Slash-and-burn tactics exposed The eco-industry

Congressman James Hansen of Utah is no bleeding-heart liberal, yet he has sponsored and supported enough environmental legislation to have been labelled “too green” by some of his Republican colleagues. He joined the Sierra Club in the 1960s because he felt the nation needed a wake-up call to action to stop practices harming the planet. Hansen says he still believes in the principles of conservation and environmental protection, just as he did as a young man. However, he has lost faith in most environmental groups and is now an outspoken critic of the heavy-handed tactics used to gain funds from the public and support from politicians.

In the past, Hansen says, environmental groups deserved support because they carried out laudable restoration projects, such as cleaning up lakes and rivers. Now he sees them as “business organizations,” whose main goals are marketing, raising money, and lobbying politicians to further an increasingly radical agenda. “They pour millions of tax-exempt and tax-deductible contributions into emotion-based media and marketing,” he says. “They are spending millions on direct marketing campaigns in order to generate more and more contributors and donor lists. They hire impressionable young college students, normally at minimum wage, to go door-to-door to sign up new members, and hire still others to attend public hearings to applaud or to boo as directed, in a cynical, purchased attempt to influence public opinion.”

Hansen says most groups rely on sensationalist images to grab public attention, which could be tolerated if the funds were used for conservation projects. However, he feels that with campaigns becoming more strident and increasingly partisan, many groups are abusing the guidelines of the Internal Revenue Service by disguising their extensive lobbying activity as “public education.”

Congress ought to look into the matter, Hansen says, because the national press does not seem willing or able to take on the job. “While members of Congress are scrutinized up one side and down the other for every word we utter and every vote we take, these groups are somehow coated with Teflon. It must always be accepted by the media as the unrebuttable truth. Must they always be given the last word?”

Hansen’s comments were part of his recent, hour-long address to fellow congressmen. It was a timely topic, as many of his colleagues had just been targeted as “enemies of the environment” for supporting the Bush administration’s energy policies. Others had previously been slammed for failing to support radical initiatives, such as road moratoriums and massive “re-wilding” schemes, particularly in the western United States.

Hansen described some environmental leaders as “masters at slashing and burning the character and reputation of those elected officials or reporters who dare to challenge them, or who dare to take different points of view on specific environmental issues.” Such tactics shouldn’t be rewarded, he says, and members who feel threatened “ought to show these men and women the door.”

Furthermore, Hansen says, the doors should stay shut until environmental groups adopt a more reasonable and respectful approach to public discourse. He isn’t holding his breath. “Despite years of trying to reach out to these groups, to enter into a constructive dialogue to come up with legislative solutions to vexing environmental problems, all I have received is the hammer to the head.”

The hammers to the head are still coming. Egged on environmental supporters, the Democratic Party, in a recent television campaign, showed pictures of Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon dotted with oil wells and derricks, and children asking mom if they could have more arsenic in their water, and more salmonella in their hamburgers.

Environmental groups are also having a field day firing up the public about what the evil Republicans will do next. One group is seeking funds to “stop an impending slaughter” of wolves in Yellowstone Park. Another wants to stop “reckless clear-cutting on national forests in California and the Pacific Northwest that threatens to destroy the last of America’s unprotected ancient forests in as little as 20 years.”

Utter nonsense, but probably a reasonable sampling of the estimated 160 million environmental fund-raising pitches swirling through the U.S. Postal Service each year. These “public education” pieces (so-called for tax and accounting reasons) are never dull, but they’re predictable nonetheless. The earth (or substitute any plant or animal) is doomed, but can be saved for a mere $10, $20, $50 or $100. In most cases, the information is distorted or plain dishonest. Clear-cutting on national forests is down 89% since 1990, for example, and there is no slaughter of wolves in Yellowstone Park, impending or otherwise.

If that’s what passes for “public education” these days, the gentleman from Utah has every right to protest.