Arson at 'Green' Homes Points To Environmentalist Divisions

The five homes that made up the 2007 Street of Dreams were half the size of the mansions showcased in previous years. "And it was a conscious effort," Lundberg said, to showcase what the building industry calls "Built Green."

The label -- which Jensen dismissed as "mostly marketing" -- is awarded on a sliding scale, from three stars to five, according to the checklist published by the Master Builders Association. The list is long on recycled materials, energy efficiency and grace notes such as gaps between paving stones so water can be absorbed by the soil.

"I call it basically a scale of light green to dark green. It's not an all-or-nothing thing," said Aaron Adelstein, who studied environmental policy at the universities of Colorado and Montana and now directs the Built Green program for the builders association.

"To folks like me, what we've seen in the last few years is the best case scenario: It's environmentalism becoming mainstream," he said. "It's the Faustian bargain of soccer moms driving up in their SUVs to the supermarket with their cloth shopping bag and buying organic food. Maybe the next decision she'll make is to trade in her SUV and drive a hybrid."

A similar notion of compromise shaped the subdivision where the houses stood. Quinn's Crossing was plotted on planners' maps as a "rural cluster development," an approach that encourages developers to build more homes by snuggling them side by side, and leaving much of the parcel wild. "Environmental excellence!" reads a sign on the lane curving toward the crime scene, where a permanent display lists facts about birds and critters in the "native growth protection area."

Conservancy groups endorse the cluster approach. But in Snohomish County, citizen groups complain that developers dominate a planning process that will bring suburban densities -- an additional 300,000 people in the next 20 years, the state says -- to areas where many people moved for the five-acre lots that clustering strives to avoid. Much of the county is rural in the sense of chain-link fences, hand-lettered "stump grinding" signs and "air mail" letterboxes on poles 15 feet in the air.

"I don't think rural cluster housing on its face is bad thing, but we've just given away too much," said Ellen Hiatt Watson, a resident turned activist.

Yet Watson called the system grudgingly responsive to citizen input, and moderately instructive. "What gets gained from compromise? How much do you learn from the other side? The developers are right: We do need homes," she said.

"The law is powerful," said Laura Hartman, whose neighborhood group challenged Quinn's Landing in court over aquifer issues and got monitoring stations in a settlement.

In a manifesto posted online, ELF declared: "We take inspiration from the Luddites, Levellers, Diggers, the Autonome squatter movement, ALF, the Zapatistas, and the little people -- those mischievous elves of lore. Authorities can't see us because they don't believe in elves. We are practically invisible. We have no command structure, no spokespersons, no office"

And, perhaps, no meaningful support, even in the "sacred" Pacific Northwest.

"The only environmental extremists I know are in prison," said Angela Smith, who runs a Seattle advocacy group that takes in earth, animals, teen rights and prison reform.

"They might have some pretty good ideas, but nobody's ever going to take you seriously if you destroy stuff," said Lana Calton, 25, sharing the vegan lunch buffet on University Avenue in Seattle.

Her matted dreadlocks and lip ring matched those of her companion, Nathan Holverson, 26. He works as a welder, she at Old Navy. They dig through the garbage at the end of their shifts for whatever their co-workers failed to recycle.

"And that maybe makes them feel weird, too, that I'm coming behind them," Calton said. But: "Maybe they'll remember me, maybe 10 years from now: 'Oh, yeah. That's what Lana was talking about.' "

Holverson pulled up a hoodie made of tufted green wool that looked exactly like moss.

"They've got to understand that this kind of [stuff] takes time, and it might not get done," he said, "but you've got to try."