Redneck For Wilderness

Felicia Nimue Ackerman writes, “When the earth comes first, humans come second, if at all.”

I am sorry to be the one to break this to her, but we are parasites who live off this planet, and we have been poisoning it and ourselves in the name of profit since the Industrial Revolution began. We have contaminated our food supply, our water, and our air, and we have the audacity to complain about the high cost of healthcare.

Which humans are we now putting first? Certainly not all humans. The United States has been exploiting people since its inception. Americans feel threatened by the idea that we may have to give up some of our creature comforts so that all humanity can continue to live on this planet.

The planet will survive no matter what we do to it, but if we don’t start putting the earth first, we will undoubtedly kill ourselves off. It’s our choice, and we are not choosing just for ourselves, but for future generations.

As someone who’s known Dave Foreman since the early days of Earth First!, I was disappointed with Jeremy Lloyd’s interview [“Redneck for Wilderness,” December 2005], which overlooks the complexity of both the man and the issues, and consequently puts a stamp of approval on his revisionist Earth First! history.

Foreman is a brilliant man and a talented performance artist who has stepped over the line from artistic license to fraudulent misrepresentation. Like so many charismatic visionaries, he attracts worshipful admirers while failing to embody the truths and values he espouses. His prideful authoritarian bent and blatant hypocrisy undermined the radical conservation movement more than the FBI provocateurs did, and certainly more than the anarchistic animal-rights and antiglobalization activists he disparages.

I would have been fine with this interview if only it had given a more complete picture. Earth First! was, from the very beginning, made up mostly of counter-culture types, not “rednecks,” and the “hippies” were more willing than the conservatives to get arrested for their beliefs. It was founded not just by Republican Foreman but also by ex-Yippie wild man Mike Roselle, honestly conservative conservationist Howie Wolke, and soft-mannered Ron Kezar. The “monkeywrenching” (sabotage of property) that Foreman advocated was mostly carried out by the anarchists he derided, and, heroic or not, it proved ineffectual in the face of unfavorable public opinion and a government increasingly adept at control. Foreman alienated the movement he helped start by calling all the shots in an autocratic manner. When the FBI arrested him, he distanced himself from his radical stance, as well as his codefendants, who had believed in him and followed the advice in his sabotage how-to book Ecodefense. They weren’t let off, like him, but ended up serving the prison time.

The megalinked corridors and expanded wilderness areas Foreman speaks of could indeed benefit animals, but would hurt the rural people he claims to care about. One has only to go into any cafe or store in the Gila bioregion and read the petitions against such proposals to measure the terror and anger they have inspired. If we are to advocate creating places free of traffic and development, there’s no advantage in downplaying the real human costs.

Foreman played the “Republican conservationist” when the conservatives were in power, pretended to be a tribalist communitarian when Earth First! was in its heyday, then returned to being a make-believe redneck when the country’s politics shifted to the right again. The only thing he has been true to is the concept of wilderness — which he promotes at the expense of the rural people and communities he says he supports.

In Jeremy Lloyd’s interview, Dave Foreman is both inspiring and infuriating, as usual.

He argues that we have to face some tough truths, but neglects to point out that the sheer amount of stuff Americans have is completely incompatible with the survival of millions of species, including our own. Though it is heartwarming to read about saving black-footed ferrets, the reason those animals and so many others are endangered is that Americans consume too much.

Foreman complains that we don’t talk about overpopulation anymore; it’s “too controversial.” But do we have a right to dissuade other human beings from having children while each of us occupies the space of six? Global responsibility starts with personal responsibility. Calling for wildlife corridors under freeways skirts the fundamental issues while pandering to our desire to have it both ways: to be generous in spirit and irresponsible in lifestyle.

Foreman says he needs his SUV because “how else am I going to haul my gear to the river or back to trail heads?” Real men walk or ride bicycles or horses to find wilderness. Real men fish with an eight-ounce spool of line, a stick, and a grasshopper. They don’t need a two-ton vehicle to haul around a bunch of gear. Real men more closely resemble my seventy-year-old neighbor, who walks a mile to the store to buy groceries because “it’s just a little thing I can do for the world.”

If Foreman weren’t so compelling, if he didn’t care so much about the planet, I wouldn’t be so disappointed in the interview. He’s got to know, in his heart, that our own greed is the real problem. He should leave the freeway tunnels to the government biologists. You’re a mouth of a great social movement, Mr. Foreman. We need you to speak the hard truths.

As the writer who interviewed Dave Foreman [“Redneck for Wilderness,” December 2005], I disagree with some letter writers in the April 2006 Correspondence.

Jesse Wolf Hardin’s memories about the origins of Earth First! don’t jibe with the facts. If an alternative version to Susan Zakin’s authoritative account of the group, Coyotes and Town Dogs, exists, I have never seen it. Hardin also decries designated wilderness areas for hurting rural people and communities, but counties with wilderness areas actually have faster growth in employment, per capita income, and total income than counties without wilderness areas. That’s not to mention the other benefits of wilderness to rural residents (I’m one myself): protection of watersheds, soil, water quality, ecological stability, plant and animal gene pools for future medical research, wildlife habitat for hunters, and multiple recreational opportunities.

I invite Felicia Nimue Ackerman to furnish evidence of any wolf predation on humans whatsoever in the wilds of North America. None exists. I was saddened to find such lies in the pages of The Sun.

It is tempting to blame consumerism for environmental destruction, as Micah Posner does, but consumer capitalism can be traced back only to the First World War, whereas environmental destruction on this continent began several centuries before that. Posner’s idea of a “real man” as someone who eschews modern conveniences misses the point. The conservation movement needs all kinds of supporters, not just those who live up to Posner’s ideals, or mine.

As a quiche-eating, latte-sipping, overeducated Sierra Club member living in urban Venice, California, I enjoyed your interview with Dave Foreman. He’s done a lot to raise awareness of our threatened wilderness, and if he has to raise some liberals’ hackles along the way, so be it. But he might keep in mind that there are urban environmentalists who love Edward Abbey, have farming roots, and are not quite sure why he feels a need to engender the antagonism he does. Good grief, if he’s in my neighborhood, I’ll buy the man a beer.