Ecoterrorism: Threat Or Political Ploy

Ecological terrorism is an issue in the United States and around the world that has skyrocketed since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since then, the primary domestic terrorism threat has been from groups labeled as eco-terrorist, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), according to Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler and Cas Mudde in their article Ecoterrorism: Threat or Political Ploy?. With this fact at hand, it is impossible to believe that any ecoterrorist movement could do good to the United States besides possibly bringing attention to the issues surrounding our environment by, of course, instilling fear. Although radical environmentalists deem their beliefs and actions helpful to the environment, the extreme ways
As laws aiming to protect the environment have been passed, the imminent failure of governmental action led to the rise of many environmental organizations, each with their own identities and motives. Radical groups, each dissatisfied with the previous efforts of the government and mainstream environmentalists, devised their own illegal and often destructive approaches to environmental protection. Some of these forceful approaches include equipment vandalism, package bombs or pipe bombs sent to administrators of institutions, destruction of research data, invasions of governmental offices, arson, and even a handful of assassinations (Nilson and Burke). Despite the violence and vengeance that many activist groups express, Rebecca K. Smith claims that “all [radical environmentalists] specifically eschew violence, and provide guidelines to ensure that activists do not injure or harm human life” and thus, should not be labeled as “terrorists.” Terrorism, she argues, is a term that should only apply to crimes intended to “inflict mass civilian casualties directly through murder or more indirectly through actions like the destruction of a drinking water purification infrastructure” (570). Taking Smith’s definition into account would ignore any
Although this may be the case, the question at hand raises opposition to that argument: do the extremists know how far is too far? Up to this point in time, collections of radical environmentalists have assassinated members of the corporate world, burned down car dealerships, and set off bombs. No, there have not been a significant number of lives lost, but if ecoterrorist organizations are not restrained, there is very little question that they will take a step that puts the larger public at risk. To say that ecoterrorists “eschew violence,” claimed by Smith, would be far from the truth. Because the radical environmentalist goal is “immediate change, its standard of success is gauged” by the number of direct actions it can mobilize, direct actions usually meaning violence (Joosse 365). Ecoterrorist groups spend so much of their time focusing on the future actions they want to take that they forget the whole purpose of their fight for the environment. They wind up “[keeping] actions—not ideas—in the forefront of the movement” (Joosse 357). Immediate change and improvement in the environment is an impossible request that is going to take longer than the demanded “right away” time frame. Ecoterrorist groups expecting visible change to be made over night makes their fear-instilling actions ineffective; they continue,