Ecotage

Ecotage (/ˈikəˌtɑːʒ/ EE-kə-TAHZH) is sabotage carried out for environmental reasons.^[1]

Cases

*"Stop Urban Sprawl"* was spray-painted on this multimillion-dollar house to protest the development. Mansions in the United States are a frequent target by the ELF.

All damage figures below are in United States dollars. Some well-known acts of ecotage have included:

Circa 1969 to 1985 – ecological activist James F. Phillips, operating covertly under the codename "The Fox", carried out a series of ecotage actions and subvertising campaigns against corporations that were polluting the Fox River in Illinois.
1998 – Arson of buildings at Vail Mountain in the United States by the ELF (Earth Liberation Front).
March 11, 1999 – Genetically engineered potatoes uprooted at Crop and Food research centre in New Zealand.^[2]
December 25, 1999 – In Monmouth, Oregon, fire destroyed the main office of the Boise Cascade logging company costing over $1 million ($1.9 million in 2024 dollars). ELF claimed responsibility.
2001 – Members of the ELF were prosecuted for setting off a firebomb that caused $7 million in damages ($13 million in 2024 dollars) at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture.^[3]
August 1, 2003 – A 206-unit condominium being built in San Diego, California was burned down causing damage in excess of $20 million ($38 million in 2024 dollars). A 12-foot banner at the scene read "If you build it, we will burn it," signed, "The E.L.F.s are mad."
August 22, 2003 – Arsonists associated with the ELF attacked several car dealerships in east suburban Los Angeles, burning down a warehouse and vandalizing over 100 vehicles, most of them SUVs or Hummers (chosen for their notoriously poor fuel efficiency) and causing over $1 million in damage ($1.7 million in 2024 dollars).
2016 - Activists from Climate Direct Action in the USA turned the emergency valves of 4 pipelines carrying oil to Canada causing the stop of up to 2.8 million barrels of oil a day. In the action the activists had to cause some property damage in order to access both the facilities and unlock the valves; they warned the present workers about what was going to happen.^[4]
From 2016 to 2017 - Activists Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, were responsible for around 6 million dollars damages to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) construction sites and to the pipeline itself. Jessica Reznicek, was sentenced to 96 months imprisonment on June 30, 2021; Ruby Katherine Montoya was sentenced to 6 years.^[4] ^[5]
August 7, 2023 – Tyre extinguishers drilling holes in 60 SUVs in a Vertu Jaguar showroom in Exeter, Devon, UK for both social and environmental reasons.^[6]
January 20, 2024 – Shut the System activists cut fiber optic cables to many insurance companies in the UK demanding them to immediately end all underwriting for fossil fuel expansion projects.^[7]

In literature and popular culture

In their 1972 environmental-action book Ecotage!, Sam Love and David Obst claimed to have coined the word "ecotage" by combining "ecology" and "sabotage" to describe a "branch of tactical biology".

In fiction, the practice of ecotage was popularized in Edward Abbey's 1975 anarchistic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang and its sequel Hayduke Lives! (1990). It has also been treated in other novels including Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season (1986) and Sick Puppy (2000), Neal Stephenson's Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988), T. Coraghessan Boyle's A Friend of the Earth (2000), Dave Foreman's The Lobo Outback Funeral Home (2000), and Richard Melo's Jokerman 8 (2004). Radical depictions of environmental protection also inform major Native American novels including N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968), James Welch's Winter in the Blood (1974), and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977).^[8]

Several books written specifically for children and young adults have also explored radical responses to environmental endangerment including Carl Hiaasen's Hoot! (2002), Flush (2005), and Scat (2009), Claire Dean's Girlwood (2008), S. Terrell French's Operation Redwood (2011), and Silas House and Neela Vaswani's Same Sun Here (2012).^[9]

Ecotage is mentioned in the Mars trilogy of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson as a means of protest shown by the Red political party. Typically, the "Reds" would destroy terraforming ventures in an effort to slow the terraforming of Mars.

The Concrete miniseries Think Like a Mountain is centred about ecotage aimed to protect first growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.

Ecotage also informs movies such as Choke Canyon (1986) and On Deadly Ground (1994).

