Book Reviews: 'Wise Use' Wise Guys: Backlash Against Green Movement May Only Grow

David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens: The “Wise-Use” Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence. Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1994. 512 pages. $25.00 (cloth).

In recent years, dozens of high-profile environmental activists across the country have been the targets of violence. While law-enforcement authorities have been slow to link the attacks to the views and actions of the victims, among the environmentalists themselves, there’s been growing unease that the attacks are not random at all, but are intended to intimidate them into silence.

David Helvarg, a journalist and private investigator, presents a strong argument to support the environmentalists’ worst fears. He examines case after case of violence directed at individuals around the country who have spoken out against polluting industries — including one suspicious death, numerous killings of pets, arson, rape, a bombing, and brutal beatings. None of the crimes has been solved nor, just as disturbing, have law enforcement authorities betrayed the least interest in investigating them. (Indeed, in the case of the bombing of Judi Bari, an Earth First! member whose car blew up under her, the victim was regarded for months as the chief suspect.)

Despite the failure of the police and FBI to pursue these cases, Helvarg makes a compelling argument that in most instances, the violence may be laid at the doorstep of various self-styled leaders of the anti-environmental trend that has come to be known as the Wise Use/Property Rights movement. People such as Charles Cushman, Ron Arnold, Alan Gottlieb, and others who have established a network of institutes and putative “grass-roots” organizations may not directly pull the trigger or set the blazes, yet their rhetoric, Helvarg argues, does everything but. Cushman in particular, Helvarg notes, has earned a nickname as “Rent-a-Riot” for his penchant to excite (or incite) the crowds on his many trips around the country, leaving a trail of violence in his wake.

The Wise-Users profess to be part of a grass-roots uprising against environmentalism taken too far. But Helvarg gives this claim the lie, showing that the number of people who contribute to the various Wise Use organizations is “far fewer than a hundred thousand” (p. 9). Instead, he writes, “the strength of anti-environmentalism has been not in its membership rolls but in its ability to mobilize a network of core activists to intervene in and politicize local conflicts, creating a perception of power that they hope can be used as a springboard for further expansion.” In addition, Helvarg notes, much of their financial support is drawn from the large industries — timber, mining, manufacturing — that stand to profit greatly from the Wise Use movement. Another major financial supporter is found in the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose newspaper, The Washington Times, provides propaganda support as well.

Helvarg concludes that “the anti-enviro violence spreading across America seems to have three primary sources” (364). The first of these is found in “spontaneous acts of violence.” “More common,” he goes on to say, “are the campaigns of escalating harassment leading to violence that seem to accompany the political organizing efforts of Wise Use/Property Rights groups.”

“Still, some of the worst violence seems to go beyond the logistical capabilities of local anti-enviro groups, developers, or low-paid workers indoctrinated with the idea that environmentalists want to steal their jobs. A number of attacks … suggest a third source of violence: professional security agents familiar with terrorist tactics” (364-365).

The tactics of the Wise Use/Property Rights movement are not limited to violence. Lawsuits aimed at silencing environmentalists (called SLAPPs, short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) are growing more frequent — and, in fact, have turned up in Hawai`i. The Wise Use movement is also adept at manipulating a too-gullible press, which, strangely, continues to be perceived by most members of the public as left-leaning. Helvarg deals with these issues in separate chapters of his book.

If anything, the grim picture Helvarg has painted has become even gloomier as a result of the November national elections. Many of the Republicans who vaulted into leadership positions in the House and Senate have had close ties to the Wise Use/Property Rights movement. According to an Associated Press article by Jeff Barnard, “the miners, loggers, and ranchers who form the backbone of the Wise Use movement are smiling again, daring to imagine renewed free use of federal land now that conservative Republicans are taking over Congress.” (The article was printed locally in West Hawai`i Today, December 11, 1994, under the headline: “Wise Use movement sees good times ahead.”)

Barnard quotes Ron Arnold, founder of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and a linchpin of the Wise Use movement: “We have entered the mainstream… Our political goals are now very substantially the goals of enough elected officials with a voice of authority in Congress that we will now be able to very effectively compete with our environmental opponents.”

Perhaps the mainstreaming of the movement will result in a smoothing of its rough edges and a tempering of its wilder cowboy tendencies.

Perhaps. But it is every bit as likely that having gained congressional strength, the pseudo-populist Wise Use movement will be emboldened to even rasher acts. One can only hope that Hawai`i, which has so far been spared the worst manifestations of the Wise Use movement, continues to remain out of its sights.

