An Environmentalist's Hero

The Sunday Denver Post tells of a 41-year old man who hiked into the Rocky Mountains to starve because he "hated the materialism and greed that, in his view, prevented people from connecting with nature. And he was frustrated that he could not change that." [HT: Ari]

So, in a story that has dark parallels to the book and film "Into the Wild," this philosophical former Denver disc jockey and Silverton coffee-shop owner, went into the wilderness of western Colorado last summer to think through this quandary — or to die.

"He couldn't figure out how to make people change so they were not so caught up in money and cars and big houses and all that," said his sister, Jovanka Mersman, of Colorado Springs. "He ultimately ended up checking out."

What a brave environmental hero, right? Our evil natures are killing the planet, so unless he could come up with a solution, the only alternative was a slow, painful suicide. It is truly tragic that he didn't live long enough to read Doug Reich's "Corpses for Change" proposal. That would have been right up his alley.

He kept a "meticulously updated" journal, but sadly, it appears that we will never learn about his innermost hallucinations thoughts. It "was soaked by the 20 feet or so of snow that had entombed his body through the winter. The few decipherable words gave no clue to his thoughts."

One can only imagine what insane ramblings this journal contained. Surely, however, it would have been reprinted millions of times and been on Oprah's bestseller list.

What this guy did to himself reminds me of that terrible film, The Happening, except that instead of some mysterious substance that causes people to commit suicide for the sake of the planet, it was the toxic, literally death worshiping, ideas of environmentalism itself that drove this guy crazy.