The recent Extinction Rebellion campaign used disruptive direct action, peacefully of course, and there is a long history of this sort of thing going back to Greenpeace activities in the 1970s. Yet as the scientific evidence piles up, and as therefore the moral urgency becomes all the greater, so the demands become increasingly unrealistic. Zero emissions next week or we all die! Elements of environmentalism are starting to take on millenarian characteristics. The children\u2019s crusade of Greta Thunberg is upon us. \u201cHow dare you?\u201d she shrieks, with purist zeal, she and her followers demanding that all other interests and all other causes must be radically subordinated to their own \u2013 for their own is the cause of all mankind. Their moral claim is absolute, as is their claim to truth. Any dissent is \u201cdenial\u201d. The scientific consensus is irrefutable, shout all those with more time to carry placards than pore over data sets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peaceful movements have gone violent for far lesser causes\nthan the very future of the biosphere. Within a few months of the catholic\ncivil rights marches starting in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, there were\nnationalist bombs in Belfast. Within a few years of Gandhi\u2019s famous and noble\npassive resistance campaign in India, there were nationalist bombs in Bengal. The\nBlack Panthers were a world away from Dr Martin Luther King Jr, but they sprang\nfrom the same source. Even the hippy movement of the 1960s, in particular\ncontexts, warped into the far-left terrorism of the Italian Red Brigades and\nGermany\u2019s Baader-Meinhof gang. Given the extremity of the stakes (as they see\nit at least) the wilder fringes of the green movement may yet splinter off in\nthe same manner. The language of many green activists, however mildly spoken,\nis all about a tipping point being reached in the health of the planet. This\nbeing so, it may also prove to be the tipping point from peaceful activism into\nviolence against property and person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One might counter-argue that there is no history of green terrorism\nin the same way that there was with, say, Irish nationalism or revolutionary\nanarchism. That is true as such, but it ignores the very great overlap between\nrevolutionary Marxism and the radical wing of the green movement. There is a\nvery clear dovetailing in their analyses of capitalism (exploiter of the people\n\/ destroyer of the planet), of the role of the state (instrument of bourgeois\ncapitalist oppression \/ serving the needs of profit-driven multi-nationals),\nand of the necessary course of action (bloody revolution \/ radical direct\naction). This wing of the green movement has no truck with the idea that\ncapitalism, with its in-built innovative dynamism, may offer a technological\nroad out of the impending crisis. Revolutionary socialists and anarchists were\nmore than happy to use violence in the past, and I am willing to bet that if\nyou were to bring Vladimir Lenin or Rosa Luxemburg into our own era, they would\nuse the same analytical structure to advocate violent action as well as mass\nprotest against the new threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any green terrorist splinter movement would be global, not\nlocal. The cause is nothing if not global, after all. It would display the same\ndecentralised, networked characteristics of current Islamic fundamentalist\nterrorism. Green militants may mount attacks on, say, drilling installations,\nports, mines and other infrastructure directly connected to the fossil fuel\nindustry or other industries deemed particularly culpable. They may even seek\nthe more generalised effect of de-stabilising the global economy through\nanything from spectacular acts against financial hubs to the targeted\nkidnapping and assassination of company executives or government ministers. The\nnumbers involved may be small, but their support base will be larger and their\nimpact will be disproportionate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vast majority of informed opinion globally (including my\nown) will currently be very sympathetic to the message of the green movement.\nHabitat destruction, species extinction, plastic pollution\u2026 one could go on\nwith the list of tragedies. All these, and probably also climate change, must\nbe laid at the door of a malfunctioning economic system that needs a serious\noverhaul. It would be a shame if green terrorism were to damage a noble cause and\nretard that overhaul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"