The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE GREEN SCARE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S4403-S4406 on May 4, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE GREEN SCARE
Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, our collective national memory is still haunted by images from the so-called ``McCarthy Era.'' This was a time in the middle of the last century when ``The Red Scare'' came to dominate both the headlines and the national consciousness, a time when no stone was left unturned in the search for the Communists beneath them.
Truth took a back seat during ``The Red Scare,'' with the result that innocent and guilty alike had their rights trampled upon, and an entirely proper investigation became an exercise in hysteria. During
``The Red Scare'' we lost track of the facts and got wrapped-up in the emotions of the time.
The United States is now entering into an energy crisis. Demand for power is up and supplies are, if not down, at least not keeping up with that demand. As an example, gasoline prices are over $2 a gallon, and the hot weather and travel season aren't even here yet, Mr. President!
We all know there's a real power crisis in the State of California. How it came about is well-documented and need not occupy us here today. Suffice it to say, all the elements conspired to come together at the right time and in the right place--much like the events told in ``The Perfect Storm''--and this disaster is now upon us.
How are we going to get out of it, or, at least, mitigate the worst of its effects? How do we get there from here? I submit we are neither going to exclusively drill our way out of it, nor are we going to exclusively conserve our way out of it. Both those options may look good on paper, but they are doomed to failure in the real world.
This body is about to come to grips with designing a national energy policy. It will be an interesting time for us, as we work to blend effective conservation measures with ways to ensure that we have the power sources we need. It is my hope that this plan will be based on sound science, not on emotions or slogans. If it's not, it's eyewash, not worth the paper the headlines it would generate are written on.
Mr. President, there is a five-part series entitled ``Environment Inc.,'' which ran between April 22 and April 26, 2001, in the
``Sacramento Bee'' newspaper.
This series was written by a ``Bee'' reporter named Tom Knudson. Mr. Knudson has won two Pulitzer Prices for his writing on environmental issues.
This series examines the high-powered fund raising machine that now characterizes much of today's Corporate Environmental Culture, a machine that increasingly funds, not environmental conservation efforts, but an unceasing flow of litigation and a spreading spill of public relations efforts. Conservation organizations have, themselves, become big businesses, complete with fund raising consultants and tremendous salaries.
Annual salaries for the heads of 9 of the 10 largest environmental groups now top $200,000; one makes over $300,000 a year. In 1997, and I quote here: ``. . . one group fired its president and awarded him a severance payment of $760,335.'' We don't see television ads of fat cats in their high-rise offices or swilling martinis in ritzy hotels. The article notes that some are now calling the Sierra Club, ``Club Sierra.'' John Muir would be appalled, I think.
Make no mistake about it, the Corporate Environmental Culture has raised a lot of money. Direct mail efforts. It boggles the mind to think that anyone would give money to a group that sends out millions of paper brochures asking for money to save the rain forest. Telemarketing efforts. ``Send us money or the Jenkins Warbler goes extinct on the 27th of next month.''
This series points out that, and I quote:
Six national environmental groups spend so much money on fund raising and overhead they don't have enough left to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending--60 percent of annual expenses--recommended by charity watchdog organizations.
Many--although, in fairness, not all--of these groups use an accounting loophole--and again I quote:
to classify millions of dollars spend on direct mail and telemarketing not as fund raising, but as public education and environmental activism!
If a citizen wants to give a few bucks to Club Sierra, that's not properly any of our business, is it? But increasingly, this series points out, environmental groups are inundating the courts with endangered species lawsuits. Such suits have become one of their basic tools. Even if there's no chance they'll win, they can tie up projects in courts for years on end.
Every time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service misses a deadline, a lawsuit follows like a hungry duckling waddling after its mother. Increasingly, the Service will tell you they are devoting more and more of their time and resources to fighting lawsuits, which leaves less and less time for the wildlife biology that is the Service's proper business.
Why would groups suppposedly dedicated to conservation behave this way? Increasingly evidence suggests this onslaught of suits might well have its roots in the Almighty Dollar and the pursuit thereof. A lawyer who wins one of these ``citizen suits'' is entitled to a refund of his or her attorney fees from the taxpayers. These attorneys typically charge $150 to $350 an hour. The series notes that, and again I quote:
When California water districts won a suit . . . last year, they submitted a bill for $546,403.70 to the government. The Justice Department was stunned.
It gets worse. There is increasing evidence that environmental groups are misusing science. They are behaving the way a fellow who tries to sell you a used toothbrush behaves, that is, they tell the truth, but they don't tell the whole truth. Here's an example from the series relating to necessary thinning programs in national forests.
The buildup of fuels in Western forests was a prominent topic in the 1996 Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project report, a 3,187-page scientific assessment of the California mountain range.
Citing a remarkable accumulation of vegetation and deadwood, the $6.5 million, congressionally funded report warned of a fiery future--unless overcrowded stands were thinned soon.
One suggested remedy was small-tree logging, followed by prescribed fire. `Logging can serve as a tool to help reduce fire hazard,' it stated.
Environmental groups overlooked that part of the report.
Instead, they plucked one sentence from thousands to argue that all logging is bad. Here's how the National Forest Protection Alliance, a consortium of activists, used the report last fall in an action alert, under the heading,
``What the Government's Own Scientists Say about Logging and Wildfires'': ``Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate and fuels accumulation has increased fire severity more than any other recent human activity.''
One fire scientist who helped write the report notes that the excerpt refers to historic logging that left Western forests littered with woody debris--not modern thinning designed to clean up such debris. Informed of this, a network coordinator for the forest alliance, said:
``This is the most popular fact we have. It is a quote congresspeople have used.''
Well, that settles that for all time, doesn't it, Mr. President?
I submit that our national energy policy is increasingly being affected not by scientific fact and the best interests of the country, but by the same type of hysteria and misinformation we saw when truth took a back seat during ``The Red Scare'' of 50 years ago.
During ``The Red Scare'' we lost track of the facts and got wrapped-
up in emotion. During ``The Green Scare,'' which we're going through now, we're giving ourselves over to hysteria yet again. This present-
day hysteria is fed by a bloated, inefficient environmental industry, absorbed by its pursuit of money and devoted to the preservation, not of the natural environment, but of its own high rise, martini-swilling corporate lifestyle. There is a sizeable body of evidence that Environment, Inc. is willing to abandon truth and science, even the very reason for its existence, in pursuit of a buck. It is a movement that has lost its soul.
There's a bright side to all this. First of all, the word is getting out. Thanks to people like Tom Knudson, the author of the ``Environment Inc.'' series and to concerned people in an out of the environmental movement, more and more people are coming to realize they've bought that used toothbrush we talked about before. As our population soars and demands upon our eco-system accelerate, there is much real environmental work to be done.
I will conclude where Mr. Knudson's series concludes, with the coming thing in environmentalism, a movement both new and rooted in the very origins of environmentalism. Everyday ``garden-variety'' environmentalists are bringing ``more science, entrepreneurial skill, accountability, teamwork, and results to a movement they say has grown self-righteous, inefficient, chaotic, and shrill.'' The Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, and other groups are focusing, not on their offices and attorney fees, but on protecting land and on restoring it. These groups are making allowances for necessary development.
This represents a maturing of the environmental movement, a realization that it is fire not smoke that counts, results, not headlines. It is time for America to stand up to the lies and hysteria of ``The Green Scare'' and say: ``No. Not again.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that excerpts from the series
``Environment Inc.'' be printed in the Record.
I wish to also note that the entire series may be found at: www.sacbee.com/news/projects/environment.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Fat of the Land--Movement's Prosperity Comes at a High Price
(By Tom Knudson)
As a grass-roots conservationist from Oregon, Jack Shipley looked forward to his visit to Washington, D.C., to promote a community-based forest management plan. But when he stepped into the national headquarters of The Wilderness Society, his excitement turned to unease.
``It was like a giant corporation,'' Shipley said, ``Floor after floor after floor, just like Exxon or AT&T.''
In San Francisco, Sierra Club board member Chad Hanson experienced a similar letdown when he showed up for a soiree at one of the city's finest hotels in 1997.
``Here I had just been elected to the largest grass-roots environmental group in the world and I am having martinis in the penthouse of the Westin St. Francis,'' said Hanson, an environmental activist from Pasadena. ``What's wrong with this picture? It was surreal.''
Soon, Hanson was calling the Sierra Club by a new name: Club Sierra.
Extravagance is not a trait normally linked with environmental groups. The movement's tradition leans toward simplicity, economy and living light on the land. But today, as record sums of money flow to environmental causes, prosperity is pushing tradition aside, and the millions of Americans who support environmental groups are footing the bill.
High-rise offices, ritzy hotels and martinis are but one sign of wider change. Rising executive salaries and fat Wall Street portfolios are another. So, too, is a costly reliance on fund-raising consultants for financial success.
Put the pieces together and you find a movement estranged from its past, one that has come to resemble the corporate world it often seeks to reform.
Although environmental organizations have accomplished many stirring and important victories over the years, today groups prosper while the land does not. Competition for money and members is keen, Litigation is a blood sport. Crisis, real or not, is a commodity. And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.
``National environmental organizations, I fear, have grown away from the grass roots to mirror the foxes they had been chasing,'' said environmental author Michael Frome, at a wilderness conference in Seattle last year. ``They seem to me to have turned tame, corporate and compromising.''
This series of articles--based on more than 200 interviews, travel across 12 states and northern Mexico, and thousands of state and federal records--will explore the poverty of plenty that has come to characterize much of the environmental movement. Some of the highlights:
Salaries for environmental leaders have never been higher. In 1999--the most recent year for which comparable figures are available--chief executives at nine of the nation's 10 largest environmental groups earned $200,000 and up, and one topped $300,000. In 1997, one group fired its president and awarded him a severance payment of $760,335.
Money is flowing to conservation in unprecedented amounts, reaching $3.5 billion in 1999, up 94 percent from 1992. But much of it is not actually used to protect the environment. Instead, it is siphoned off to pay for bureaucratic overhead and fund raising, including expensive direct-mail and telemarketing consultants.
Subsidized by federal tax dollars, environmental groups are filing a blizzard of lawsuits that no longer yield significant gain for the environment and sometimes infuriate federal judges and the Justice Department. During the 1990s, the U.S. Treasury paid $31.6 million in legal fees for environmental cases filed against the government.
Those who know the environment best--the scientists who devote their careers to it--say environmental groups often twist fact into fantasy to serve their agendas. That is especially true in the debate over one of America's most majestic landscapes: its Western evergreen forests. A 1999 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 39 million acres across the West are ``at high risk of catastrophic fire.'' Yet many groups use science selectively to oppose thinning efforts that could reduce fire risk.
``A lot of environmental messages are simply not accurate,'' said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest ecology and ecosystem science at the University of Washington. ``But that's the way we sell messages in this society. We use hype. And we use those pieces of information that sustain our position. I guess all large organizations do that.''
And sometimes when nature needs help the most, environmental groups are busy with other things.
As the tiny Fresno kangaroo rat struggled for survival in the industrialized farmland of California's San Joaquin Valley in the 1990s, for example, the environmental movement did not seem to notice.
As a fisheries conservationist tried to save rare trout species across remote parts of Oregon and Nevada, he found no safety net in major environmental groups.
As sea turtles washed up dead and dying on Texas beaches in 1993, no groups made the turtles their mascot.
``I contacted everybody and nobody listened,'' said Carole Allen, who rehabilitates turtles injured in fishing nets.
``Everybody wants to save dolphins. Turtles aren't popular. It really gets frustrating.''
Yet look closely at environmentalism today and you also see promise and prosperity coming together to form a new style of environmentalism--one that is sprouting quietly, community by community, across the United States and is rooted in results, not rhetoric.
``I'm so frustrated with the opportunism and impulsiveness of how groups are going about things,'' said Steve McCormick, president of The Nature Conservancy, which uses science to target and solve environmental problems. ``What's the plan? What are the milestones by which we can measure our success?''
Today's challenges are more subtle and serious than those of the past. Stopping a dam is child's play compared to halting the spread of destructive, non-native species. Protecting old-growth forests from logging is simple; saving them from fire and disease is more difficult.
But as the Bush administration takes control in Washington, many groups are again tuning up sound bites--not drawing up solutions.
There is no clearinghouse for information about environmental groups, no oversight body watching for abuse and assessing job performance. What information exists is scattered among many sources, including the Internal Revenue Service, philanthropic watchdogs, the U.S. Department of Justice and nonprofit trade associations.
Sift through their material and here is what you find:
Donations are at flood stage. In 1999, individuals, companies and foundations gave an average of $9.6 million a day to environmental groups, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, which monitors nonprofit fund raising.
The dollars do not enrich equally. The nation's 20 largest groups--a tiny slice of the more than 8,000 environmental organizations--took in 29 percent of contributions in 1999, according to IRS Form 990 tax records. The top 10 earned spots on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America's wealthiest charities.
The richest is The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Va., group that focuses on purchasing land to protect the diversity of species. In 1999, The Nature Conservancy received $403 million, as much as its six nearest rivals combined: Trust for Public Land, Ducks Unlimited, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, National Wildlife Federation and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Forty years ago, the environmental movement was a national policy sideshow. Today, it is a strong, vocal lobby that weighs in on everything from highway transportation to global trade. Some groups, such as the National Audubon Society and Environmental Defense, are generalists, dabbling in many things. Others, such as Ducks Unlimited and Conservation International, have found success in specialization.
* * * * *
David Brower, the legendary former Sierra Club leader who led successful battles to keep dams out of Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon in the 1950s and '60s, said success springs from deeds, not dollars.
