As the protest nears its one-year anniversary, plenty of people have suggestions: Fire hoses, skunk spray and tranquilizer darts are among the thorny ideas Internet posters have planted.
Why not just plant 1000 other trees elsewhere; isn't that good enough? The school's already offered something similar:
They promise to plant three new trees for every one felled.
That would be the carrot approach; how about the stick? This idea comes from an eBay auction a student once showed me:
"All right you people up there, listen up. If you don't come down right now, I'm going to rip this sapling right out of the ground! I'm going to twist it, pull it, bend it, make it suffer, too! And then, I'm going to burn it, twig by twig, until you come down? And 15 minutes later, I'm going to do the exact same thing to this sapling! And there are lots of saplings!
"But you can stop the torture. You can stop the pain. Come down, and the saplings remain unharmed. We'll dig them up gently, cooing to Mother Gaia as we do so, and we'll replant them elsewhere.
"This is your only warning! If you fail to comply, if you fail to come down, the wanton destruction of these young saplings will be on your hands!
"And just to show you that we mean business..." Out comes a machete, and in one swoop, down goes a young 6' tall oak.
See? Maybe we can learn something from the Islamofascists. Lefties like Islamofascists anyway.