Talk:Wise use

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wise use article.
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[edit] Initial comments

I dispute the contention that Property and Environment Research Center falls into the Wise Use category. I see nothing in Ron Arnold's manifesto that fits with PERC's philosophy.Percolator 21:23, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There should be more information presented about the terrorism associated with the Wise Use movement.

Your writeup on Ron Arnold and the Wise Use Movement omits pre-1988 events, since they were already underway well before then, under the aegis of the Northwestern US Forest Industry, during the debate over the RARE 2 (Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) studies which had begun in 1972.(and concluded under Clinton by 2001)

My awareness of Mr Arnold (who claimed to have formerly been in the Sierra Club executive) began in the late 70's when the British Columbia forest industry began circulating reprints from Mr Arnold's anti-environmental writings, around the time BC's very bitter "War in The Woods" began heating up.

Although the Wise Use rationale was not being promoted to the public as a philosophy, as it is being today, its tenets were well-discussed within industry journals and its boardrooms. This was well evidenced in the tenor of the industry's appeals to the public.

The Wise Use Movement then (ca 1980) took the form of the many SHARE groups (Share the Forest, the Woods, etc), in an active coalition between the IWA (the International Woodworkers of America) and BC's Council of Forest Industries (COFI). At that time the IWA was run by Jack Munro, a declared anti-environmentalist who was likely prompted by a fear of withdrawals of cutting rights from BC's TFls (Tree Farm Licences) and job loss as anything else, as Mr Arnold was warning was then happening in the US.

At that time the issues centered around environmentally unsound forest practices, the immediate prescription for which was seen by environmentalists as massive withdrawals from the "working forest" in the large TFL's. The environmentalist reasoning was that by the time forest practices improved, there would be no environmentally stable "working forest" left.

The major focus at the height of this "War in The Woods" was the South Moresby Wilderness Proposal, and the Share Groups mounted massive ad hominum attacks in their various communities against anyone publicly endorsing anti-forest industry sentiment. Though job blackmail was commonly used against Gov't workers and teachers, and business boycotts employed, such as that which saw Colleen McCrory - later to be awarded the Governer-Generals Award and other major recognition - lose her business, I know of no physical injuries inflicted.

I seriously doubt there's one out of a thousand Canadians today who know what Wise Use means.

The article fails to mention that that the Wise Use controversy prompted John A Livinston's book, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation (1981), which outlined the fatal flaw of Wise Use, which is its inability to deal with self-interest on the part of the individual or his/her society, the solution for which is offered by Arne Naess' Deep Ecology movement.

You (or somebody) should include all the above info in the History section of the article. 151.200.57.98 09:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

"In 1993 the Wilderness Society asked a media communications firm, MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider, to study the Wise Use movement." Does the inclusion of this stray sentence in the article make any sense? It should be expanded, such as: What were the results of this study? Or else it probably should be removed. 151.200.57.98 09:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

You're right, it is a stray. I removed it. I was not able to find more about the study except what Arnold had said. This is a tough bunch, where is Eric Hoffer when you need him? KAM 12:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heavy reliance on biased source

The Disinfopedia takes a one-sided view of everything, even though it's a wiki. Here's an example of the kind of slant they put on things:

  • "Facts don't matter; in politics perception is reality," Arnold told Outside.
  • For a number of years, Arnold was a registered agent for the American Freedom Coalition, a political offshoot of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The American Freedom Coalition takes credit for funding the first Wise Use conference in 1988. Aside from telling Outside he is willing to ignore facts to achieve his goals,

From the observation that in politics "facts don't matter", an article Disinfopedia quotes assumes that this means that Arnold himself believes that facts don't matter to to him; then they further conclude this means he'll (in their words) "ignore facts to achieve his goals".

Not to mention they way they try to discredit Arnold by associating him with an unpopular group (the Unification Church).