``We were getting members because we were doing things,'' Brower said before he died last year. ``Out (strength) came from outings and trips--getting people out. If came from full-page ads and books.''
Today, there is a new approach--junk mail and scare tactics.
``Dear Friend, If you've visited a national park recently, then some of the things you're about to read may not surprise you!
``America's National Park System--the first and finest in the world--is in real trouble right now.
``Yellowstone . . . Great Smoky Mountains . . . Grand Canyon . . . Everglades. Wilderness, wildlife, air and water in all these magnificent parks are being compromised by adjacent mining activities, noise pollution, commercial development and other dangerous threats . . .''
So begins a recent fund-raising letter from the National Parks Conservation Association, a 400,000-plus-member organization. The letter goes on to tell of the group's accomplishments, warn of continued threats, ask for money--
``$15 or more''--and offer something special for signing up.
``Free as our welcome-aboard gift . . . The NPCA bean bag bear!''
Let's say you did send in $15. What would become of it?
According to the group's 1998-99 federal tax form, much of your money would have been routed not to parks but to more fund raising and overhead. Just $7.62 (51 percent) would have been spent on parks, less than the minimum 60 percent recommended by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a nonprofit charity watchdog group.
And the parks association is not alone.
Five other major groups--including household names such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club--spend so much on fund raising, membership and overhead they don't meet standards set by philathropic watchdog groups.
It's not just the cost of raising money that catches attention these days. It is the nature of the fund-raising pitches themselves.
``What works with direct mail? The answer is crisis. Threats and crisis,'' said Beard, the Audubon Society chief operating officer.
``So what you get in your mailbox is a never-ending stream of crisis-related shrill material designed to evoke emotions so you will sit down and write a check. I think it's a slow walk down a dead-end road. You reach the point where people get turned off.'' Then he hesitated, adding:
``But I don't want to say direct mail is bad because, frankly, it works.''
Even some of those who sign the appeals are uncomfortable with them.
``Candidly, I am tired of The Wilderness Society and other organizations--and we are a culprit here--constantly preaching gloom and doom,'' said William Meadows, the society's president, whose signature appears on millions of crisis-related solicitations. ``We do have positive things to say.''
Many environmental groups, The Wilderness Society included, also use a legal accounting loophole to call much of what they spend on fund raising ``public education.''
In 1999, for instance, The Wilderness Society spend $1.46 million on a major membership campaign consisting of 6.2 million letters. But when it came time to disclose that bill in its annual report, the society shifted 87 percent--$1.27 million--to public education. The group also shrank a $94,411 telemarketing bill by deciding that 71 percent was public education.''
The Wilderness Society's spokesman, Ben Beach, said that kind of accounting is appropriate because fund-raising solicitations are educational.
``No one is trying to do anything that isn't right by the rule book here,'' he said. ``A lot of us don't particularly like getting (telemarketing) calls. But that's not to say you don't learn something.''
Still, the accounting practice is controversial. Nine of the nation's 20 largest groups don't use it. ``Playing games with numbers is not worth the effort or questions that would come from it,'' said Stephen Howell, chief operating officer at The Nature Conservancy.
``It should be called what it is,'' said Noonan, the Conservation Fund leader. ``As we become larger and more successful, I worry about the ethics of our movement. We need to think about self-regulation and standards. If not, the ones who make mistakes are going to hurt it for all of us.''
Dollars can disappear in other ways, of course.
* * * * *
Comfortable office digs and sumptuous fund-raising banquets are another drain on donor dollars. The Sierra Club spends
$59,473 a month for its office lease in San Francisco. In Washington, Greenpeace pays around $45,000 a month.
In June 1998, The Nature Conservancy spent more than $1 million on a single fund-raising bash in New York City's Central Park. Carly Simon and Jimmy Buffett played. Masters of ceremonies included Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace and Leslie Stahl. Variety magazine reported that the 1,100 guests were treated to a martini bar and a rolling cigar station.
``The goal was to raise (our) profile among high-dollar donors,'' Conservancy spokesman Mike Horak said in a statement. And it paid off: $1.8 million was raised.
* * * * *
Salaries gobble up money raised, too. In 1999, top salaries at the 10 largest environmental groups averaged $235,918, according to IRS tax forms. By contrast, the president of Habitat for Humanity, International--which builds homes for the poor--earned $62,843. At Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the president made $69,570.
Among environmental groups, Ducks Unlimited paid its leader the most: $346,882.
``Those salaries are obscene,'' said Martin Litton, a former Sierra Club board member, who worked tirelessly over a half-century to help bring about the creation of Redwoods National Park in 1968 and Sequoia National Monument last year. Litton did it for free.
``There should be sacrifice in serving the environment,'' he said.
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