Green Terrorism’s New Left Roots

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These views might be dismissed if they were just nonsensical musing on fringe websites. But Al Gore is a former vice president of the United States and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his Green activism. John P. Holdren, who is Obama’s director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has argued in the past for the “de-development” of the United States, believing the country is “over developed.” He co-authored the 1973 book Ecoscience with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, believers in the need to reduce human population. The trio wrote:

The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one.

The most critical change of all must be a change in goals; all people, rich and poor alike, must come to recognize that being a citizen of a giant, smoggy, freeway-strangled industrial state is not necessary to being a happy, healthy, fulfilled human being.

This Green worldview is common fare at the United Nations, where negotiations are in progress to produce a global treaty limiting energy use and production in the industrialized nations by the end of this year. In the wake of the failure of the UN process to adopt a treaty in Copenhagen last year, Climate Justice Action, an international coalition of over 70 organizations whose protests have included invading buildings, declared:

Today we know that is up to all of us to collectively reclaim power over our daily lives. It is we who must start shutting down and moving beyond the engines of capitalism, the burning of fossil fuels, the conversion of all life into commodities, and the toxic imaginaries of consumerism. It is we who must create different ways of living, other ways of organising our societies. Today we know that climate justice means taking action ourselves.

The UN talks are based on the notion of a zero-sum world which has reached its limit of tolerance for human civilization. One of the most direct statements of this view came from Nick Dearden, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign:

The rich world has gobbled up far more than its fair share of the earth’s atmosphere in order to develop. In essence, industrialised countries colonised the atmosphere, in the same way they did other resources.

The solution: rich countries need to ‘pay’ through redistributing a fairer share of limited atmospheric space, as well as helping poorer countries adapt to the mess they find themselves in.

General hatred for civilization turns into specific hatred for American and Western civilization. It is the self-loathing of the “anti-imperialist” New Left of the 1960s that spawned the environmentalist movement in the first place. The first Earth Day was in 1970. Its rallies were attended by the same activists who were burning American flags while protesting the raiding of communist sanctuaries in Cambodia that year.

The theme was that the U.S. must be brought down, both at home and abroad. Reducing America’s wealth would reduce its power, which the New Left considered an evil influence on the world. As life-long radical Jeff Jones wrote in 2008: “There can be no solution to the world’s environmental crisis as long as Americans enjoy their rapacious and engorged standard of living at the expense of the health and survival of billions of other.” He traced his feelings back to 1969, when Students for a Democratic Society “famously announced that those of us living in the heart of the imperial empire were going to have to give some of it back.”

These words are from Jones’ chapter on the environmental movement in the book Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements and Communiqués of the Weather Underground, 1970-1974 which he co-edited with President Obama’s old Chicago friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

The Antiwar and Green movements remained linked, as was evident in John Lee’s manifesto where he demanded: “War must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures.”

Lee’s assault on the Discovery offices was essentially an act of suicide by a deranged “true believer” in Green ideology. But since that ideology is very much a demand that Americans, if not humans worldwide, commit what would amount to mass suicide, the insanity has it origins with those who founded it and continue to spread it through schools, government agencies and international organizations.

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  • Spider

    These Enviro extremists are truely insane. It is almost like a Jim Jones style cult these people have joined, complete with the cool-aid to drink and a deranged utopian leader to follow.

  • SuperTx

    Of course, Jim Jones was the darling of the Left until he went off the deep end, and then they scattered like cockroaches.

  • spinoza149

    Not all eco-groups are terrorist sympathizers. Plant-It 2020, an international reforestation foundation takes a non-nuanced, strong, published stand against all forms of terrorism including eco-terrorism. This stand has been posted in our Code-Of-Ethics at growforests.org in the articles section. We are trying to get other environmental organizations to take a public stand on this and other important issues such as exposing particular lies, deceptions and fear-mongering within the environmental movement.

    • therealend

      Good luck with that. I mean it. However, watch out for the radical Greens though. I believe they will discredit you and everything you do. This belief is based on historical fact about other reformist groups.

      • Michael Thau

        One must take a stand in life. I agree with you but there is a quote (by Burke?) that says something along the lines of 'Evil gains power when good men stand aside and do nothing.' WWII taught us that every individual and group must take a stand and draw a line against that which is wrong.

