Anti-environmentalist: A REply

[Fred Stoss <fstoss@acsu.buffalo.edu>]

Also, please do not dismiss the fact that many environmental "activists" are under severe scrutiny by federal law enforcement.

REPLY: And rightfully so. There are extremists in the environmental camp.

The FBI has listed that environmental terrorism is on the rise. This begins to sound like a new-millenium McCarthyism.

REPLY: Terrorism is terrorism regardless of the issues. Desctruction of property and lives is wrong and should not be tolerated. This does not, however, mean that every person or organization that calls for clean water and clean air, safe and healthy communities, and other forms of a "healthy environment" should be labled and enviro-whacko of enviro-Nazi.

What has been the EPA's role in the use the RICO Act and so-called "slap suits" seeking damages and an injunctions from families, neighborhood groups, citizen groups filed by busineeses and industries as a means to intimidate the public from getting too involved. What is the EPA's role to protect the individual who does take action and what is the EPA's responsibility for protecting citizens from such activities?


Many who would become involved stand back and watch because they don't wish to draw attention to themselves.

While the "new" movement to encourage the public to become involved encourages everyone to work together, there is always a propensity to strike-out at that "one small voice in the wilderness". Remember Rachael Carson and Silent Spring?

REPLY: Do you mean do we remember how businesses and industries waged a viscious and rentless campaign to destroy Carson's professional and personal reputation during the last years of her life (she was dying from cancer)? Yes, there was a failed attempt to discredit Carson. Industry trade groups did every imaginable thing to discredit Carson, including all sorts of fabrications and misrepresentations they attributed to her and her writings. 
There were government agencies, most notable the Department of Agriculture, who waged their own war against Carson, perhaps falling prey to the same agrichemical businesses and industries who were also relentless in their pursuit of government approvals for uninhibitted use of pesticides they were manufacturing and selling. Linda Lear has done a magnificent job in providing a chronicle of Carson's life in the biographical work: Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature," New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1997, 634 p.

Fred Stoss