Manes, Christopher. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1990.
With the rise of Earth First! in 1980, American environmentalism took a great step forward in the revolutionary tradition of Paine, Jefferson, and Thoreau with a no-holds attack on what was perceived as a “sell-out” attitude taken by the mainstream environmental groups in their dealings with the extractive industries and their representatives in Congress. Christopher Manes traces an uninterrupted, unadulterated chronology in American political philosophy, from the revolutionary basis of the United States as an enlightened response to new political realities in Europe to the founding of radical environmentalism as a reaction to the continued and accelerating devastation of America’s biotic foundations.
The antics of Earth First! and its marine counterpart Sea Shepherd are faithfully recorded and given reasoned justification: “tree-spiking,” with camouflaged nails, of trees slated for clearcutting in the hopes of deterring a clearcut; the “monkeywrenching” of bulldozers, pavers, dump trucks, tree chippers, and other eco-intolerant mechanizations by pouring corn syrup in the gas tanks and sand in the crankcases, causing the permanent destruction of the machines’ engines; nonviolent demonstrations, including protesters handcuffing themselves to logging trucks or to hidden areas of valleys doomed to be flooded from upstream dams; and Sea Shepherd’s disruptions of seal clubbing in the Arctic and the ramming of whaling vessels at sea.
The members of these organizations are generally disaffected wilderness enthusiasts who have seen the value of letter writing and petitions go all to pieces in the face of the entrenched political muscle generated from multi-trillion dollar global “economic agreements” that serve to further disenfranchise the citizenry from the environmental decision-making process. Moreover, to the radical environmentalist the Washington, DC based “corporate” environmental groups are uninspired, corrupt, and overly familiar with the processes of buying favor in Congress. In taking the matter into their own hands, Earth First!ers hope to achieve a triage of results, in descending order of preference: (1) stop the proposed action—such as a clearcut or road building scheme—entirely; or failing that, (2) buy enough “downtime” through intransigent protest or the actual destruction of equipment to allow the grass-roots environmental lobby to bring the necessary pressure from DC; or, if nothing else, to (3) provide an excuse for the laggards in the Sierra Club and Audubon Society to point to their “radical extremism” as an excuse to demand more concessions from industry: “See what these crazies are doing out there in the woods? We can’t control them! We don’t know what they’ll do next! Yes, so you’d better give us that wilderness designation; it’s certainly the safest thing to do....”
But Manes’ book came out in 1990, and a lot of the momentum for this lazy assumption of concession in the face of monkeywrenching was spent along the way; the last ten years have seen the empire striking back, in federal court, with all the fury of a goaded grizzly. Meanwhile, corporate environmentalists (including staid traditionalists like The Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation but also activist groups like the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife) now see support for Earth First! as a potential kink in the income stream, and have effectively distanced themselves from the eco-saboteurs, whose extremist elements, such as the mysterious Earth Liberation Front, regularly torch the more egregious examples of suburbia sprawling into the wild.
Along with all of the self-congratulatory reminiscence in Green Rage is a good deal of political philosophy dealing with the ramifications for human society of biological depletion. Manes quotes political scientist William Ophuls as saying that “in a situation of ecological scarcity ... the individualistic basis of [American] society, the concept of inalienable rights, the purely self-defined pursuit of happiness, liberty as maximum freedom of action, and laissez-faire [economics] itself all require abandonment if we wish to avoid inexorable environmental degradation and perhaps extinction as a civilization.” This prophesy of the ultimate direction our current unsustainable path is taking us is the absolute worst nightmare of the radical environmentalist, who is generally a libertine who values open space, personal freedom, and the loosest possible organization of society; the imposition of an “eco-fascist” regime (in the above scenario designed to dole out shrinking resources to the rich while beating back the clamoring demand of the anxious billions) is, contrary to the paranoid mouthpieces of the industrial league, the farthest thing from the wishes of the average Earth First!er.
Radical environmentalists see themselves as patriots, extending the freedoms of the Bill of Rights to their ultimate realization. “At the time of the American Revolution, not all men were as equal as others. It took a civil war to extend certain inalienable rights to all people in out society. Next rights were conferred upon women and other minorities [sic]. This recognition of rights has even been extended beyond the human species. Family pets are now protected from inhumane treatment. The next major extension of rights is to the land.”
In illuminating both the history of radical environmental theory and action, as well as examining the fine lines that serve to delineate the current streams of thought in this momentous new philosophy, Manes has done a good deal to reveal “radical environmentalism” not as a communist conspiracy or elitist foreign ideology but as an open-ended revolutionary philosophy rooted deep within traditional American convictions.
