by Thomas E. Foss

Created on: July 25, 2008

If I am trying to be as open minded as I can on this topic, I can understand why environmentalists would be labeled terrorists. Like terrorists, environmentalists do occasionally use fear to argue their point of view. The main talking point appears to be that we should be worried about the weather and rising oceans in the future. Terrorists on the other hand, also use fear. The difference is, however, that terrorists use threats that are within their control, while environmentalists use threats that are outside their control. Terrorists' threats include use of violence. Environmentalists would usually not pursue such tactics, but rather warn about future events.

I believe that the common understanding of the word terrorist is someone who is fighting for something, usually killing civilians or alternatively striking a military target at a time when civilian costs are bigger than they would have to be. Environmentalists do occasionally argue for the use of force (through laws), but the difference is that the means argued for are not violent. The other difference is that most environmentalists would support democratic means, and they try to affect the democratic political parties to change their behavior. Thus, while both terrorists and environmentalists wish to reduce the freedom of people and countries, this is done in different ways. While terrorists has threatened Denmark several times lately, with one of their goals being to make Denmark withdraw from Iraq, environmentalists, on the other hand, might wish to ban polluting cars. The latter is obviously not done by threatening to bomb drivers of SUVs.

Some might see these two acts as similar, but my belief is that there is a qualitative difference between them. I think the families of victims in terrorism attacks around the world would see Al Gore and those responsible for 9/11 as all that similar. The difference, to me, is way too big to group them together. Any any group including both would lose meaning.

This is one of my reasons for completely rejecting the idea. Using the term terrorism as a label seems popular today, but using it for political purposes makes the term lose value. The word should not be a label we use subjectively, it should rather have a clear, objective meaning we can grasp. If environmentalists were terrorists, the word would lose any objective meaning it still has, and it would purely be a subjective word destined for whatever person, group or organization one would like to give it that label. This constitutes a loss for the language, for communication and for those talking about terrorists who are terrorists.

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