Less Ambiguous Eco-Terrorism

Eco-terrorist James Jay Lee has recently been shot and killed for taking and threatening hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters. In his later years, he was awoken by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and he had become a militant environmentalist and supporter of the anthropogenic global warming theory. A recently released manifesto reveals that he held a grudge against the Discovery Channel for their lackluster efforts to support the theory and demonize the skeptics. And as purveyors of information offered for public assimilation, he felt it is their duty to do exactly that.

The manifesto he leaves behind is truly frightening. The diatribes found therein read nothing like the musings of a student of science or a concerned environmental activist, but rather like the ideological ravings of a lunatic. And it raises the disturbing question, how closely does his fanaticism align with that of the current environmentalist movement?

Unlike other manifestos espousing hateful ideologies, James Jay Lee’s does not direct his hate at any religion, race, or culture. Mein Kampf, for example, presented the evil yet focused arguments that the Bolsheviks and Jews were cancerous elements, a threat that must be purged. Lee, on the other hand, espouses a more holistic hatred, as all human beings are equally malignant in his eyes. At numerous points in his rant, Lee references human civilization as “filth,” and he demands that the Discovery Channel’s programming expose humanity’s “disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed.” There are few other binding values in his ideology beyond these labels of humankind.

But the clues to Jay Lee’s eccentric sickness do not end there. He delves to deeper abysses by proclaiming, “Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”

Talk about a “final solution.” Most cultures across the globe correctly perceive children as innocent and understand the need for their protection. Only a sick and twisted mind could hold the idea that children are the disease of the Earth. The sane inhabitants of this planet view children as the potential means by which humanity can better the world for nature and mankind.

If James Jay Lee were alone in such environmental fanaticism, there might not be significant cause for alarm. But thousands of activists and even accredited environmentalists have professed such ridiculous beliefs and been absolved in the past. For example, David Graber, a biologist of the National Park Service, is quoted as saying something remarkably comparable to Jay Lee’s recent appeal for the culling of mankind:

I know scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line ... we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth.... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

Even though few environmentalists vocally espouse these extremes, such unnoticed rhetoric is frightening because these sentiments about the human detriment to the planet are foundational in the environmentalists’ ideology. Rarely do these beliefs manifest themselves as violence or destruction beyond anomalies like Lee’s attack or random acts of destruction like the torching of a Hummer dealership, but they often manifest themselves as political rhetoric. In recent years, procreation and population growth have been accused as the inevitable culprits of prophesied environmental catastrophes, and have been used as arguments to promote tax credits for non-procreating individuals and as ammunition to expand abortive practices, including support of federal abortion funding.

So James Jay Lee’s actions may have been extreme. But when set against the ideology of many anthropogenic global warming activists, how radical were his core beliefs?

William Sullivan