I think we need additonal sources of information on the Wise Use movement. --Uncle Ed 15:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

The article would be much more effective if it were writen from a more fair, objective point of view, IMO. As it is some of the writing almost borders on conspiracy theory stuff. Steve Dufour 03:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The article is highly biased. It is far from encyclopedic. -Exucmember 04:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Checked for its neutrality? This article is interesting because it follows the formula for the environmental movements response to the wise use movement. Tinkering will just dilute it. Ed Poor is right new sources are needed. KAM 14:39, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
What I would like to know is: Is "wise use" really a movement or is it just a label that is put on people? You really can't tell from the article. Steve Dufour 06:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The best info I've been able to find on line that is from neither wise-use or envionmental groups themselves is from James McCarthy here [1] and here [2] KAM 17:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried reading the first McCarthy PDF, but it was too buzzword-laden. I did gather that "Wise Use" began in the US Midwest but that it petered out around 10 years ago.
See also the new article on anti-environmentalism I just started.
We also need a comparison of "anti-environment" (i.e., hostility to nature) and "anti-environmentalist" (i.e., critical of radical environmentalism, the "Greens", etc. --Uncle Ed 20:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
McCarthy focuses on the grass-roots elements of wise-use and seems sympathic . A better all-round article is here Determined opposition: the Wise Use movement challenges environmentalism

Environment, Oct, 1995 by Phil Brick [3]


I see now that the article calls wise use an "agenda" rather than a "movement". Steve Dufour 03:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


McCarthy says; Defining a core ‘Wise Use’ agenda is difficult,as priorities vary by region, industry, organization, and more. But its overall goals are increased private access to public resources and reduced state regulation of private land and resources, categories embracing a range of more specific goals.
It defines itself mainly in opposition to environmentalists, environmental regulations, and federal agencies governing land uses, all of which it portrays as arrogant, ignorant outsiders attempting to deny local communities their livelihoods and rights. Broadly, Wise Use in the West is dedicated to defending continued commodity production on public lands, and in the East to resisting the regulation of private lands.
The article on the other hand (which is titled "wise use") accepts at face vaule the "25-point Wise Use Agenda" by Arnold. Arnold strikes me as insincere and opportunistic. Holding up him as the face of the wise-use movement to some extent a stawman argument. KAM 13:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
If a Democrat, or for that matter a socialist, advocated taking resources from nature for human use would he or she also be a wise user, or is it just a Republican thing (as the article seems to imply?) Thanks. Steve Dufour 14:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems the wise use movement is considered to be part of the what is being called the anti-environmental movement (thanks Uncle Ed). According to the article I used as a source for the Arnold quote the anti-environmental movement: "has two primary and underlying aims. First, it has an interest in demonstrating the counter productivity of environmental laws and government regulation. Secondly, it aims to undermine any green ideology.... that does not support, for example, private property rights, monetary rule and what might be termed 'rational resource development'. Is the second aim the Wise use and both aims the anti-envionmental movement as a whole? KAM 15:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The section Further Connections between the Bush Administration and Wise Use seems more anti-envioronmenal then wise use to me. Saying President Bush has connections to wise use doesn't provide much information. Is ownership of a mutal fund with stock in big oil a connection? Could this be moved to it's own page? KAM 17:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Competely unsourced, vague "connections" section

"Further Connections between the Bush Administration and Wise Use" A number of members the Bush Administration who have connections to Wise Use:

  • President George W. Bush -
  • Vice President Dick Cheney - CEO of Halliburton, the world's second largest oil-drilling company
  • Former Chief of Staff Andrew Card - General Motors lobbyist
  • Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton -
  • Former Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles - mining industry lobbyist, National Environmental Strategies, Inc. (NES), Senior Vice President for Public, Environmental and Marketing Activities for the United Company
  • Head Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Mark Rey - timber industry lobbyist
  • Assistant Attorney General for Environment and Natural Resources Thomas Sansonetti - Wise Use leader, mining industry lobbyist
  • Former EPA deputy administrator Linda Fisher - lobbyist for Monsanto
  • Superfund head Marianne Horinko - lobbyist for Koch Petroleum Group, Koch Industries
  • Assistant administrator of Air and Radiation Jeffrey Holmstead - Wise Use leader, utility industry lobbyist
  • Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton - lawyer for asbestos polluters
  • EPA department solicitor William G. Myers - "executive director of a Wise Use group, Public Lands Council, an arm of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association that advocates grazing rights on government land for minimal fees" (Crimes 38).
  • Assistant secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks H. Craig Manson - as chief counsel of the California Fish and Game Department under Governor Pete Wilson, wanted to suspend Endangered Species Act under certain circumstances
  • Assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management Rebecca W. Watson - mining lobbyist
  • Assistant secretary of Water and Science Bennett Raley - Wise Use leader, mining lawyer, lobbied against 1994 Clean Water Act reauthorization
  • Interior's assistant secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget Lynn Scarlett - Former President of Reason Foundation (think-tank downplaying global warming and air pollution), does not believe in curbside recycling or nutrition labels on food (Crimes 39). Scarlett served as interim Secretary of the Interior between the administrations of Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne, and is now the Deputy Secretary of the Interior.
  • Director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Jeffrey D. Jarrett - coal company executive

