eco-terrorist captured...government media yawns...

[billc]

Imagine if this terrorist had been an abortion clinic bomber...the coverage would be endless...

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/beyond-the-green-weenie.php

The news media has always covered eco-terrorism as weakly as possible. The usual asymmetry can be observed. While every time an abortion clinic is bombed or vandalized, or an abortion doctor murdered, the media always convict mainline pro-life groups of guilt-by-association, but when the Earth Liberation Front or other eco-terrorist group burns a building or trashes a scientific research lab, mainstream environmental groups are seldom or never confronted for a high profile denunciation.
Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported the arrest of a long-time eco-terrorist fugitive,Rebecca Rubin, who was associated with several arsons conducted in the 1990s by the Earth Liberation Front. But I’m still waiting for the news feature that delves into the question of what inspired these folks to become eco-terrorists. What books did they read? Which individual thinkers influenced them? I suspect the possible answers are too uncomfortable, just as it turned out in the 1960s that people who joined the Weather Underground were inspired to do so by what they were learning in elite college classrooms. There has always been a lot of awkwardness about the fact that the thought of the Unabomber’s famous manifesto had an uncanny resemblance to Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. (For more on this subject, see my long paper about Gore’s essential Heideggerianism.)
Then there’s the story out of Belgium a few days before the election a month ago about the murder of an ExxonMobil executive that bears the marks of a professional hit. There hasn’t been much follow up to this story, and I guess the police are being mum about it. Could it have been eco-terrorism? The Telegraph story does muse: “Like most oil majors, its operations attract the wrath of environmental activists.” Stay tuned to this one.
The reason to demand some heightened scrutiny of the connection between eco-terrorism and the environmental mainstream is that the so-called “mainstream” is amazingly casual about encouraging civil disobedience. My latest example of reckless and irresponsible advocacy in this manner comes not from the Sierra Club or other corrupt group, but from investor Jeremy Grantham, whose economic concerns I was just highlighting here a few days ago. While Grantham is a shrewd investor, it turns out he’s a climate nutter. Last week in Naturemagazine, Grantham advocates that climate campaigners prepare to “be arrested if necessary” in service of the cause. After opening with the caveat that “I am a specialist in investment bubbles, not climate science,” Grantham goes off the rails: