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There are differences

It doesn't seem to me that the ELF and the ALF should always be spoken of in the same breath. The Animal Liberation Front is decades old and well-established in over 20 countries.

The Earth Liberation Front didn't really appear on the radar until 1998, when a Vail ski resort was torched. There are questions about the communique in which ELF claimed responsibility. There are questions about the authenticity of ELF website. There are questions about whether the ELF exists as an organization in any ontologically robust sense.

In general, the animal-rights movement has a much longer and more storied history of violent direct action than the environmental movement. Lumping them together as one amorphous threat is driven as much by the political needs of the powers-that-be as by events on the ground.

Two new eco-movies on the way from Participant Productions

Speaking of Participant Productions, I just discovered they have two more environmentally themed films in development:

1) Luna

Luna is based on the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, a drifter turned environmentalist who galvanized the movement in the early 90's to save the redwood trees in Northern California from deforestation.

Julia Hill was a young woman without direction or purpose whose travels brought her to Northern California and the quiet majesty of the ancient Redwood trees. At that time, junk bond king Charles Hurwitz was leading a campaign to clear cut the redwoods via his newly acquired company Pacific Lumber to ensure maximum profits. Eager to protect the trees she had come to love, Julia agreed to work with a small environmental agency called Earth First to stage a tree "sit" which involves living up in the trees for days at a time to prevent the trees from being cut down.

Days became months and months turned into years, as Julia refused to come down from her tree until she knew the Redwoods would be protected. She braved fierce weather, injury and attacks from lumber men to save her tree, Luna, and the old growth trees around her. Julia's struggle drew massive media attention and she became an eloquent spokesperson for the Redwoods and the environmental movement.

2) Electric Dreams

Based on the book by Caroline Kettlewell, Electric Dreams tells the story of a rag tag group of rural students beating all odds to win a competition to create an electric car. Led by an idealistic new teacher and a garrulous shop instructor, the kids work together to convert a 1985 Ford Escort into an electric vehicle they call "Shocker." To the surprise of the community, Shocker takes the winning prize, beating out the better-funded and well-bred schools nearby. The students come away having learned about engineering, alternative energy, and about themselves.

For a complete list of movies coming soon, in theaters, on DVD, and in development, visit the Participant Productions website. Good stuff.

Shade-grown coffee not quite taking off

I made up that part about Starbucks. Coffee gets credit for just about everything. Depending on the day, you will find that it either causes or prevents cancer, depression, heart attack, and ostensibly, sex. However, the article did get me wondering how the shade-grown coffee campaign was going.

Apparently, sustainable coffee accounts for less than half of one percent of all coffee sold, and can be split into three categories: Organic, fair trade, and shade grown. Shade-grown coffee presently accounts for about 0.1 percent of all coffee sold. (99.9% is not sold as shade grown).

ClimateCrisis.net

All films by Participant Productions are accompanied by a "campaign" and campaign website. So too with An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary that "weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change."

As Dave mentioned, An Inconvenient Truth is debuting at Sundance this month, where I expect viewers to be directed to ClimateCrisis.net. Here we find the ubiquitous carbon-footprint calculator, ways you can make a difference, information about the campaign and movie, and a list of scientific advisors that includes Rosina Bierbaum, Eric Chivian, Henry Kelly, James McCarthy, Mario Molina, Michael Oppenheimer, Ellen Thompson, and Lonnie Thompson.

An enemy that’s just an idea can never surrender

If the executive branch was trying to distract attention from Osama Bin Laden's latest taped message and the NSA spying scandal with this "eco-terrorism" business, they failed pretty miserably. When Gonzalez and Mueller took questions, only the final two were about the Milk Jug Brigade.

QUESTION: On the environment and eco-groups, how big a blow is wrapping up these people that you've got indictments against -- how deep do you think the support goes for these kinds of acts?

MR. MUELLER: If you read the indictment and you see the listing of the actions that have taken place at the hands of this group over a period of time, you get some understanding of the impact of this investigation and this indictment. In terms of identifying and arresting those who were principly responsible for something like 17 -- over 15, as the Attorney General pointed out, acts over the last few years in this arena. So, I think it's fair to say it was a substantial blow.

A blow to who, though? To what? Membership in the Earth Liberation Front seems to require one thing: Saying so. These fruitcake hippies said they acted in the name of ELF, but how is throwing them in jail a "blow" to ELF? It's not like ELF is an organization with upper management you can remove. It's just a name. Any angry malcontent who wants to can claim to act on its behalf.

The ELF is an idea, not a gang. Now that the federal government has made it famous, I'm sure it will begin attracting a broader array of malcontents, one of whom eventually will be willing to injure another human being, and then we're off to the races.

It's not coincidence that this administration has declared war on an opponent which can by definition never be defeated, can never surrender, because it is an abstraction. The war will last in perpetuity. So when Gonzalez starts pushing for special "wartime" powers on behalf of the FBI and ATF, he will in effect be working to permanently expand the powers of the executive branch. That is, after all, his one true mandate from his bosses.

