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ELF vs. the Great Suburban Denial

Category: Preservation

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Written by Randy Garbin

Last week, someone torched three 4,000-square-foot-plus McMansion-like “dream homes” in the Seattle area. Because of some placards left at the scene, the FBI suspects a group known as the Earth Liberation Front or ELF. In 2001, the FBI labeled the group as “eco-terrorists,” in an attempt—in our minds—to brand what are really just a bunch of vandal ideologues with the worst possible name.

For those who don’t know, the ELF is so loose knit, it hardly warrants description as an organization. The group seems to operate in small cells with little relation to each other except for their common dislike of sprawl and anything else they feels harms the environment. ELF barely exists at all except as a nebulous idea and an ideological banner under which completely independent activists can operate.

In other words, if you don’t like that development swallowing up the nearby farm, then burn it down, spray paint ELF on a sign somewhere and you now belong.

In the past ten years or so, ELF has taken responsibility for the torching of an unfinished housing development on Long Island, the destruction of some brand new Hummers as they sat in the dealer’s lot, a newly built ski lodge in Colorado, and the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture. In that last case, the authorities caught the alleged culprit and brought her to trial.

I don’t condone or advocate ELF, but I sure understand its motivations. Who among us doesn’t ponder blowing up the Walgreen’s that just replaced the neighborhood diner? Or the Wal-Mart that’s sucking the life out of our downtown?

The concept of ELF springs from a general frustration of the individual’s lack of control over the world in which he or she lives. America wants others to believe we have a free economy (we don’t) and a democratic society (not so much either). Our system of government and our economy has produced many great things and generated immense wealth. But it has also produced sprawl, gas guzzlers, the interstate highway system, and Wal-Mart. Some see those things as similarly great, but what about those of us who don’t? How do we avoid having that garbage forced down our throats?

I have long believed that rampant development of outer-ring suburbs harms the environment. Our penchant for single-family homes connected by broad asphalt arteries traversed by energy gulping, carbon spewing machines disrupts the ecosystem in ways we are now only beginning to understand and quantify. The most energy efficient locale in America is the island of Manhattan, and while city living isn’t for everyone, the model of a traditional street grid with walkable districts provides the blueprint for the future, not a vision of the past. If the entire country lived more like that, we could tell OPEC what to do with their oil and never have to worry about sending troops to protect it.

When all this environmental damage is essentially sanctioned—and indeed subsidized—by our government, where is the citizen to turn? To city hall? Anyone who’s attended a zoning board of appeals hearing sees who usually holds the cards when it comes to development issues, especially in cities with struggling economies and small-minded city bureaucrats. Developers and the titans of sprawl have armies of attorneys and consultants ready at their beck and call to thwart any attempt to change a system that has benefitted them so well.

To call a group like ELF a terrorist organization is at best a hyperbolic misnomer and at worst a brazen fear mongering tactic. Equating an empty, smoldering McMansion with highjacked jet liners flying into the World Trade Center insults our intelligence.

As I see it, ELF’s actions provide an early indicator of the larger battle on the horizon. The McMansion set will not want to give up their two-acre paradises no matter how high gas prices rise, and you can bet that their Congressmen will pass whatever laws they can to protect that wasteful way of life. In the meantime, those who see the writing on the wall and move to existing walkable communities or advocate for their development will resist any allocation of scarce resources to maintain the Great Suburban Denial.

I have no suggestion for what to do about ELF or how you as an individual can combat sprawl, but I do suspect that much of this will be decided for us. The specter of five-dollar-a-gallon gas will do more damage to the McMansion and the SUV than any crazed, enviro-arsonist ever dreamed.

Read the account of the ELF arson here.