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Over the past several decades, thousands of environmentallymotivated acts of sabotage-commonly referred to as "ecosabotage" or "ecotage"-have caused millions of dollars in damages to individuals, organizations, businesses and governments involved in projects with controversial environmental effects Indeed, it is believed that between 1997 and 2006 one group alone, the Earth Liberation Front, has been responsible for $100 million in property damage.1 Much of this destructive activity has taken place in the United States, where Earth Liberation Front members claimed responsibility for two of the most highly publicized and costly acts of ecotage to date: an arson at a Colorado ski resort in 1998 that destroyed buildings and equipment worth an estimated $12 million,2 and another in 2003 at a California housing development, which resulted in roughly $22 million in reconstruction costs and lost revenues.3
As such actions have garnered public and political attention, ecotage has sometimes been called "eco-terrorism," a term generally at odds with those employed by eco-saboteurs themselves, many of whom consider what they do to be some form of "civil disobedience."4 Either label, to be sure, can obscure important distinctions, for while ecotage does seem to differ from more conventional forms of civil disobedience, primarily insofar as ecosaboteurs tend both to act in secrecy and to be willing to destroy property, it also differs significantly from terrorism, since eco-saboteurs target property rather than people, and they do so discriminately rather than indiscriminately.5 Of course, precise classification of such a complex phenomenon is difficult. Here, however, as with so many other contentious issues, it often seems that what one calls ecotage is less an expression of conceptual clarity about what it is, than an expression of its moral censure or approval.
Perhaps not surprisingly, popular opinion has tended to favor the former view: ecotage has been widely condemned, even within environmental and activist communities.6 Yet the philosophical literature has sometimes suggested that ecotage may actually be morally defensible, particularly if the defense proceeds on consequentialist grounds. In "Ecosabotage and Civil Disobedience," for example, Michael Martin argues that although eco-saboteurs have not yet fully assessed the consequences of what they do, there is no reason to think that, if they did, they could not reasonably conclude that at least some acts of ecotage are...