Exploiting Sept.11 - Greens Bashed as "Eco-Terrorists"

The Clearinghouse on Environmental Education, Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) has issued a special bulletin detailing efforts by anti-environmentalist to attack green activism. "There have been rhetorical attacks branding public interest groups as elitist and unpatriotic, further attacks on non-profit status of a handful of groups, and a renewed intensity in fighting 'eco-terrorism,' a term and concept environmental backlash leaders are trying desperately to get into circulation," the report states. Plans in the works include a renewed effort to enact vaguely defined federal "eco-terror" legislation that could limit rights to non-violent protests and would not deter violent crime, accompanied by "a nasty public relations ploy attempting to cast ALL environmentalism as 'eco-terrorism' to varying degrees."