Seattle Times piece re: Eco-Terrorism

Jerry Large of the Seattle Times had a pretty good take on the Street of dreams arsons, and the green movement in general, yesterday:

Arson? Now it's uneasy being green

By Jerry Large

Seattle Times staff columnist

I might have to stop recycling, maybe even buy a really big SUV.

Who wants to be on the same side of an issue as the eco-terrorists who destroyed a group of houses near Maltby this week?If that's how you save the environment, count me out.

Later he comes to the good part, which sums up my uneasiness with the whole green movement. (Well, aside from the whole sanctimonious bit):

Slow movement is frustrating, and in this case a good argument could be made that dropping a bunch of mansions in an ecologically sensitive spot doesn't make sense no matter how much cork flooring they have.

The thing is, we are way past any kind of purity when it comes to our relationship with the ecosystems we inhabit.

Think of all the resources those fires wasted.

Every aspect of our attempts to reduce our impact is full of complexity and compromise.

I embraced compact fluorescent light bulbs because they save energy. Turns out disposing of them poses a hazard because they contain mercury.

How about the push to use more biofuels to get away from burning oil? Most of that fuel is made from corn. Growing corn for ethanol means using lots of fertilizers made from petroleum and pesticides. It adds nitrogen to the air. It also raises the price of food as corn is diverted to energy.

Unless we go back to a hunter-gatherer existence, we're going to face constant choices in which there is no room for a terrorist's absolutism.

Again: If one expects ones actions to have any positive effect, one must consider the consequences, and these people obviously did not.