using his mind to reshape nature to his needs.

As monstrous as it sounds, it is precisely because these heroes are the sustainers of human life that they are targeted by those who are willing to take up arms for their cause, environmentalism.

Despite common belief to the contrary, the ideology of environmentalism is not concerned with improving man's life on earth. If it were, it would not oppose but champion industrial progress -- luxury homes, dams, highways, bioengineering, food irradiation, etc. -- and the individuals who create it.

Environmentalism instead champions wilderness (including wild animals). On this premise, science and technology are irredeemably evil. If the supreme value is a world untouched by human hands, then in logic man and industry are destroyers of value, to be eliminated by force if necessary.

Committed environmentalists openly voice this hatred of man and industry. The founder of Greenpeace reflects: "I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot kids who shoot birds." A biologist with the U.S. National Park Services states: "Until such time as homo sapiens should decide to return to nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." The head of the 1992 Earth Summit wonders: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"

Environmental terrorism is a consistent expression of environmentalism's worship of wilderness. By making the preservation of untouched nature the ideal, environmentalism necessarily makes man, who survives by exploiting nature, the enemy.

If we value our lives, we must never make common cause with environmentalism, no matter how appealing a particular environmentalist project may seem. We must fight not only against particular environmental terrorists but also against the ideology that inspires them. But even more important, we must fight for rational values: man's life and industrial civilization.

The author ignores the immense threat to agriculture that these people pose, too. They don't seem too fond of farmers or ranchers, either. The effects of bioterror in the food supply would be devastating. The Farm Bureau is very concerned about it.

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.' " The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature", but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the "Naturist" reveals his hatred for his own race, i.e. his own self-hatred. In the case,of "Naturists" such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women, it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly "natural."

ROBERT HEINLEIN

I hate the word enviornment. Conservatives should reclaim the issue and get us back to conservation based on respect for nature and love of its beauty a la spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Not enviornment. yuk.

Eco-terrorists don't care for the environment. They are a bunch of commies and terrorists, like Al-Qaida and Hamas and need to be liquidated completely from this planet. Burning down development creates pollution. What a bunch stupid morons. They have hijacked protecting the environment and made it into a dirty thing that makes people more hostile. I for one do not like light or glare pollution.

Thanks for the heads up Coleus! ECO-PING

FReepmail me to be added or removed to the ECO-PING list!

That's why these people should not be considered environmentalists, but terrorists. A healthy, productive environment does improve man's life!

One of the more alarming things about these groups is the amount of government money they are able to suck up in the name of "protecting the environment". Money they then use against the citizens who paid the taxes in the first place.
It is my opinion that the whole environmental movement is a religion of it's own, and as such should not recieve any government help.

Try asking for a government (taxpayer) grant titled: "The deleterious effect of environmentalism on human freedom and the origins of nature worship in Nazi Germany."

Bet a box of doughnuts the proposal would be thrown in the circular file. Why? Because the fascists handing out grants to study so-called environmentalism are hell-bent in destroying human freedom and they worship nature.

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