Environmentalists whine a lot. I whine mostly about biodiversity loss, global warming and mismanagement of ecosystems. As an environmental scientist, I whine with copious data, stultifying statistics and assumed authority. Even friends get tired of my harping and ask for solutions, not more details about the problems.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve studied radical environmental movements. Fifteen years ago, I met with a small group of them in a forest in Tennessee. One among that group now faces sentencing before a federal court in Oregon for crimes attributed to the Earth and Animal Liberation fronts.
The fire season has barely started, but the costs of wildfires in Florida are already soaring. Few homes have been destroyed so far, but with more dry weather likely, more will probably go up in flames before the summer rains start. Given that the disastrous fires of 1998 didn’t get cranking until June, 2007 is likely to go down as the costliest fire season on record.