Book Examines Earth Liberation Front's Arson Legacy
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Matthew Wolfe authored "Fires in the Night," a book examining the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a US eco-anarchist movement defined by arson as a form of radical environmental protest.
- The book frames ELF's actions as emerging from "real frustration" over a "burning planet," using the movement's own emotional logic as a lens.
- Earth Liberation Front is positioned in the book as part of a broader legacy of 1990s radical environmentalism in the United States.
- The book's central framing question is whether echoes of 1990s radical environmentalism are returning louder or fading away in the current climate moment.
Why it matters: By revisiting a movement that used arson as direct action decades ago, the book forces a contemporary read on whether mainstream environmentalism's failures are radicalizing a new generation — or whether that chapter has closed. Readers interested in climate activism history get a primary-source look at ELF's stated motivations, which Wolfe presents as rooted in frustration rather than nihilism.
