Eco-terrorists defy society

By Mike Rosen Copyright 1998 The Denver Post November 20, 1998

A news story this week announced the opposition of environmental groups to a proposed expansion of the Breckenridge ski area. Well, stop the presses! Call 60 Minutes! Talk about "Man bites dog!" How unusual, enviros opposed to development.

Personally, I don't pay much attention to them anymore. Dogmatic environmental activists have succumbed to the Boy Crying Wolf Syndrome. The hysteria and alarmism surrounding the highly tendentious global warming theory is a good example. They protest too much. Prudent environmental concerns are one thing. I'm glad we've taken decisive steps over the past few decades to clean up our water and air. Catalytic converters on automobiles were a good idea, as are restrictions on wood burning when weather conditions dictate. It's good that we go after toxic dumpers and that we reclaim polluted sites. Early environmentalists championed these causes, and I commend them for it. But like activists and crusaders of other stripes - labor unions come immediately to mind - they don't know when to moderate their passions and demands.

Actually, their immoderation is by design, under a process known as the political dialectic. First, you stake out your territory at the extreme. This is called the thesis. That's countered by the opposition's response, the antithesis. Ultimately, the political process produces a compromise, the synthesis. The more extreme the initial thesis, the activists calculate, the closer to that position will be the eventual synthesis. This notion encourages activists to make unreasonable demands. In the practical world, legitimate environmental concerns have to be balanced with social and economic trade-offs. That's where the rest of us come in.

Following the recent arson attack of eco-terrorists in Vail, I imagine the good people of Breckenridge must now be on their guard. Enviro zealotry, to this new breed of sociopath, trumps all other considerations. Taking credit for the fires at Vail that destroyed property, vegetation and animal life was something called the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), with a new twist on destroying the village in order to save it. ELF is a splinter group that broke with EarthFirst!, of tree-spiking fame, because the latter wasn't violent enough. ELF declared that it set the Vail fires "on behalf of the lynx." The lynx have neither confirmed nor denied this, perhaps because they haven't been seen in the vicinity of Vail for at least 20 years.

The liberal media stretched mightily to impute guilt-by-association-of-political-philosophy to conservatives for the Oklahoma City bombing, wildly asserting that their philosophy incited rabid militia types to violence. We heard the same kind of argument attempting to link the religious right to the Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming. You would think they would use the same reasoning to link the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund to ELF and the Vail fires. Fat chance.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, picked two of his victims from an EarthFirst! hit list. We can see what kind of a mind-set we're up against. ELF has issued a thinly veiled threat of further acts of violence against recreational skiers and perhaps the 1999 World Alpine Skiing Championships in Vail this winter. Who the hell do they think they are? In the words of Eric Hoffer: "A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority; what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority." I enjoy skiing at Vail; I'll continue to do so. Vail Associates answers to its shareholders, its customers, its neighbors and a host of government regulators. Tree huggers/burners don't have veto power. A project like the Category III expansion has to jump through a forest of regulatory hoops before it becomes a reality. The 885 acres is a relative flyspeck in the context of U.S. Forest Service real estate. Lynx and snail darters can be perfectly content setting up housekeeping somewhere down the road.

Eco-terrorists don't own the Gore Mountain range. They haven't been elected to office, and they won't be permitted to hold the rest of society hostage. If they choose to break things and kill people, sooner or later they'll wind up behind bars. Maybe we should put them on display at the Denver Zoo - in the lynx cage. Mike Rosen's talk show airs on 850 KOA, 9 a.m. to noon weekdays.

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