Truth and Consequences

Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, having already skewered one unscrupulous industry of gyp-merchants packaging revolting ingredients for a gullible public, inadvertently lifts a lid on another - violent deep greens - in Saturday's Guardian. He writes on Edward Abbey, author of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, about a group of environmental activists who decide to launch a "counter-industrial revolution" to pulverise the "megalo-maniacal megamachine" of American capitalism, which would have co-incided nicely with the aims of the Soviet Union at that time. The extract, with its fetishistic and loving detail on the paraphanalia of terrorism and destruction, put me in mind of the tone and story structure of The Turner Diaries, the first ever neo-Nazi airport novel, which allegedly inspired the Oklahoma City bombing.

However, it seems Abbey had something in common with environmentalists such as the late Sir James Goldsmith:

"Abbey was married five times, slept with countless young co-eds, and had five children, despite a fervent belief in zero population growth. Though a proud anarchist, he spent most of his life employed by federal agencies and state universities. An outspoken opponent of gas-guzzling, air-polluting automobiles, he drove a red Cadillac convertible and enjoyed tossing empty beer cans out of the car."

Yes, indeed.

I'm writing very little these times. I just got a review copy of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist[sic] which I am reading at pace of knots before I talk with him this coming Friday. Second, I have a big presentation to do and sitting in front of a computer trying to flesh out my thoughts for the blog is no relaxation after spending twelve hours doing the same thing for work. Even worse, most of the blogs I regularly visit seem to be writing very little during the summer heat.