Patricia Tummons

One argument frequently heard in the effort to promote the cause of biological diversity is that many plants facing extinction may have pharmaceutical value. The cure for AIDS may lie directly in the path of a bulldozer in Indonesia, this argument goes, or a powerful cancer treatment could exist in the forest targeted for burning by Brazilian ranchers.

Others (this reviewer included) believe that species diversity is a value in and of itself, whether or not the species protected have direct, instrumental value to the human race. To believe that plants have value only insofar as they have utility would seem, at some level, to give carte blance to species destruction, once the species in question has been shown to have no apparent use or purpose in our limited human scheme.

Whatever one’s view, this book by Mark Plotkin can only strengthen the argument that the fight to preserve biological diversity in some of the planet’s most threatened outposts merits international support. A scientist specializing in ethnobotany, Plotkin found himself in the position of apprentice to several shamans of different tribes in remote areas of the Amazon. By hook or crook, he managed to get them to share with him some of their secret cures, learned — through trial and error, one supposes — in the course of millenia lived in the rain forest.

“Civilizing” influences have broken the ancient tradition of passing the shaman’s learning from one generation to the next — a loss as profound as any other experienced in modern times. To counter that, Plotkin has helped establish for compensating these tribes when their knowledge is exploited for commercial purposes. Lisa Conte, a pharmacologist and founder of Shaman Pharmaceuticals, formed a nonprofit organization, called the Healing Forest Conservancy, “set up expressly to return a percentage of all profits that flow from these potential medical products back to the indigenous peoples who teach us the plants and to the countries in which the plants grow” (287). Other companies appear to be following suit.

Perhaps most important, Plotkin has given the younger generation of Amazon Indians a new pride in their traditions. Two of the shamans he worked with have died, but a third now has two apprentices, inspired by Plotkin’s own work among them. Plotkin has, moreover, assumed the burden of translating the information he collected back into their language.

“I feel strongly that this effort has helped validate their culture in the eyes of the Indians,” Plotkin writes. Prior to this work, the Tirios had only one book written in their language: the holy Bible. This research constitutes a true partnership between Western and Indian cultures; both share in any potential material benefits, but more important, this approach to ethnobotany helps the indigenous peoples understand the potential global importance of a fundamental aspect of their culture.”

P.T.

The Auditor, State of Hawai`i, Audit of Contract Administration and the Office of Space Industry in the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Report No. 95-3, January 1995. 78 pages; no charge.

The state auditor’s report on contract management in the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism contains a wealth of information on matters besides the state’s push for the spaceport. In addition, an appendix includes a list of contracts issued by seven DBEDT divisions from July 1, 1989 through the end of the 1992-93 fiscal year.

Divisions whose contracts are listed are the Energy Division, the Business Services Division, the Industry Promotion Division, the Business Development and Marketing Division, the Research and Economic Analysis Division, and the Foreign Trade Zone, in addition to the Office of Space Industry. Because the auditor reviewed contracts issued by DBEDT’s Tourism Office just a year ago, that division was not included in the present audit.

The audit’s findings range from the sublime to the absurd. In one case, DBEDT issued a two-year, $17,000 contract to help sponsor an international cricket competition in Hawai`i. “DBEDT has stated that this event will have a significant economic impact on Hawai`i,” the audit reports. “However, a DBEDT staff member stated in a memorandum that the potential economic impact from the event is low.”

Another contract called for spending $100,000 “for a marketing program to promote Hawai`i as a place to do business,” the auditor writes, then adding, in a wry note, “Presumably this would be something different from what DBEDT staff are currently supposed to be doing; however, exactly what is not clear. The contract did not specify what this marketing program would accomplish… As a result, the department cannot demonstrate that the contract resulted in any benefit to the state or taxpayers.”

Of the 72 contracts closely examined, 17 provided for expense accounts or reimbursement of expenses. “Such contractual provisions,” the auditor writes, “offer no incentive for contractors to control their costs.”

Marion M. Higa, the state auditor, has received merited praise for this and a host of other hard-hitting reports her office has issued of late. More than praise, however, these reports deserve readers — at the Legislature, at the highest levels of the governor’s administration, among leaders of environmental and good-government organizations, and, most of all, at the homes and businesses of ordinary taxpayers.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 5, Number 8 February 1995