Ecotage ( ) is

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

carried out for environmental reasons.

Cases

All damage figures below are in

United States dollar The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

s. Some well-known acts of ecotage have included: *Circa 1969 to 1985 – ecological activist James F. Phillips, operating covertly under the codename "The Fox", carried out a series of ecotage actions and subvertising campaigns against corporations that were polluting the Fox River in

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. *1998 – Arson of buildings at Vail Mountain in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

by the

ELF An elf (: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic peoples, Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in Norse mythology, North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' ...

(Earth Liberation Front). *March 11, 1999 – Genetically engineered potatoes uprooted at Crop and Food research centre in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. *December 25, 1999 – In Monmouth, Oregon, fire destroyed the main office of the Boise Cascade logging company costing over $1 million ($ million in dollars).

claimed responsibility. *2001 – Members of the ELF were prosecuted for setting off a firebomb that caused $7 million in damages ($ million in dollars) at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

's Center for Urban Horticulture. *August 1, 2003 – A 206-unit condominium being built in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

was burned down causing damage in excess of $20 million ($ million in dollars). A 12-foot banner at the scene read "If you build it, we will burn it," signed, "The E.L.F.s are mad." *August 22, 2003 – Arsonists associated with the

attacked several car dealerships in east suburban

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, burning down a warehouse and vandalizing over 100 vehicles, most of them SUVs or

Hummer Hummer (stylized in all caps) is an American brand of Pickup truck, pickups launched in 1992 when AM General began selling a civilian version of the M998 Humvee. Although discontinued in 2010, Hummer returned as a model under GMC (automob ...

s (chosen for their notoriously poor fuel efficiency) and causing over $1 million in damage ($ million in dollars). *2016 - Activists from Climate Direct Action in the USA turned the emergency valves of 4 pipelines carrying oil to Canada causing the stop of up to 2.8 million barrels of oil a day. In the action the activists had to cause some property damage in order to access both the facilities and unlock the valves; they warned the present workers about what was going to happen. *From 2016 to 2017 - Activists Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, were responsible for around 6 million dollars damages to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) construction sites and to the pipeline itself. Jessica Reznicek, was sentenced to 96 months imprisonment on June 30, 2021; Ruby Katherine Montoya was sentenced to 6 years. *August 7, 2023 – Tyre extinguishers drilling holes in 60 SUVs in a Vertu Jaguar showroom in Exeter, Devon, UK for both social and environmental reasons. *January 20, 2024 – Shut the System activists cut fiber optic cables to many insurance companies in the UK demanding them to immediately end all underwriting for fossil fuel expansion projects.

In literature and popular culture

In their 1972 environmental-action book '' Ecotage!'', Sam Love and David Obst claimed to have coined the word "ecotage" by combining "ecology" and "sabotage" to describe a "branch of tactical biology". In fiction, the practice of ecotage was popularized in

Edward Abbey Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) 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 nov ...

's 1975 anarchistic novel '' The Monkey Wrench Gang'' and its sequel '' Hayduke Lives! (''1990). It has also been treated in other novels including Carl Hiaasen's '' Tourist Season'' (1986) and '' Sick Puppy'' (2000), Neal Stephenson's '' Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller'' (1988), T. Coraghessan Boyle's '' A Friend of the Earth'' (2000), Dave Foreman's ''The Lobo Outback Funeral Home'' (2000), and Richard Melo's '' Jokerman 8'' (2004). Radical depictions of environmental protection also inform major Native American novels including N. Scott Momaday's '' House Made of Dawn'' (1968), James Welch's '' Winter in the Blood'' (1974), and Leslie Marmon Silko's ''

Ceremony A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan language, Etruscan origin, via the Latin . Religious and civil ...

'' (1977). Several books written specifically for children and young adults have also explored radical responses to environmental endangerment including Carl Hiaasen's ''Hoot!'' (2002), '' Flush'' (2005), and '' Scat'' (2009), Claire Dean's ''Girlwood'' (2008), S. Terrell French's ''Operation Redwood'' (2011), and Silas House and Neela Vaswani's ''Same Sun Here'' (2012). Ecotage is mentioned in the Mars trilogy of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson as a means of protest shown by the Red political party. Typically, the "Reds" would destroy terraforming ventures in an effort to slow the terraforming of Mars. The

Concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

miniseries ''Think Like a Mountain'' is centred about ecotage aimed to protect first growth forests in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

. Ecotage also informs movies such as '' Choke Canyon'' (1986) and '' On Deadly Ground'' (1994).

Academic literature

In an article released on 23 May 2024 by Springer Nature, Dylan Manson tries to develop a just war inspired theory that could justify defensive activism and hence eco-tage: "The conscientious defensive activist can only engage in permissible eco-sabotage when she acts with just cause as constrained by necessity, with proportionality, with a reasonable chance of success, and without putting life at excessive risk." The author makes then a distinction between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric eco-tage and questions whether the real cases he brings meet or not the aforementioned moral criteria. In The Morality of Ecosabotage (2001), Thomas Young argues that some arguments against Ecosabotage cannot prove it always wrong and that there’s some ground for a utilitarian justification of ecotage.

References

External links

* *{{Commonscatinline
Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching
- Online text Eco-terrorism Radical environmentalism Protest tactics 1970s neologisms Sabotage

Cases

In literature and popular culture

Academic literature

See also

References

Further reading

External links