IMO, this section doesn't belong in the article even if a legitimate connection were cited for each entry. Besides, none of these entries are sourced, and a similarity of views or policy or lobbying does not constitute a "connection." (Should we have this kind of section in the Nazism article, or a similar list of Democrats in the Communism article?) -Exucmember 18:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wise use groups

During the Reagan administration, many Wise Use groups had influence in Reagan's kitchen cabinet, including Colorado brewer Joe Coors of Coors and Co.[citation needed] Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), and the Heritage Foundation, two anti-environmental groups endeavoring to reduce restrictions on major polluters such as Coors and Co. Using his influence in the Reagan administation, Coors chose anti-environmentalists like Anne Gorsuch and her husband Robert Burford to administer the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management, repectively. Burford had pledged to destroy the Bureau of Land Management.[citation needed] Coors also chose MSLF President James Watt as Secretary of the Interior.[citation needed] "Watt was a proponent of 'dominion theology,' an authoritarian Christian heresy that advocates man's duty to 'subdue' nature" (Crimes 25).

Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition replaced communism with environmentalism as the biggest threat to democracy and Christianity (see The New World Order by the Rev. Pat Robertson, and Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). Robertson used his Christian Broadcasting Network in coordination with Ralph Reed, an official in the Bush campaign, to foil environmentalists. The CBN made anti-environmentalism as the point issue in talk shows, documentaries, and news hours. In Crimes Against Nature, Kennedy reports that "...Reed gave seminars to corporate public relations executives, coaching them on how to use electronic technologies and grassroots organizing to foil environmentalists" (Crimes 29). Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's seat of the U.S. Congress in 1994, and Gingrich showed his loyalty to Wise Use in what Kennedy calls his "anti-environmental manifesto" - Contract With America. During this time period, Gingrich and Congressman Tom DeLay tried to sneak anti-environmental attachments on bills through Congress. DeLay once admitted to the Wall Street Journal (as quoted in Crimes Against Nature) that "We have lost the debate on the environment," after President Clinton shut down the government in December 1995. DeLay said the Endangered Species Act is the greatest threat to Texas after illegal aliens. DeLay also called the EPA "the Gestapo of government" (Crimes 19). Dick Cheney is also connected to branches of Wise Use. From 1992 until he became Vice-President, Cheney was a "distinguished adviser" to the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, and was on the board of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest. Ron Arnold, Wise Use leader, is the executive vice-president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Several environmental advisors to president George W. Bush have been associated with the Wise Use movement. These include Terry Anderson and Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

[edit] Overhaul needed

I made some changes, but this article is still a mess and needs a complete overhaul. I think it may have been the best example of a biased article (not including stubs) that I have found on Wikipedia. Personally, I am rather neutral on this issue, as this "Wise use" movement attracts business interests which seek to justify their actions which in many cases should not be completely unregulated by government (and at the fringes, bad behavior), and on the other hand some on the other side go too far, such as extremists in the name of environmentalism who have committed what has been called acts of "ecoterrorism," such as driving spikes into trees which break logger's expensive saws and have resulted in at least one death.