Witness:

More shadowy enemies

I'm looking over this "eco-terrorism" stuff. Some stray thoughts.

Why always "shadowy"? Can we find a new adjective for our bogeymen?

Is this what shadowy means?

Who is the leader of the ELF?
This is what has caused problems for law enforcement trying to put an end to the group's activities. There is no Osama bin Laden of the ELF [ed: Yesima bin Burnin?], there are no "lieutenants," and no hierarchical structure at all. It may even be a misnomer to call the ELF a "group."

This misnomer has nonetheless been deemed a "vast eco-terrorism conspiracy." It earned a press conference graced by both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Gonzales thanked law enforcement at all levels for "their continued determination to help protect Americans from the threat of terrorism, both foreign and domestic."

Foreign. Domestic. Hey, it's all the same stuff.

But what distinguishes setting fire to buildings with crude milk jugs full of gasoline from simple crime?

Gonzalez's formulation was careful: They "worked together with extensive planning to influence the conduct of government and private businesses through the use of coordinated force, violence, sabotage, intimidation, and coercion."

Mueller stuck to Rumsfeldian koans: "But terrorism is terrorism, no matter what the motive."

To me that sounds uncomfortably like "terrorism is whatever the hell we feel like calling it, including maybe ... yeah you, the shifty-eyed guy in the back. You a terrorist, chump?" But maybe I'm just paranoid.

Why Tom Friedman makes a dubious green.

My man David Roberts has been quite impressed by the recent writings of NYT uber-pundit Thomas Friedman.

Friedman is a crude but effective writer, and I'm glad to see he's enlisting his thunderous arsenal of platitudes in service of conservation, etc. Undeniably, he makes some good points.

But I fear that the world's problems are a bit more complex than can be dreamt of in Friedman's neoliberal philosophy. The hyper-globalized system of trade that he breathlessly champions may itself be too energy intensive to be sustained -- even by "green" energy. Why should the global south gear its productive capacity to producing for the northern countries? Why should the U.S. essentially outsource its working class thousands of miles away to China?

I don't reject global trade. But I think wise public policy minimizes it, not subsidizes it at every level. I'd like to see a national-level pundit who champions local culture, who calls on governments and NGOs to bolster it where it flourishes. Among the many benefits of gearing local economies to produce mainly for themselves would be much less energy-intensivity.

And by no means would such pronouncements have to be couched in the dour, anti-hedonist terms that tend to characterize enviromentalism. If production were geared to be local, people would generally eat and drink much, much better.

Press wonders why press doesn’t do a better job

In an Op-Ed in Wednesday's Washington Post, David Ingatius muses whether, in the press's collective posture on global warming, "we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind."

Setting aside for the moment issues such as his overly generous -- and blame-diluting -- usage of the royal we, and the question of why someone as well-placed as he is doesn't decide to do something about it, I'd like to muse a little myself about the best way of writing about global warming.

Many have blamed politicians' failure to take global warming seriously on scientists' techno-prose and reluctance to make unequivocal conclusions concerning their highly complex research. A failure to communicate, if you will.

Ignatius deems Elizabeth Kolbert the best reporter on the subject, and I can't argue with that conclusion on the whole, except to say that in her latest article in the Jan. 9 edition of the New Yorker, titled "Butterfly Lessons," readers are treated to two pages of butterfly trivia, including no less than eight Latin names, before giving the reader any indication that the article is really about global warming, how it's killing butterflies, and how we're next.

Frankly, I'd like to see a page taken from the Bush Administration's 9/11 discourse: In every newspaper, a quote a day from a top scientist saying: "We're scared as shit. And you should be too."

Call me… Ishmael

Joan Root was gunned down in her house the other day. She joins Dorothy Stang, Dian Fossey, and who knows how many others on the long list of people who have gotten in the way of someone's paycheck.

I stumbled on a documentary of Chico Mendes while writing this. If you have high speed and an hour or so to spare, I highly recommend watching it. Rubber barons created a monopoly by enslaving people, who were in turn broken by British plantations, who were in turn broken by new technology -- synthetic rubber. The surviving workers (Mendes being the son of one of them) adjusted to life in the jungles -- after displacing the native Indians, of course. But, it wasn't until cattle ranchers displaced them that the forests in those areas of the coast were finally completely destroyed.

I have a favorite saying: The future cannot be predicted because the act of predicting it will alter it (in unpredictable ways). So here goes. I predict that the next wave of destruction, maybe the final one, will be biofuels, and it will be the ranchers' turn to be displaced. The average American consumes 10 pounds of coffee, 70 pounds of beef, and 4000 pounds of gasoline annually.

From Fill-Ups to Free Parking

In other news, vegans to eat 30 cows in 30 days Leaving London this week, a pair of drivers set off on a trip around the world, pledging to use fewer than 50 tanks of gas, hoping to “show people that in these hard environmental times they can save fuel.” By driving 14 hours a […]