" Ecoterrorism " letters in Monitor

Janet Levers' letter in The Christian Science Monitor ( Nov.2 )

    reminds me of the despairing mood of many anti-war protestors in the

    late 1960s . Her cause is our precious eco-system , the living environment

    that supports ALL life on earth.

          Levers writes: " There is complete lack of acknowledgment of the

    despair that betrayal of our system brings to those who truly care

    about the environment ."  She was responding to a story headlined :

    " Violence Escalates in the Name of Environmentalism " ( Oct. 26 ) .

             I personally see little cause for despair. Even the callous

    rich want a livable world . But a deeper problem is scientific illiteracy.

          Think of the millions of people who smoke. Don't they want a

    healthy body and a long life, just like the non-smokers ? But they

    lack respect for KNOWLEDGE . Or they are alarmingly ignorant.

           A SANE person will - in the long run - do the right thing .

        Today is election day and I just voted . I would never vote for

    any candidate proven to be insensitive on environmental issues.

       But democracy MEANS accepting the will of the majority. If you

    have no faith in the good sense of the majority, then you are

    right to despair over the future of the environment. You are

    right to conclude that we humans - homo sapiens ? - are just

    one more soon to be extinct species...and that the cockroaches

     -who have THE RIGHT STUFF - will inherit the earth.

             But our capacity to learn IS one of the great truths

    of our 1,000,000 million year history. What we do need is not

    more eco-terrorists but more eco- TEACHERS !