Letter from PIELC

I recently attended the 2002 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Four to five thousand delegates included people from the grass roots on up to the apex of the environmental movement. Their lawyers come to get continuing education credits. There were very few opposition folks, like myself, though I think most of us kept a low were interested in any kind of elevated profile. There are some heartening developments, from our perspective, though.

We see a great leviathan, the Green Machine, arrayed against us, but they see themselves as a fragmented organisation, with many squabbling camps fighting over the cash. More like a herd of cats than a cohesive movement. There is also a serious schism between the grassroots activists and the Big Green leadership, with its corporate structure and highly paid executives and lawyers.

There are advantages to us in helping them get still more fragmented. Since they are suspicious of each other, and form easily dissolved marriages of convenience to fight particular issues, there are many chinks in their armour, just waiting to be exploited.

They see themselves as victims, crying, "They're picking on us." whenever they encounter any opposition.

As Lomborg says, they have nothing to trade upon but their perceived credibility. Since they are more than willing to lie, cheat and steal, seeing the end as justifying the means, they can often be shattered with well-supported facts. Take a lesson from Lomborg in presenting factual counter-arguments … provide reputable, well-recognized information sources, along with easy access to source documents. When publishing a press release, that can mean attaching a fact sheet and the relevant passages from a research piece. On the Internet, it means linking directly to the source whenever possible.

The Green Machine often has the media in its pockets. Following Goebbels' principle of repeating lies often and loudly, they make headway against reality. However, they often forget to provide in-depth information directly to reporters. Since journalists are, by and large, rather lazy, giving them everything they need to build an article or report often works. We can turn this to our advantage by giving journalists everything they need to present our side, and back it up by building an online media resource site that, over time, will shatter green credibility at every turn.

Environmental stewardship movements in contrast rely on fact-based approaches to the environmental issues of the day, locally, regionally, and internationally. That's where I feel we are. We don't want to oversee a decline in environmental quality, despite how the Green Machine may paint us. We do, however, understand that humanity has a legitimate place in the world, and that we need to care for the planet for ongoing viability and quality of life. We want to bring developing nations onto the playing field with us...we do not want to level the playing field by bringing ourselves down to the level of developing nations.

The Green Machine has an anchor dragging it down ... the Black Bloc[1]. ELF[2], ALF[3], and their fiends are very much alive and well. The tighter we can tie the public perception knot between them and their more mainstream companions, and the more visible we can make the knot, the less credibility the Green Machine will retain.

There was a panel discussion at the PIELC about the viability of non-violent approaches to environmental issues. One panellist recalled that Ghandi got India away from the British Empire through non-violence. A second said he preferred non-violence as well, but understood what made people become rowdy. The third panellist was an anarchist writer, who maintains that progress will not come without violence.

Most of the audience were Black Bloc people, who resonated most with panellist three. As a victim class, they blamed violence on the police at WTO and IMF protests and the like...failing to remember who precipitated the head bashing by destroying the odd McDonalds or Starbucks storefront.

The Black Bloc are interesting ... I had not personally seen organized anarchists gathered together in one place before. I had seen them in action on television, but it's not quite the same. I think it's safe to say that we can anticipate a higher level of direct confrontation from these people in the future.

Here in the USA a major chink in the green armour has appeared and is wide open to use by all who care to take the time. Government scientists were caught last year planting lynx hair for lab analysis in connection with a lynx habitat study that could have closed off millions of hectares of public lands to resource extraction. Another was going around asking taxidermists for samples of grizzly bear fur...he was involved in a grizzly bear habitat study. The courts recently awarded a timber company $9.5 million from the federal government for falsely declaring a timber zone under consideration for harvesting as spotted owl habitat...that scientist thought that the area "felt like spotted owls were living there"!

Environmental activist "scientists" are suddenly being “outed” in the media, and increasingly seem as embarrassing the nation. The National Academies of Science recently found that there was no adequate scientific basis for shutting off irrigation water to the farmers and ranchers of the Klamath Basin last year, something the irrigators howled loudly enough that the Bush Administration actually listened to them. The Green Machine bit off more than it could chew when it tried to use surrogate species to shut down 1,400 family farmers.

These all serve to demonstrate the willingness of the Green Machine to falsify science. I don't know if that can be of use to you in your present situation with foxhunting, but all you have to do is to find one UK example of science fraud and hammer hard on it to force a more stringent look at the "science" behind the hunt ban crowd. With enough adverse publicity for the ban supporters, enough MPs might see the issue as a political hot potato better left to die in committee.

(Mr. MacLeod is a consultant and author who works to bring balance to the information published about the environmental issues of the day.)

[1] The black bloc is a collection of anarchists and anarchist affinity groups that organize together for particular protest actions. Black is the colour of anarchism. They originated in Germany in the 1980s but became prominent after the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999.

[2] Environment Liberation Front

[3] Animal Liberation Front

Send mail to enquiries@igreens.org.uk with questions or comments about this web site. Last modified: October 19, 2005

Send mail to enquiries@igreens.org.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: October 19, 2005