In Defense of Mother Earth: Radical Environmentalism and Ecoterrorism in the United States, 1980–2000s

This chapter considers the definition of ecoterrorism and its close association with radical environmentalism. It focuses in particular on the group Earth First!, the tactic of “tree spiking,” the arrest of five radical environmentalists in Arizona in the late 1980s, and the association of the Unabomber with radical environmentalism. The chapter suggests that the use of violence, sabotage, and extralegal tactics by radical environmentalists has generally been a response to perceived shortcomings in conventional reform and traditional democratic processes, rather than an inherent product of radical environmentalists’ ethos or disposition.