The seminal work of fiction featuring eco-terrorism as a major focal point is Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang , wherein a group of environmentalists disrupt various projects that are damaging to the environment. The novel inspired the Earth First! movement and directly influenced the Earth Liberation Front. The term "monkeywrenching", in the sense of sabotage, derives from the book. [1] [2] [3] The 1985 film Pale Rider , directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, likewise frames eco-terrorism positively; in the film, the vigilante justice morality which is a common feature of the Western genre is applied to environmentally destructive mining practices. [4] In contrast, Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear portrays eco-terrorists—in this case a group of environmentalists who seek to raise awareness about anthropogenic global warming by creating extreme weather events—in a negative light. [3]
The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 precipitated an increase in eco-terrorism appearing in fiction. Examples include Paul Di Filippo's 1993 short story "Up the Lazy River" and Rebecca Ore's 1995 novel Gaia's Toys . [5] Besides film and literature, the theme has also appeared in video games such as Final Fantasy VII . [6] In more recent years, eco-terrorist antagonists such as those in the 2018 superhero films Aquaman and Avengers: Infinity War have been portrayed as being right about the issues but wrong about the solutions. The portrayal of eco-terrorist protagonists also shifted in the second half of the 2010s; whereas in earlier works such as the 2013 film Night Moves they would be motivated by idealism, later works such as the 2017 film First Reformed and the 2018 novel The Overstory have them motivated by the existential dread of perceiving human society as fundamentally unsustainable in relation to nature. [7]
A Friend of the Earth is a 2000 novel by T.C. Boyle. The novel is a story of environmental destruction set in 2025; as a result of global warming and the greenhouse effect, the climate has drastically changed, and, accordingly, biodiversity is a thing of the past.
Radical environmentalism is a grass-roots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged from an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism.
Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which emphasises social organization, freedom and self-fulfillment.
Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching is a book edited by Dave Foreman, with a foreword by Edward Abbey.
Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property.
Ecotage is sabotage carried out for environmental reasons.
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.
The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989), published in 1975.
William David Foreman was an American advocate for the conservation of wild lands and wildlife. He was a co-founder of three organizations: Earth First!, the Wildlands Project, and the Rewilding Institute. A prominent member of the radical environmentalism movement beginning in the 1980s, his advocacy and actions shifted in the early 1990s into collaborations with professionals in the field of conservation biology.
George Washington Hayduke is a fictional character in Edward Abbey's novels The Monkey Wrench Gang and Hayduke Lives! Hayduke is portrayed as a rugged individualist in the books by Abbey, and has a predilection for working independently when protecting the environment. He is at first skeptical of working with the rest of the monkey wrench gang early in the first book, but soon collaborates with them.
State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organizations have disputed the views presented in the book.
Ecotage! was a 1972 paperback book edited by Sam Love and David Obst and published by Pocket Books.
Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups, or individuals, challenge an established institution such as a law, economic system, social order, or government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent protest and civil disobedience to vandalism, terrorism, and other violent activity.
Ecofascism is a term used to describe individuals and groups which combine environmentalism with fascism.
The Green Scare is legal action by the US government against the radical environmental movement, that occurred mostly in the 2000s. It alludes to the Red Scares, periods of fear over communist infiltration of US society.
Christian views on environmentalism vary greatly amongst different Christians and Christian denominations.
Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is a radical environmental movement that perceives the existence of industrial civilization itself as the greatest threat to the natural environment, and calls for its dismantlement and a return to a pre-agricultural level of technology. Although DGR operates as an aboveground group, it calls on others to use underground and violent tactics such as attacks on infrastructure or assassination. A repeated claim in DGR literature is that acts of sabotage could cause a cascading effect and lead to the end of civilization. DGR and far-right ecofascists use similar accelerationist and anti-majoritarian tactics, seeking systemic collapse.
Alan Marshall is an Australian author, scholar, and artist working within the discipline of environmental studies. He is noted as a key scholar in environmental ethics and for his investigations into eco-friendly cities of the future. Marshall has for a longtime been a teaching / research fellow at two universities in Slovakia; UPJS and Prešovská univerzita v Prešove.
Climate fiction is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works of climate fiction may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future, or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Climate fiction typically involves anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
Ecofiction is the branch of literature that encompasses nature or environment-oriented works of fiction. While this super genre's roots are seen in classic, pastoral, magical realism, animal metamorphoses, science fiction, and other genres, the term ecofiction did not become popular until the 1960s when various movements created the platform for an explosion of environmental and nature literature, which also inspired ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Environmentalists have claimed that the human relationship with the ecosystem often went unremarked in earlier literature.