Environmental journalism is not a cheerful field of work. The opposition is severe, well funded, and becoming more brutal each year. After years of indifference, the managers of the corporate sector and their hired scribes (Commentary, Nation Review, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, et al.) have finally awakened to the fact that environmentalism, if taken seriously, is a greater threat to the Perpetual Power & Growth Machine than labor unions and Communism. Labor unions can be broken or bought off, and in our nation they mostly have been, while international Communism, though a competitor for planetary power, does not threaten the basic system: Communists like capitalists believe above all in technology, the ever-expanding economy (nice self-contradiction!), industrialism, militarism, centralized control – the complete domination of nature and human beings. The more intense the rivalry the more alike the two sides become; the difference between the men at the top are merely ideological, like the different colors of opposing football teams. As Orwell pointed out in the conclusion of Animal Farm, when the ruling administrators from the two sides convened for a conference, they all looked – to the animals outside looking in – much the same. Which was which? The animals could not tell."
Edward Abbey
Down The River
"...I suggest that Abbey purchase ten six-packs of Schlitz, enclose himself in his garage inside his pickup truck, start the motor and see if he can drink all of the beer..."
J. R. Skousen
Lake Forest, Illinois
from a "fan" letter to Abbey
