Michael Crichton received similar rebukes with State of Fear:

Amazon Review:First let me say that I am in Crichton's corner when he criticizes the radical environmentalist movement. And that is why I was quite excited to read this book. I haven't read many of Crichton's, but thought that "Rising Sun" was superb, and "Sphere" was better than average. But "State of Fear" was just simply awful. The characters were cartoonish at best. The primary "hero" was an amalgamation of Alan Quartermain, Indiana Jones, and James Bond, but we learn virtually nothing about him. Also, the reasons why the millionaire benefactor acts are never explained. And boy, the plot is just down right silly.

I am advised that former Montana Gov. Judy Martz applied the ecoterrorist label to environmentalists who were legally disputing timber harvests in response to the forest fires of 2000. Here's a hilariously spluttering essay posted by "objectivist" Robert Bidinotto (Uh, Bob, have you ever....you know...read... The Fountainhead? You know, the book by Ayn Rand, whom your site was created to honor? Do recall anyone bombing a building to make a statement about morality in that book? Oh, and what does Ellis Wyatt do to the oil field in Atlas Shrugged?) Randheads are an amusing lot.

Global Guerrillas posted an article about ecoterrorism I thought was quite silly, because it actually took the notion seriously. Still, given the fatuous topic, it's not the worst one that could have been written. And it inspired this comment:

First, this application of the Global Guerilla paradigm just screams Red Herring. Or is 'straw man' a better description? What's next, a revival of the Yellow Peril?

America has become obsessed with finding terrorist guerillas everywhere. While the major media loves to inflate the threat of groups such as Earth First! or ELF, their activities have had consequences far, far below micro-pinprick level. If this stuff keeps up, pretty soon we'll find an analysis of the Global Guerrilla potential represented by pimple-faced teenage boys spray painting "Osama Was Here" on freeway overpasses.

Second, but more substantively:

An implication of John Robb's post - though almost certainly unintended - is that the dominant American economic system is unable to change, EXCEPT IF INDUCED TO DO SO AS A RESULT OF SYSTEM ATTACKS.

Specifically, John Robb wrote:

"If eco-activists adopt global guerrilla tactics, they could coerce a rapid move to clean energy alternatives."

Meaning, I suggest, that short of such coercion, any efforts to move to a stabile, decentralized (and thus more secure) energy system won’t happen UNLESS such Global Guerilla attacks take place.

And sadly, that is probably correct.

Again, I am not implying that John Robb intended to say this. However, it is the truth of the matter regardless. US capitalism has become so extremely sclerotic that it cannot initiate needed, long-term changes to its delivery model (profit maximization) from within its own rationality structure – its ‘logic’ of business.

John Robb also wrote:

“Small but extremely effective (high ROI) attacks on the energy corridors leading to target regions, would quickly increase the costs of conventional energy such that clean power alternatives would become extremely attractive.”

Sad but true. US capitalism will not institute ANY changes toward clean, renewable energy sources short of “(high ROI)” attacks. This is because the system is, at the level of its core social rationality, inseparably dependent upon highly centralized systems of social control. It is in such systems that the big money is to be made. A ‘down-building’ of such systems would represent a titanically huge destruction of capital values (power plants; delivery networks; etc.). Any move toward decentralization is not possible within the logic of the system, for that would entail a de facto annihilation of capitalist control.

So the idea of “Green Guerillas” riding to the rescue of the capitalist system is a fiction of a fevered imagination. They are not going to magically appear in order to ‘move’ the system toward clean, de-centralized energy. And even if they did, they would be wiped out in almost no time at all. In the America of 2005, if some “eco-terrorists” popped up and started pouring sugar into tractor gas tanks, that Marine Corps General who thinks killing is a “hoot” would be unleashed on them, and faster than you can brew your morning coffee they would be gone, gone, gone.

So it simply won’t happen. You would do as well to try and predict the time and place of the next spaceship landing. There will be no changes of the waste and inefficiency originating from within, and any and all opposition will be either vaporized or, more commonly the case, integrated into the apparatus of control as new components of its own stabilization.