Nevertheless, I am offended by a highly biased article (on either side). Is it possible that the reason no one on the "Wise use" side has radically revised this article is that its blatant bias was an example of their adversaries' unreasonable lack of fairness? -Exucmember 19:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

"seeking increased access to public lands" - In my view this is not how critics see wise use but this is the view of wise use, in fact the central view. From Mccarthy "They argue that the timber reserves were established for local use..." From reading the 1905 wise use introduction it seems that it is the case the the reserves were created for local use. KAM 13:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I was being very bold in editing, and there are bound to be some adjustments that should be made. I would encourage you to be more bold in your edits (both mine and, especially, previous editors'); you know more about this topic than I do. In the adjustment I just made, for example, I'm not sure that "wetland protection and the Endangered Species Act" are the most typical kinds of legislation that Wise use would oppose, or whether these were chosen by critics to suit their POV and critique of Wise use. In my view, recent editors have not been nearly bold enough in rewriting this article, which was essentially a propaganda piece against Wise use. -Exucmember 17:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree the article needs an overhaul. I didn't want shift too far the other way. Element of wise use are extreme right-wing, anti-environmental, dishonest and employ divisive and perhaps dangerous rhetoric. KAM 22:55, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it is important, then, to indicate more prominently in the article that Wise use runs the gamut from relatively centrist to extremist views, encompassing a broad range of people, including those that you mentioned (and including some examples of both "moderate" ideas and behavior, as well as the ideas and behavior of extremists). What is not appropriate is for the anti-"Wise use" people to put a propaganda article that represents only their POV on Wikipedia. We need, rather, an article consisting of facts and fair characterizations that are also well-sourced). -Exucmember 00:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

If you imagine a wilderness converted to a forest forest with logging, hunting, fishing, ATV trails some environmental groups would react with great passion. If that forest was then converted to suburbs the same groups would not be interested in protecting it. A wise use envionmentalist may feel the other way. Use the wilderess, save the working forest. [4]KAM 22:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wise Use

Someone said it before on here, but this IS an article about a movement that defines itself primarily in opposition to the environmental movement, so from someone who has done extensive research on the subject, I think it would be extremely hard and probably disingenious to try to make this article "neutral" by airbrushing the anti-environmentalist sentiment that pervades this movemenet. I do agree however that there are a lot more and better sources on Wise-Use and people's reactions to it then those that were used in this article. Also, people should not be so quick to dismiss industry ties to the movement as "conspiracy theory", in fact they run very deep and have had a profound impact on the movement's effectiveness in shaping government policy on these issues. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.172.211.127 (talk) 20:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC).

Where in the article does it dismiss industry ties as a conspiracy theory? The question is not if resource industries seek to influence government policy in order to overturn or weaken environmental laws and regulations. Clearly they do, this is not disputed by anyone. Jesse Walker and other claim that there is a populist backlash against the envionmental movement. However Halvarg's book offers as an explanation, not a populist backlash, but "“Astroturf” movements created by big business." [5] KAM 00:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that the environmental movement seeks to conflate anti-environmentalism with wise use. WHAT'S OLD AND WHAT'S NEW ABOUT THE WISE USE MOVEMENT here [6] seems like a good source. It also metions the Myth and Ideology of the Old West, the key to the criticism seciton is good understanding KAM 14:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revision

I propose the following revision. Remove the section,

It lays claim to what it characterizes as "assumptions of the Western worldview":

And replace it with,

According to Ron Arnold most of the wise use movement would agree with the following principles:
  • Humans, like all organisms, must use natural resources to survive.
  • The earth and its life are tough and resilient, not fragile and delicate.
  • We only learn about the world through trial and error.
  • Our limitless imaginations can break through natural limits to make earthly goods and carrying capacity virtually infinite.
  • Humanity's reworking of the earth is revolutionary, problematic and ultimately benevolent.

He never says that those three points are what the wise use movement is about, he simply states that "the environmental movement challenges the dominant Western worldview and its three assumptions". Calibas 03:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

As that can be quoted/sourced, I find it a good replacement. It retains the information and improves accuracy. Went ahead and changed it. CP/M comm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistent uppercase and lowercase usage.

The title of the page says 'Wise use', while the actual URL includes 'Wise Use Movement'. In other sections, the usage of uppercase and lowercase in the 'Wise Use' phrase is highly inconsistent. Valencerian 02:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why the most frequent usage in the article appears to be "Wise use", with the W capitalized and the U uncapitalized. Either both words or neither should be capitalized. - furrykef (Talk at me) 04:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

I took the liberty of removing the tag. I think that more could be added to the criticism section , perhaps the part about Richard White could be expanded. In my view the "wise use is a front group" is not taken seriously by neutral writers. KAM 00:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)