Dear HCN,
The take of Beltway green
Paul Pritchard of the National Parks and Conservation Association
on the national environmental movement is: “We feel like General
Custer.” (-D.C. Green Power Brokers Look for New Home,” HCN,
11/13/95). An apt analogy, indeed – though hardly a grassroots,
cross-cultural organizing sentiment. The genocidal Custer got what
he had coming. Just as insulting is Sierra Clubber Carl Pope’s
attempt to divert the blame to the public. His projection holds
that the current eco-assault is the environmentally concerned
American voters’ fault because, “they do not hold (politicians)
accountable.”
Years of slavishly protecting
“access’ to politicians instead of protecting wildlands by Pope and
the other high-paid CEOs of D.C. green groups has led to the very
lack of accountability politicians face. Democratic Party
chameleons all know that they can get their 90 percent League of
Conservation Voters ratings handed to them by merely attending to
the few no-brainer issues the league consistently serves up. Even
Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, R-Ore., the “Architect of Extinction,” gets
a 90″ rating from LCV. Just who is not holding these hacks
accountable?
Jon Roush, CEO of the Wilderness
Society, has the audacity to blame conservationists by claiming
that since “ranchers (are) nascent environmentalists’ and that
“loggers liked being out in the woods,” “a great organizing
opportunity was missed” because environmentalists couldn’t overlook
the damage done by these eco-ranchers. Just what was the missed
opportunity? The chance to do more old-growth logging like Roush
carried out on his Montana ranch? The Wilderness Society never
missed any opportunities to pollute its board of directors with
timber CEOs, big ranchers and resource-extraction
heirs.
Many of us grassroots environmentalists
have worked in the woods and mills. Some still do. We all know that
it’s not the small rancher nor the guy riding the crummy to the
logging site working to feed his family that’s the enemy. It’s the
huge trans-national corporations, their PAC-controlled politicians
and their corporate foundation-funded, cautious, careerist
D.C.-greens that have been the three-legged stool of destruction.
The long-practiced “go-along-to-get-along” policy of the national
environmental groups has merely come home to roost in the age of
the Newt.
Michael
Donnelly
Salem,
Oregon
The writer is president
of Friends of the Breitenbush
Cascades.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline How Newt hit a nerve.
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