OPINION/COMMENTARY

Green War Gets Radical

This book is a reality check for those who still view the environmental movement through rose-tinted glasses. While it does not sketch the rise of environmentalism and the launching of Earth Day on Lenin's birthday on April 22, 1970—it delivers one into a mature, popular and well-funded 25-year old movement. It paints a vivid picture of the Greens in action in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest that is so different from the conventional view of environmentalism, that all but the least reflective reader will ask: What is going on here? "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari" documents the efforts of left-wing, radical environmentalist and Earth First! leader Bari to organize the Redwood Summer in 1990. Her goal was to gather thousands of people from across the nation in the California coastal counties of Mendocino and Humbolt and shut down the timber industry, especially the harvest of redwood trees. Large corporations, their sawmills and logging jobs were specifically targeted. Their tactics involved confrontational marches and blockades, trespass, chaining themselves to trees and trucks and the destruction of logging equipment. This escalated into continuous confrontations and near-violence. Loggers and sawmill workers were deeply angry at the efforts to destroy their industry, jobs, families and communities. Although opposed by traditional natural resource users, the Greens got support from liberals, soccer moms, hippies, artists and an army of marijuana growers and users. Fears of violence and concerns about ecoterrorism brought in police departments, the California Highway Patrol and the FBI....