ER - EPIC, other groups form extreme fringe

EPIC, other groups form extreme fringe
by Leo Sears
3/23/05

The Buckeye Conservancy had Patrick Moore, Ph.D., as the guest speaker at its recent annual dinner held in Fortuna’s River Lodge.

This brought howls of outrage from some of the more strident local environmentalists.

“He is real environment-bashing slime and needs to be refuted,” reads an e-mail from the Environmental Protection Information Center to Earth First!, which describes Moore as “a well-known Canadian Eco-traitor.”

To the environmental extreme, such as EPIC, anyone willing to voice an opinion it doesn’t like is fair game for character-bashing as slime, and worse.

To much of the rest of the world, Moore is an experienced voice of moderation in a cacophony of environmental extremism.

Why does he set off such over-the-top reactions from extremists?

In the opinion of the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper), it is “because he is probably the environmentalists’ most-effective critic.”

“He holds a doctorate in environmental science and, before joining the industry’s public-relations machine, was a leading member of Greenpeace for its first 15 years. The fact that someone so high-profile switched camps with such a splash has long grated on the green camp.”

The Forest Action Network (the most confrontational group trying to halt logging on British Columbia’s Central Coast) has even created a Web site called “Patrick Moore Is A Big Fat Liar” to ridicule him.

Environmental thinkers are divided along a sharp fault line, according to Moore.

“There are the doomsayers who predict the collapse of the global ecosystem,” he said. “There are the technological optimists who believe that we can feed 12 billion people and solve all our problems with science and technology.

“I do not believe that either of these extremes makes sense. There are real problems and there is much we can do to improve the state of the environment. There is a middle road based on science and logic, the combination of which is sometimes referred to as common sense.”

In the doomsayers category, we have such groups as FAN, EPIC, Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, Redwood Peace and Justice Center, Refuse and Resist!, and Local Solutions – the list goes on and on with cross-linkages and memberships.

“As a result of the rise of environmental extremism,” Moore points out, “it has become difficult for the public, government agencies and industry to determine which demands are reasonable and which are not.”

As ranchers, corporate executives and ordinary people embrace a style of environmentalism that is quietly saving species, restoring forests and grasslands, and preserving open space, those to whom protest has become a way of life are forced to adopt evermore strident positions to justify their existence.

“It’s almost as if the person or group that makes the most outrageous accusations and demands is automatically called ‘the environmentalist’ in the news story,” Moore said. “Industry, no matter how sincere in its efforts to satisfy legitimate environmental concerns, is branded ‘the threat to the environment.’”

Ranchers have always been protective stewards of the lands that have provided their livelihoods for generation after generation. To do otherwise would have been against their own best interests and threatened their very survival.

How best to accomplish that in today’s world is the genesis of the Buckeye Conservancy that is “dedicated to the promotion, communication and implementation of those ideals and policies that support the ecologic and economic sustainability of natural resources and open space in family ownership.”

Faced with business interests that are willing to cooperate, environmentalists are often left with a choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions.

Many environmentalists choose the latter, and their concept of “sustainable development” has (while still calling it “sustainable”) taken a strong “anti-development” direction.

There is probably a good deal of truth in what Congressman Richard Pombo said during congressional hearings: “What most of these groups are – are fund-raising machines.

“They don’t really care if they solve a problem – their interest is in maintaining the battle because that is what funds their organization.”

Another Congressman, Scott McInnis, summed it up by saying, “Environmental groups have learned to sell fear.”

(Leo Sears is a Eureka resident. Opinions expressed in columns do not necessarily represent those of The Eureka Reporter. Readers who would like to respond to this and other columns may e-mail letters or guest opinions to editor@eurekareporter.com.)