The Sunday Read: ‘The Rise and Fall of America’s Environmentalist Underground’

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Warning of imminent ecological catastrophe, the Earth Liberation Front became notorious in the late 1990s for setting fire to symbols of ecological destruction, including timber mills, an S.U.V. dealership and a ski resort. The group was widely demonized. Its exploits were condemned by mainstream environmental groups, ridiculed by the media and inspired a furious crackdown from law enforcement. But in 2022 the group is more relevant than ever. These days even America’s mainstream environmental movement has begun to take a more confrontational approach, having previously confined its activities largely to rallies, marches and other lawful forms of protest. Even the “staid” environmental groups based in Washington have slowly started to embrace more radical tactics. Climate activists are starting to abandon their dogmatic attachment to pacifism, choosing instead to work toward destroying the “machines” inflicting the damage — but will such a radical idea prove effective? The journalist Matthew Wolfe delves into the world of the activists, and questions the future of environmental activism.

Audio player

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Matthew Wolfe. This week's Sunday read is my article from the New York Times
0:07.6	magazine, The Rise and Fall of America's Environmentalist Underground.
0:13.9	Okay, so this story is about a group of environmental activists in the Pacific Northwest who banded
0:20.5	together in the 1990s and called themselves the Earth Liberation Front.
0:27.5	First of the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, were concerned with the ways in which the
0:32.4	planet was being harmed, from deforestation to climate change, which they believed were
0:38.9	placing us on a slow path to ecological catastrophe. They believed that the people in power simply
0:44.8	weren't doing enough to address the problem.
0:48.4	So the ELF decided to try a new tactic, and that new tactic was arson. They began burning
0:56.7	down buildings of institutions. They said were complicit in destroying the environment.
1:03.5	Like a timber mill or a slaughterhouse or a ski resort that was going to expand into
1:09.2	an old-growth forest. So over the next decade, the ELF carried out a massive campaign of
1:16.2	ecosabotage. And by the early 2000s, their activities led to the FBI describing them as
1:23.2	the most wanted domestic terrorist group in the country, even though they'd never killed
1:28.0	anyone.
1:31.8	The 1970s were a sort of golden age of environmentalism. At the time, there was this political consensus
1:39.0	around protecting the environment, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered
1:44.3	Species Act all passed Congress with huge bipartisan majorities. And there was also the
1:50.0	growth of big environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and
1:54.6	Greenpeace. But by the 1980s, as the right wing began to push back against environmental
2:00.1	protections, a lot of activists felt that the larger, more mainstream environmental groups
2:05.4	were compromising too much. So they pushed for more aggressive goals and tactics. This
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.