Monkey wrenches

Just as we take up the topic of (re-) wilding in Environmental Ethics, it's reported that the founder of the Rewilding Institute has died.

David Foreman, who as the co-founder of the environmental group Earth First! urged his followers to sabotage bulldozers, slash logging-truck tires and topple high-voltage power lines, earning him a reputation as a visionary, a rabble-rouser, a prankster and, even among some fellow activists, a domestic terrorist, died on Sept. 19 at his home in Albuquerque. He was 75...

[Earth First!'s] members drew inspiration from the writer Edward Abbey, whose 1975 novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” depicts a group of eco-warriors who attack increasingly grandiose targets — including the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona — in the name of the environment... Earth First! and Mr. Foreman were not just more strident than the mainstream. They advocated a different philosophy, known as deep ecology, which holds that nature has inherent value, not just in its utility to people. Their vision included returning vast swaths of land to nature, ripping out any trace of human intervention.

Coincidentally, I heard myself in class last time recalling (not endorsing) Edward Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang shenanigans, and its "incendiary call to protect the American wilderness" at all costs, legal or not. “My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don’t know anything else worth saving. That's simple, right?”

It's too simple. Earth First! is too simple, and humanity vs. nature is wrongheaded. Like it or not, we're part of it. We have to find a way to own and inhabit that identity, and not become pro- (really anti-) natural self-loathing humans. We have to hang on to our cosmopolitan pedigree, "starstuff contemplating the stars" etc. That's how we'll get back to the garden, by remembering where we came from.

David Foreman probably wouldn't have appreciated Paul Hawken's approach to regenerative ecology. His obituary reports that he called himself "a redneck for the environment" and resented "the arrival of a new, younger cohort of activists who wanted to inject social justice issues into Earth First!’s environmentalism." 

But his legacy has been constructive, in spite of himself. 

After his decade with Earth First!, Mr. Foreman and several of his colleagues created a new organization, the Wildlands Network, which called on governments and nonprofit organizations to buy up large chunks of land and return it to its natural state. He later created the Rewilding Institute to develop policy ideas to realize that vision.

Rewilding our world is one of the most constructive things we can do for the future. No monkey wrench required.