The Gaia Preservation Front (GPF), commonly the Gaian Front, is the clandestine direct-action arm of the Gaian Protection Organization, a legal environmental body campaigning against the export of Earth’s atmospheric nitrogen to orbital habitats. The Front is responsible for the Coriopolis Bombing Crisis of 2118, the most costly act of terrorism in history.

Position#

The Front’s premise is the nitrogen drawdown: that Earth’s atmosphere is being permanently exported to build orbital habitats, that the rate is compounding, and that the institutions nominally governing it — the Natural Resource Trust and the Fund — are financially incapable of restraining it.

The scientific content of the position is not seriously disputed. What is disputed is the urgency, the discount rate applied to a multi-century harm, and whether any remedy short of halting construction is adequate. The Front’s demand is a construction moratorium, which — since nitrogen is consumed by building habitats and not by living in them — would arrest the drawdown immediately and cost no existing resident anything. That this demand is cheap is the strongest argument for it and the reason the Front’s arguments retain public sympathy even after the bombing.

Escalation#

For most of its history the Front’s actions were symbolic and non-injurious. Operations were confined largely to Earth: stink-bombing Fund offices, paintballing Fund officials, vandalising Fund vehicles and buildings. The most serious injury on record came from a paintball strike on an official leaving a conference, requiring regenerative surgery to restore sight in one eye. In a poll taken in this period, only 55 percent of respondents thought the designation of the group as terrorist was appropriate.

Two changes preceded the bombing. The frequency and variety of incidents rose sharply over several months, and the target set moved from Earth to the L5 region. The Front began destroying atmospheric scoops with stealth munitions — three in a single month — and destroyed at least one thermospheric scoop by severing its tether with a weapon disguised as a meteor, a technique that exploited the legal prohibition on destroying natural meteors not posing a hazard to life or property. See atmospheric scoop attacks.

Intelligence assessments circulating shortly before October 2118 held that the Front was preparing something substantially more dramatic. The assessment was correct.

Aftermath#

The bombing cost the Front whatever legitimacy its earlier restraint had earned it, and cost the wider Gaian Protection Organization considerably more, despite the latter’s disavowal of the attack. The irony noted by most subsequent analysis is that the attack achieved the Front’s stated goal: the scuttling of the atmospheric skimmer fleet and the accelerated transition to gas-giant nitrogen did more to halt the drawdown than the moratorium it had demanded.