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EXTREME ENVIRONMENTALISM COMMITTING
GENOCIDE AGAINST CRITICAL ANALYSIS
According to testimony recorded in the Congressional Record of May 8, 2001, the salary of many environmental leaders ranks in the top 2 percent of U.S. wage earners.
Last year, Mark Van Putten, head of the National Wildlife Federation, pulled down more than $250,000, a 17 percent raise over the previous year.
Kathryn Fuller, World Wildlife Fund president, was paid $241,000.
National Audubon Society president John Flicker reaped a $240,000 paycheck.
$239,000 went to Natural Resources Defense Council director, John Adams.
The top job at the Wilderness Society pays $204,000, Defenders of Wildlife $201,000.
Remuneration for Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund president Buck Parker was $157,000.
Sierra Club's Carl Pope was elevated to $199,577 in 1999, from a mere $138,000 in 1998, nearly a 50 percent increase.
Are these laborers worthy of their hire?
Are their organizations saving the environment?
Not according to the testifying elected officials, who have asked Congress to investigate how the tax-exempt donations from business, foundations and individuals is spent.
The testimony of Reps Hansen and Simpson claim that today's most influential environmental groups have evolved from hands-on, grass roots organizations that actually planted trees and worked on streambeds to huge business groups focusing on marketing, litigation and perpetuating and expanding their power bases. They are slick, richly-funded, well-organized and employ hordes of idealistic college students and highly pragmatic accountants, marketing firms and attorneys.
Between 1992 and 2000, they instigated 435 lawsuits, with a funding total from the U.S. Government (aka the taxpayers) of $36.1 million. One case in Texas involving salamanders netted Sierra Club lawyers $3.5 million in taxpayer funds.
Defenders of Wildlife, who in 1999 collected $17.5 million in donations to help save wolves, uses an accounting loophole that classifies millions of dollars spent on direct mail and telemarketing as education and environmental activism, rather than the fund-raising category under which it belongs, thus saving a fund-raising and management tab of more than 50 percent.
So what, you may ask. Isn't that the American way?
Well....not for an America that professes to want more money for education in order to improve analysis and critical thinking skills. I just read in the Arizona Republic that the education establishment's response to the outstanding spelling performance of homeschooled students was their 'concern' that homeschooled students are overly subjected to rote learning and memorization, rather than the 'critical thinking' skills needed in today's competitive economy.
In other words, say our educators, students 'and the public' require "the rest of the story" in order to arrive at sensible judgments.
However, the last thing 2-percenters leading the contemporary environmental movement want is critical thinking. They want sheeplike acceptance of the distortion, emotionalism, omission and slash and burn tactics against challengers that is routine in their brochures, press releases and solicitations for your $20 or $25 membership fee. Unquestioning acceptance, not critical thinking, is necessary for the survival and expansion of environmental bureaucracies, as it is for all bureaucracies.
Take the Defenders of Wildlife letter that reaped a harvest of millions: "Dear Friend, I need your help to stop an impending slaughter----otherwise Yellowstone National Park----could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups---"
These people send literature to children and visit classrooms, manipulating the minds and emotions of young children and teachers alike with pictures of cuddly wolf cubs and 'name the baby wolf' contests.
I seriously doubt that a schoolroom in America has been exposed to the kind of photo you see here. But it is a very important component of the wolf reintroduction program.
Baby calves are cute and cuddly, too. This one was mutilated by one introduced wolf, then saved by a vet. Later, another wolf finished the job on the poor, wounded calf.
Half of my cousin's 10 baby calves in western New Mexico were killed in the same manner. Day after day he rides out and sees his mother cows frantically grouped up trying to protect the remaining babies from circling wolves... "Thirty sheep have been killed on a ranch nearby. On another neighboring range, three cows in the proces of giving birth have been slaughtered by wolves."
But is this "rest of the story" allowed in the classroom?
Of course not. We must shield the tender sensibilities of children from the grim reality of half a calf and focus instead on cuddly cubs.
So much for developing critical thinking skills, and so much for educationally balanced, tax-exempt environmental programs.
Reps Hansen and Simpson quip that the biggest impact the most powerful environmental groups today have on the environment is the amount of paper they use. The Wilderness Society alone mails out 16,986 membership solicitations a day. The amount of paper generated by environmental lawsuits is unmeasurable. If one Sunday edition of the New York Times requires the pulp from 75,000 trees, imagine the number of rainforests and 'old-growth' trees needed for carrying on "save the environment" activities.
The role of extremist environmental activism in preventing proper maintenance of our dangerously overgrown forests contributed greatly to the record 93,000 fires that burned 7.3 million acres in 2000. In Idaho alone, more trees burned than have ever been logged in the history of the state. And never have I seen a written estimation of the loss of endangered plants and animals on those 7 million acres. In fact, the subject is pointedly ignored. How's that for analytical probing, weighing and balancing?
And let's not forget the power shortages, courtesy in large part of the eco-movement.
So, are the handsomely-paid directors and their faithful "minions saving the environment".....with the $9.6 million dollars a day (in 1999) donated to environmental groups by individuals, companies and foundations.....?
I don't think so.
Payson.cc © 2001 Carrol Cox
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