Talk:Wise Use Movement

Your writeup on Ron Arnold and the Wise Use Movement omits pre-1988 events in both Canada and the US, since they were already well underway before then, under the aegis of the Northwestern US Forest Industry, during the debate over the RARE 2 (Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) studies then being conducted by the Clinton Administration, 1995 to 2001.

My awareness of Mr Arnold (who claimed to have formerly been in the Sierra Club executive) began when the British Columbia forest industry began circulating reprints from Mr Arnold's anti-environmental writings in the late Seventies, 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.

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.

Biased/inaccurate

This article is extremely biased and inaccurate. The idea that those in the 'wise use' movement are 'anti-environment' is merely one persons opinion. Their ideas and philosophy may be different, that does not inherently make it wrong, and that does not make it 'anti-environment'. That is for individuals to decide on their own, not for this article to present as it does.

The article does not in any way address the philosopy behind wise use environmentalism, which should be done before one begins to attack it.