ABSTRACT

The "eco-terrorism" has been well-recognized in a number of arenas; it nonetheless may be most accurate to use "violent, radical, direct action environmentalism" to describe the behaviors in question. The motivations driving eco-terrorist activity are diverse. While concern for preventing environmental degradation is often at the core of such actions, the philosophy of Deep Ecology plays no small role in forming an intellectual framework from which eco-terrorists may justify their actions. Anti-globalists are largely defined by their opposition to capitalism, modern civilization, technology, and what they perceive as the resultant despoliation of cultures, the environment, and imperilment of human survival. Anti-globalists or green anarchists, to the extent they overlap, represent a broad dissatisfaction with international policies and practices that are at once prevalent and difficult to alter. Solutions to eco-terrorist actions have largely been premised upon traditional law enforcement tactics: investigation, infiltration, arrest, and prosecution.