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think is right.” ~ Thoreau
With the rise of Earth First! in 1980, American environmentalism took a great step forward in the revolutionary tradition of Paine, Jefferson, and Thoreau with a no-holds attack on what was perceived as a “sell-out” attitude taken by the mainstream environmental groups in their dealings with the extractive industries and their representatives in Congress. Christopher Manes traces an uninterrupted, unadulterated chronology in American political philosophy, from the revolutionary basis of the United States as an enlightened response to new political realities in Europe to the founding of radical environmentalism as a reaction to the continued and accelerating devastation of America’s biotic foundations.
The antics of Earth First! and its marine counterpart Sea Shepherd are faithfully recorded and given reasoned justification: “tree-spiking,” with camouflaged nails, of trees slated for clearcutting in the hopes of deterring a clearcut; the “monkeywrenching” of bulldozers, pavers, dump trucks, tree chippers, and other eco-intolerant mechanizations by pouring corn syrup in the gas tanks and sand in the crankcases, causing the permanent destruction of the machines’ engines; nonviolent demonstrations, including protesters handcuffing themselves to logging trucks or to hidden areas of valleys doomed to be flooded from upstream dams; and Sea Shepherd’s disruptions of seal clubbing in the Arctic and the ramming of whaling vessels at sea.
The members of these organizations are generally disaffected wilderness enthusiasts who have seen the value of letter writing and petitions go all to pieces in the face of the entrenched political muscle generated from multi-trillion dollar global “economic agreements” that serve to further disenfranchise the citizenry from the environmental decision-making process. Moreover, to the radical environmentalist the Washington, DC based “corporate” environmental groups are uninspired, corrupt, and overly familiar with the processes of buying favor in Congress. In taking the matter into their own hands, Earth First!ers hope to achieve a triage of results, in descending order of preference: (1) stop the proposed action—such as a clearcut or road building scheme—entirely; or failing that, (2) buy enough “downtime” through intransigent protest or the actual destruction of equipment to allow the grass-roots environmental lobby to bring the necessary pressure from DC; or, if nothing else, to (3) provide an excuse for the laggards in the Sierra Club and Audubon Society to point to their “radical extremism” as an excuse to demand more concessions from industry: “See what these crazies are doing out there in the woods? We can’t control them! We don’t know what they’ll do next! Yes, so you’d better give us that wilderness designation; it’s certainly the safest thing to do....”
But Manes’ book came out in 1990, and a lot of the momentum for this lazy assumption of concession in the face of monkeywrenching was spent along the way; the last ten years have seen the empire striking back, in federal court, with all the fury of a goaded grizzly. Meanwhile, corporate environmentalists (including staid traditionalists like The Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation but also activist groups like the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife) now see support for Earth First! as a potential kink in the income stream, and have effectively distanced themselves from the eco-saboteurs, whose extremist elements, such as the mysterious Earth Liberation Front, regularly torch the more egregious examples of suburbia sprawling into the wild.
Along with all of the self-congratulatory reminiscence in Green Rage is a good deal of political philosophy dealing with the ramifications for human society of biological depletion. Manes quotes political scientist William Ophuls as saying that “in a situation of ecological scarcity ... the individualistic basis of [American] society, the concept of inalienable rights, the purely self-defined pursuit of happiness, liberty as maximum freedom of action, and laissez-faire [economics] itself all require abandonment if we wish to avoid inexorable environmental degradation and perhaps extinction as a civilization.” This prophesy of the ultimate direction our current unsustainable path is taking us is the absolute worst nightmare of the radical environmentalist, who is generally a libertine who values open space, personal freedom, and the loosest possible organization of society; the imposition of an “eco-fascist” regime (in the above scenario designed to dole out shrinking resources to the rich while beating back the clamoring demand of the anxious billions) is, contrary to the paranoid mouthpieces of the industrial league, the farthest thing from the wishes of the average Earth First!er.
Radical environmentalists see themselves as patriots, extending the freedoms of the Bill of Rights to their ultimate realization. “At the time of the American Revolution, not all men were as equal as others. It took a civil war to extend certain inalienable rights to all people in out society. Next rights were conferred upon women and other minorities [sic]. This recognition of rights has even been extended beyond the human species. Family pets are now protected from inhumane treatment. The next major extension of rights is to the land.”
In illuminating both the history of radical environmental theory and action, as well as examining the fine lines that serve to delineate the current streams of thought in this momentous new philosophy, Manes has done a good deal to reveal “radical environmentalism” not as a communist conspiracy or elitist foreign ideology but as an open-ended revolutionary philosophy rooted deep within traditional American convictions.
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think is right.” ~ Thoreau
