Editor's note: For individual eco-adventurers pushing the limits, click here.
Being extreme sure isn’t what it used to be. Just ask Henry David Thoreau. Considered by many to be the original eco-extremist, his argument for simple living is a bit tame by today’s standards. Not that it wasn’t prescient, it’s just all that bean growing seems...well, less than extreme when you consider that Walden Pond was just a mile and change from his home—close enough for regular food and laundry deliveries from Mom.
In his defense, Thoreau never claimed to be an eco-extremist. But how have the frontlines of hardcore activism changed over the years? Here’s a sampling of the past four decades.
On September 15, 1971, a fishing boat chartered by a handful of activists set sail for Amchitka, Alaska. The boaters planned to protest nuclear testing in the area, which was near a major fault line, but were intercepted by the Navy’s USS Confidence. The rebels were ultimately turned back (and the test bomb went off as scheduled), but the confrontation captured international attention and sympathy, and nuclear weapons testing ceased in the area. Greenpeace was born.
Once considered threatening enough to warrant a covert bombing of their flagship by the French government, Greenpeace has since managed to shake loose much of its extremist image. But they haven’t exactly gone soft. Consider Emma Gibson. The British mother of three has stood in front of oncoming trains, swum in front of coal-carrying barges, and climbed the British Parliament.
“I would never do anything where I was putting my health or life at risk,” insists Gibson, who still finds time to commute to the London Greenpeace branch four days a week. “That would be completely unacceptable.”
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In 1971, law student Ronnie Lee began Band of Mercy as a ragtag group of militant animal lovers based in England. Casting themselves as a sort of Underground Railroad for animals, their activities escalated from petty crimes to arson. Shortly after the group’s first animal evacuation (six guinea pigs from a guinea pig farm), the group changed its name to Animal Liberation Front.
Over the next 30 years, the leaderless resistance has expanded to more than 40 countries, aided by a decentralized structure that diffuses hierarchy and responsibility (and a rad recruiting video).
Despite early insistence on nonviolence toward “sentient beings,” by the 1980s, a militant faction called the Animal Rights Militia had emerged, graduating to scare tactics such as letter-bombing and injecting chocolate bars with rat poison (later recanted as a hoax). Messing with a man’s chocolate? Now that’s extreme.
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If cancer thought like humans... Video: VHEMT.org
VOLUNTARY HUMAN EXTINCTION MOVEMENT (VHEMT)
No, this isn’t China’s newest policy to combat overcrowding. It’s an actual global movement calling for—you guessed it—no new children.
“We’re pro-children once the child is here,” explains Les U. Knight, founder of the VHEMT. “What we're against is conception."
Started in 1991 in Portland, Oregon, VHEMT (pronounced “vehement”) has gained traction in recent years, with some mainstream media outlets echoing similar sentiments about the responsibilities of bearing children today (Octo-mom, anyone?).
But before you drink the Kool-Aid, Knight himself admits the idea isn’t about to set the world ablaze.
“Voluntary human extinction is unlikely,” he says, “but it’s the moral thing to do.”
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On April Fool’s Night, 1992, a group of activists in Brighton, England, took matters into their own hands in protesting a local peat company. Frustrated with ineffective boycotting, they destroyed more than £50,000 worth of pumps, trucks and machinery, dubbing themselves "the Elves.”
The movement spread like wildfire. Targeting cars, buildings, and fast-food restaurants, the Elves became as infamous for their messages as their criminal activity. When they burned down a condominium in San Diego in 2003, they put up a banner that read: “If you build it, we will burn it.” Three weeks later, they returned to the city to burn 125 SUVs and Hummers, scrawling “I love pollution” in spray paint.
But it’s not all fun and games with the Elves. After mistakenly destroying 30 years of research at University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture (they thought the labs were doing genetic modification research; they weren’t), three were imprisoned for up to 13 years. One member, William Rodgers, committed suicide in his cell by suffocating himself with a plastic bag.
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SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY
Paul Watson is an opinionated man. In 1977, he was ousted from the board of Greenpeace for having what the organization described as “too powerful a drive, too unrelenting a desire to push himself front and center.” This is the man, after all, who famously called for the mass depopulation of the planet to 1 billion (the global population in 1804) and has called the human race a “virus.”
But Watson is also determined. He started the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977—the same year he was dismissed from Greenpeace—and has been badgering the whaling industry ever since.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win,” said Watson at a 2002 convention. “Then you write the history.”
Though Sea Shepherd methods occasionally border on the crude (think ship-ramming), the cause has been championed by celebrities and organizations worldwide. Retired Price Is Right host and animal activist Bob Barker recently donated $5 million for a new boat, and Watson’s tactics have led to his own television show and even his very own South Park parody. Maybe it pays to be extreme after all.
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