On the nature of the Greens

While working on my paper and looking into potential graduate programs, I've been doing a lot of reading on environmental ethics. One interesting (and I feel rather telling) point I have noticed is that the so called "deep ecologists" (the guys who go out and attack whaling ships and lie down in front of bulldozers and put metal spikes in trees to break logging equipment) seem to have a bit of trouble finding jobs at universities. ;-)

Before the articles written by more mainstream thinkers, there are happy little paragraphs listing all their credentials and prestigious universities where they work. For the deep ecologists, their paragraphs look more like this:

"Jerry Smith has written several books on the evils of modern society and technology, including "Why We Should Ban Cars, Planes, and All Modes of Transportation," "Democracy's War on Nature," and "Let the Chickens Run Free." He lives by himself in a cabin in the Adirondacks. [We're not exactly sure where, because he's currently hiding from the U.S. government for burning down an animal testing facility]."

This, of course, is a slight exaggeration, but a surprising number of the radicals do seem to live out in cabins by themselves. I wonder why......