It's difficult to correct someone when you're not in a uniform. Last week, walking down a path in Lakeshore Nature Preserve, the blackbird calls were disrupted when a pair of tiny dogs took off at full force, yapping insanely, in chase of a Canadian goose. As the goose took umbrage and honked unprintable threats, the dogs circled back toward their smiling owner, who urged them on. Luckily for the dogs, who might otherwise have lost an eye or two, the goose retreated and took flight.
My boyfriend, an ecologist who frequently tracks wildlife in the area, attempted to explain to the dog's owner in a friendly matter that uses of a nature preserve do not include harassing wildlife. But what's a pair of students to do? The woman cheerily giggled about training her lap dogs to chase birds, because [her] grandpa was a hunter"" and passed merrily on by, dogs running unleashed toward the next fowl.
How frustrating. More often than not, there is no lightening bolt waiting to smite environmental vandalism, whether it be something as minor as an irresponsible dog owner, or as overwhelming as the 20 million barrels of oil burned each day in the United States.
On April 1, several pranksters decided to fight for their view of environmental vandalism with a handful of BB guns. Owners of more than 100 vehicles along Monroe, Williamson and Langdon streets awoke to deflated tires and notes of ""Happy Fossil Fools Day. Drive less!"" creating a holdup that flared tempers and inundated towing services. While local police ranked the prank as disorderly conduct, students in the UW's environmental studies department were outraged.
Students and affiliates of UW-Madison's Nelson Institute almost unilaterally expressed disgust at the activist prank in rants over the department's listserve. Water managers and conservation biologists are a different breed from those who ""monkey-wrench,"" the word coined for damaging property to halt development. It's a term as inconvenient to the environmental movement as was its author Edward Abbey, an inescapably famous and politically incorrect pain. Monkey-wrenching is a tactic no conservation professional will ever condone, but remains seductive to all who are frustrated with continued momentum of systems that, if continued, will pull both human culture and 3 billion years of evolution down with them.
Getting lumped with vandals is the worst sort of press for environmentalists trying to work real changes within the system. To Evan Murdock, a UW-Madison graduate student in Land Resources, the actions on Fossil Fools Day ""lets the professional denialists paint us, once again, as a bunch of spoiled, stuck-up kids with no real sense of the problem, no real solutions, and no real commitment beyond a night of self-satisfied vandalism. And worse yet, it lets them be right.""
In no time, UW's environmental studies students identified flaws in the Fossil Fools Day plan. The prankster's acts preached only to the converted, caused indiscriminate annoyance and was missing any real dialogue of the larger problems at hand. That's not to mention that the vandals actually increased fossil fuel use by the time the tow trucks got around to everyone.
Despite the lack of practicality of the Fossil Fools Day plan, the eco-warriors did receive some skeptical admiration.
""At least they feel strongly enough about fossil fuels to get out and do something that lets people know that their choices affect other people,"" said Jeremiah Yahn, a UW-Madison graduate student in zoology. A valid point, since after all, the sustainability revolution is just that - a revolution of business, agriculture and lifestyle. Revolutions never go forward without a little shaking up.
But ultimately, the sustainability movement can afford few enemies. There is no power great enough to force smart choices on the world, nor should there be. There is also no enclave where the converted few may be saved, so long as our problems stem from the actions of the whole. Real changes will require cooperation on a massive scale.
Damaging the property of those who have already decided that their livelihoods are justified burns a brand of enmity that is hard to forget; an enmity that will be capitalized on by those who still seek power and profit with no regard toward health, community or future generations.
With any luck, Madison, already one of the world leaders in urban conservation reform, won't see any more misguided tire tricks in the future. But you never know - there could come a day where it's better to break the tanks before they roll into Tiananmen Square.
E-mail Debbie at science@dailycardinal.com
