In 1994, a book called The War Against the Greens exposed the "Wise Use" movement and its corporate sponsors in compelling and sometimes chilling detail. The book helped delegitimize the movement by showing how "Wise Use" fringe groups, posing as grassroots organizations, were in reality backed by some of America’s most powerful industries.
Now author David Helvarg is releasing a revised and updated version of The War Against the Greens (in bookstores this summer) documenting how Wise Use supporters have landed prominent jobs in the Bush Administration, where they hold sway over the nation’s environmental laws and policies.
The Wise Use movement was launched by right-wing extremists, mostly in the American West, who aimed to convince lawmakers and the public that environmentalism infringed on property rights, cost jobs, and hurt the nation’s economy. Backed by mining, timber, development, and energy interests, the movement was linked to militia groups. It created a climate that encouraged violence against environmentalists such as anti-logging activist Judi Bari, who was maimed in 1990 when a bomb exploded under the seat of her car in Oakland, California.
Although the Wise Use movement lost momentum for a while during the later 1990s, Wise Use supporters and their monied sponsors today steer environmental policy for the Bush Administration.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton is a veteran of the right-wing law firm in Colorado, Mountain States Legal Foundation, once headed by James Watt. The group billed itself as "the litigation arm of Wise Use." As attorney general of Colorado, Norton opposed the Endangered Species Act and supported paying financial compensation to developers whenever environmental laws limited their real or potential profits.
Under Norton at Interior are J. Stephen Griles, a former oil, coal, and gas lobbyist, and Lynn Scarlett, formerly with the libertarian Reason Foundation. Norton’s special assistant on Alaska is the former head of Arctic Power, a Wise Use group dedicated to opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
At the Department of Agriculture, Secretary Ann Veneman once represented a Wise Use coalition made up of timber interests, off-road vehicle associations, and Wise Use activists trying to stop a conservation plan for the Sierra Nevada. Veneman’s chief of staff is a former lobbyist for the Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a group closely aligned with the Wise Use movement. Her undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, who oversees the National Forest Service, is a former vice president for the Forest and Paper Association, Mark Rey, formerly a popular keynote speaker at Wise Use functions.
It seemed for a while that the Wise Use movement had lost clout since its heyday in the early 1990s. But in fact its adherents are more influential than ever: they are running the U.S. government under the Bush Administration.
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