{"id":1040,"date":"2012-03-06T20:33:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T01:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anthony.darrouzet-nardi.net\/scienceblog\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2012-03-09T12:47:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T17:47:28","slug":"if-a-tree-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/?p=1040","title":{"rendered":"Documentary: If a Tree Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifatreefallsfilm.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1047\" title=\"if_tree_falls\" src=\"http:\/\/anthony.darrouzet-nardi.net\/scienceblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/if_tree_falls1-450x236.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/if_tree_falls1-450x236.jpg 450w, http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/if_tree_falls1-300x157.jpg 300w, http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/if_tree_falls1.jpg 511w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last weekend, I enjoyed watching <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifatreefallsfilm.com\/\">If a Tree Falls<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a documentary about a group of arsonists in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Earth_Liberation_Front\">Earth Liberation Front<\/a>. The film was both educational and a fascinating story. It illuminates some important aspects to environmental activism in the 1990s and early 2000s and the filmmakers do a great job of answering an obvious question: what were the arsonists thinking? It also has an interesting sort of reverse mystery \u2014 we already know whodunnit, but it&#8217;s interesting to see who figured it out and how.<\/p>\n<p>One of the fun things for me in watching the story unfold was that I remember seeing news stories about a lot of the events in the film and I feel like I have been on the periphery of the communities in which the events took place. I remember protesting old-growth logging with a youth environmental group when I was in high school. I remember hearing about the &#8220;black bloc&#8221; anarchists from friends who attended the Seattle WTO protests when I was in college.\u00a0I remember hearing about the burning of a scientific poplar plantation in Oregon from a guest speaker at CU as a grad student.<\/p>\n<p>While I obviously don&#8217;t agree with arson as a tactic, I and many other environmentalists are in the awkward position of agreeing with the arsonists on some of the issues that motivated them. For example, it is in fact tragic and shortsighted to clear-cut the few remaining old growth forests on the west coast. Also, the frenzy to brand people &#8220;terrorists&#8221; so that prosecutors and law enforcement can claim to have bagged them is worrisome. In the end, I don&#8217;t think their misguided approach to addressing these problems has had a huge impact one way or another because it is clear that they are well outside of the mainstream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend, I enjoyed watching If a Tree Falls,\u00a0a documentary about a group of arsonists in the\u00a0Earth Liberation Front. The film was both educational and a fascinating story. It illuminates some important aspects to environmental activism in the 1990s and early 2000s and the filmmakers do a great job of answering an obvious question: what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scienceblog.darrouzet-nardi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}