        By the way, we just released a paper discussing scams and deceptions in the nonprofit tree-planting industry. Another item to piss-off the 'holier-than-thou' do-gooders!

  • Proudscott

    If humans are of no higher value than animals (equal in evolution or just another part of it) then why wouldn't human beings feel ok about ending anothers life. The lion eats the cubs, the dog owner or horse owner puts the animal down to keep it from suffering…so why wouldn't it be ok to simply put Uncle Joe down becasue he has cancer too. The far left enviro-whackos will see fit to kill millions to save whales.

    I hope they start with themselves

  • Voltimand

    To spinoza149

    Excuse me, but the whole point of the environmentalist movement is not to control the environment, and that word does not apply to the forests and the trees and the birds and the bees. It applies to "OPs," i.e., "other people." The everything that the movement and its various exemplars is directed to controlling is the behavior of other human beings, and in the U. S., other American citizens. This is typical leftist triangulation, whereby the surest way to get from A to B is via point C, where "C" equals some sort of diagnosis that "people" are doing the wrong thing and they must therefore be controlled, which is of course the point B in question being aimed.

    The whole history of enviromentalism–which historians that deal with the history of primitivism going back to the pre-Christian era discuss at length–is awash with dichotomous "this vs. that" thinking. The only truly "good" planet is a planet in which nature remains untouched by the (necessarily "unnatural") hand of human beings. If you believe the pap you preach in your comment, I would not be in the least surprised. The "lies, deceptions and fear-mongering" you people should start going after is not just something "within the environment movement": it IS the environmental movement.

  • Voltimand

    How can this article miss what is arguably the most important document in the history of environmentalist hatemongering: the Unabomber Manifesto? When it came out after Ted Kacynski insisted that the Washington Post and NY Times publish it (what? these rags publish inflammatory leftist propaganda?), no one knew how to make sense of it. However, academics like myself recognized it for what it was: very bad academic prose that needed serious editing and cutting in order to make its murderous message clearer and sharper (SARCASM ALERT!!). Kacynski was the true enviromentalist and knew what he wanted: he wanted people (aka "human beings who destroy the natural world") DEAD. What else was he doing when he sent bombs through the U. S. Mail to all those poor perps out there just opening their mail? Exactly like this Discovery Channel guy, who also knew what environmentalism is all about: killing human beings. If you can't control 'em, kill 'em.

  • http://www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com Tar_n_Feathers

    I'm no psychologist, so I'm going out on a limb here with an unqualified theory. I think this disdain for all things human might be a reaction to the reality that human beings have the intelligence and ability to tell the environuts just how full of crap they are. By comparison, "nature" including the animal world is a benevolent haven where one can project any distorted reality that suits their whims. It's easy to love nature. Nature doesn't tell you to STFU.

  • badaboo

    Get a bloody grip Hawkins , the man was a sociopath , product of a sick mind . The man was in need of counseling for a long time , just as it seems are some posters here .
    No wonder Admin .shut down comments on Trupzeck's similar rant , I guess they think Hawkins cleaned it up abit , but no , it's just as dumb .

    And BTW tar_n_feathers , you're right , you're not a psychologist , so don't try to be one . Sick minds are sick minds , and they dont find their oriogins in the 60's or in environmentalism.
    Jeffrey Dahmers old man was a Republican , so what does that meran ??? Republicans spawn homosexual cannibals ???

    Grow up .

  • Jim Johnson

    If you ever saw the recent movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" staring Keanu Reeves you would see the exact message mentioned in the responses. Basically "We will Kill you Because You did keep the Earth Tidy."

    Well Keanu gave the earthlings a break. "Take a little time to pick up after your selves and maybe we will let you live"

    I say "Pick it up your self if it's so important space boy and hold your breath as we do not need your carbon dioxide" "By the way there is a mental health clinic down the road and lots of Haldol on hand. Help your self"

  • WilliamJamesWard

    I hope that someday pulling weeds will be a terrorist
    act and forbidden by law, won't that be a shame………….William

  • http://www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com Tar_n_Feathers

    I'm with you on this one, Bad. Frankly, I'm unclear on JJ's point, but if you're going to make a Keanu Reeves reference to back up an argument, you're already on dangerously thin ice. Now if you want to talk about the 1951 original version then that's a whole new conversation. (Patricia Neal was hot)

    "Klaatu barada nikto"