Ecoterrorism is real

Indictments are piling up for defendants charged with multiple acts of environmental extremism. The latest involve a 1998 firebombing at a Colorado ski resort.

A question lurking behind that $12 million blaze, as well as two defendants charged earlier with the 2001 destruction of the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, is does it qualify as terrorism? Sadly, the answer is yes. These criminal acts are wholly intended to intimidate and demoralize people to change their behavior and change public and political policy. That is a classic definition of terrorism.

Attempts to soft-pedal the sabotage as somehow less ugly and threatening because it is aimed at property, not people, is insulting. All of the fiery menace and destruction is focused directly at people who construct, sell or study things and ideas that offend and incense a radical minority.

After the arson at Vail, a message was sent to a radio station: "We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded areas." Judge, jury and prosecution all rolled into one.

The accusations against the shadowy Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front are not the property crimes of insurance fraud or stupid vandalism. All of the attacks were intended to frighten, intimidate and discourage.

More indictments are ahead. Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton writes that federal grand juries continue to meet in Seattle, Eugene, Denver, San Francisco and other cities. Charges in the Colorado ski-resort arson are each punishable by five to 20 years in federal prison.

There is a challenge here as well for federal authorities and state legislatures to maintain a balance between crime and punishment. No one wants to see every impassioned environmental evangelist with a message and a can of spray paint turned into a felon.

State and federal lawmakers bear the burden of assuring punishment fits the crime. This country is still haunted by Draconian federal drug statutes that locked away people for terms of imprisonment that defy common sense and grossly exaggerate the relative threat to the commonweal.

Do not undercut the fight against ecoterrorism with marginal cases and prison terms that mock the notion of justice. Stay focused on those who would use flames to change minds.