Academic literature

In an article released on 23 May 2024 by Springer Nature, Dylan Manson tries to develop a just war inspired theory that could justify defensive activism and hence eco-tage: "The conscientious defensive activist can only engage in permissible eco-sabotage when she acts with just cause as constrained by necessity, with proportionality, with a reasonable chance of success, and without putting life at excessive risk."

The author makes then a distinction between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric eco-tage and questions whether the real cases he brings meet or not the aforementioned moral criteria.^[4]

In The Morality of Ecosabotage (2001), Thomas Young argues that some arguments against Ecosabotage cannot prove it always wrong and that there’s some ground for a utilitarian justification of ecotage.^[10]

References

^ "Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words". Dictionary.com. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
^ Wild Greens Attack GE Potatoes, Genetic Engineering Network, March 11th 1999.
^ Bernton, Hal (October 5, 2006). "Local News | Earth Liberation Front members plead guilty in 2001 firebombing | Seattle Times Newspaper". Seattletimes.nwsource.com. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
^ ^a ^b ^c Manson, Dylan (2024-09-01). "Eco-sabotage as Defensive Activism". Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. 27 (4): 505–522. doi:10.1007/s10677-024-10449-w. ISSN 1572-8447.
^ "Southern District of Iowa | Arizona Woman Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Conspiracy to Damage the Dakota Access Pipeline | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 2022-09-23. Retrieved 2025-06-05.
^ Gayle, Damien (2023-08-07). "Activists drill holes in tyres of more than 60 SUVs at Exeter car dealership". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-05-22.
^ Gayle, Damien. "As Europe criminalizes environmental protest, some activists turn to sabotage". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2025-05-22.
^ Aitchison, David (2013-07-25). "Revolution as technē: place, space, and ecotage in the American radical novel". TRANS-. Revue de littérature générale et comparée (in French). 16 (16). doi:10.4000/trans.851. ISSN 1778-3887.
^ Aitchison, David (2015-05-15). "Little Saboteurs, Puerile Politics: The Child, the Childlike, and the Principled Life in Carl Hiaasen's Ecotage Novels for Young Adults". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 40 (2): 141–160. doi:10.1353/chq.2015.0018. ISSN 1553-1201. S2CID 142407527.
^ Young, Thomas (2001). "The Morality of Ecosabotage". Environmental Values. 10 (3): 385–393. doi:10.3197/096327101129340886. ISSN 0963-2719.

External links

The dictionary definition of ecotage at Wiktionary
Media related to Ecotage at Wikimedia Commons
Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching - Online text

[1] "Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words". Dictionary.com. Retrieved March 6, 2024.

[2] Wild Greens Attack GE Potatoes, Genetic Engineering Network, March 11th 1999.

[3] Bernton, Hal (October 5, 2006). "Local News | Earth Liberation Front members plead guilty in 2001 firebombing | Seattle Times Newspaper". Seattletimes.nwsource.com. Retrieved 2010-09-01.

[:0-4] Manson, Dylan (2024-09-01). "Eco-sabotage as Defensive Activism". Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. 27 (4): 505–522. doi:10.1007/s10677-024-10449-w. ISSN 1572-8447.

[5] "Southern District of Iowa | Arizona Woman Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Conspiracy to Damage the Dakota Access Pipeline | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. 2022-09-23. Retrieved 2025-06-05.

[6] Gayle, Damien (2023-08-07). "Activists drill holes in tyres of more than 60 SUVs at Exeter car dealership". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-05-22.

[7] Gayle, Damien. "As Europe criminalizes environmental protest, some activists turn to sabotage". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2025-05-22.

[8] Aitchison, David (2013-07-25). "Revolution as technē: place, space, and ecotage in the American radical novel". TRANS-. Revue de littérature générale et comparée (in French). 16 (16). doi:10.4000/trans.851. ISSN 1778-3887.

[9] Aitchison, David (2015-05-15). "Little Saboteurs, Puerile Politics: The Child, the Childlike, and the Principled Life in Carl Hiaasen's Ecotage Novels for Young Adults". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 40 (2): 141–160. doi:10.1353/chq.2015.0018. ISSN 1553-1201. S2CID 142407527.

[10] Young, Thomas (2001). "The Morality of Ecosabotage". Environmental Values. 10 (3): 385–393. doi:10.3197/096327101129340886. ISSN 0963-2719.

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