May/June, 1995

Table of Contents

Why?

Oklahoma City will burn in the memory of every person who saw the horrible pictures of human suffering and needless destruction. No reason, no perceived injustice, no excuse is sufficient to justify the bombing which killed and maimed innocent people and terrorized the nation. The initiation of violence in any form must be condemned by the human community. Obviously, the human community has a long way to go; violence appears to be rising rather than waning. At this writing, there is only speculation as to the motive for the Oklahoma City bombing. The speculation is focusing on Americans: revenge for Waco; right-wing wackos; left-wing lunatics; or unbalanced, mentally defective misfits. Whatever the motive, it was insufficient to justify the deed. There are, however, important lessons to be taken from this experience.

The Oklahoma City bombing draws attention to a mind-set that Americans have assumed belonged only to foreign terrorists. It is precisely the same mind-set celebrated in Edward Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang, further defined in Dave Foreman's Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, and rabidly advocated in the Earth First! Journal, which proclaims:

"Monkeywrenching is more than just sabotage, and your (sic) goddamn right it's revolutionary! This is jihad, pal" (January, 1995).

The only difference between the Oklahoma City violence and the violence described as "monkeywrenching" is a difference of scale. The victim of a saw blade shattered by a nail in a spiked tree suffers as innocently as the victim felled by debris from a collapsing federal building. Gil Murray, President of the California Forestry Association, is just as dead from the pipe bomb delivered to his office on April 24, as the victims under the Oklahoma City rubble. The mind-set that enables ecoterrorism or terrorism against a federal building - is the same. And it is wrong!

Dave Foreman justifies monkeywrenching (ecoterrorism) in his book Confessions of an Eco Warrior by claiming that nature is at war with those who would destroy her. Eco warriors (ecoterrorists) are nature's defenders called into battle to fight a holy war. Mike Roselle, who authored the "jihad" statement, says

"there are no innocent bystanders because in these desperate times, bystanders are not innocent."

The mind-set these statements reveal is the mind-set humanity has been struggling to outgrow for millennia. That mind set is this: a person, or a group of people believe that other people should behave in a particular way. When they do not, force - or violence - is justified to compel compliance. Whoever initiated the violence at Oklahoma City believed that others should behave differently, and they were willing to use violent force to compel compliance.

The tactic is not only inhuman, it is ineffective. At best, people are intimidated for only a short period of time. Then their anger is organized and their determination is bolstered and their behavior continues with new vigor. There is no doubt that monkeywrenching has deepened the motivation of people who resist the agenda advanced by Earth First! and other ecoterrorist groups. Nor can there be any doubt that the Oklahoma City bombing will deepen the motivation of the federal government and the American people to squash the sources of political terrorism. In both instances, society is the loser.

Environmental differences cannot be solved by decree of government nor declaration of war by Earth First! Political differences cannot be solved with bombs, neither those dropped from airplanes, nor delivered by a rented truck. Such actions only delay solutions and deepen the despair while solutions are sought.

The millions of Americans who are rightly concerned about the growing power, and the arrogant abuse of the power possessed by the federal government, are now likely to be confronted by an even more aggressive government, hell-bent to stop terrorism. Willing or not, Americans are likely to give up even more individual freedom by empowering the government to invade privacy, to monitor perfectly legal private communications, to infringe upon the right of assembly, to weaken rules of evidence, and strengthen rules of seizure.

Once again, the mind-set that advocates and initiates violence to influence the behavior of others - has backfired. Whether the action seeks to advance an environmental agenda or a political agenda - the "jihad" mind-set is counter-productive, destructive, and inhumanly insensitive. Regardless of political beliefs, color, religion, or race, the innocent people who died and suffered in Oklahoma City are the unwitting martyrs of a new cause - the elimination of the "jihad" mind-set. No matter where each American finds himself on the political spectrum, the "jihad" mind-set is not appropriate. The initiation of violence is never justified. A pipe bomb at a federal office in Carson City, Nevada, arson of Kent family cattle facilities near Fallon, Nevada, the killing of Tom Kelly's cattle in New Mexico, and the bombing in Oklahoma City are all fruits of the "jihad" mind-set. The only difference is scale.

About this edition...

Rarely have we crammed so much information into one edition. The bombings, in Oklahoma City and in California, occurred in the final production stage. No one could not be affected by the images and implications of these hideous events. The media, of course, were eager to paint every militia, every gun proponent, and every conservative with the broad brush of biggotry - and worse.

Nevertheless, there is a job to be done. The responsibility for that job cannot be shirked because the media might misunderstand, or worse. This nation is great because divergent opinions are allowed to collide in the arena of public discourse. It's called free speech. There have always been collisions of ideas. Those collisions should be encouraged, not suppressed.

This edition will cause collisions in several quarters. The UN admirers will not appreciate our criticism, though our criticism is aimed at improving the institution, not dismantling it. Politically correct advocates of the New Age will not appreciate our revelation of Gaia Worship at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine - by our Vice President. Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) will cringe at the disclosure of the interconnectedness - not of nature - but of the individuals and organizations that are, in fact, the marching army of the global environmental apparatus.

Those who share ECO's philosophy and objectives cannot be intimidated by the media's propensity to point fingers of blame. Now is the time to stand full of compassion, but firm in conviction. Now is the time to double-check every fact, and redouble determination.

The Debate: An Overview

When Ocie Mills was jailed for "polluting the waters of the United States" for the act of depositing 19 loads of building sand on his own property, many Americans cried foul. Other Americans cheered the triumph of wetlands over the wishes of a private property owner. Few Americans recognized that Ocie's delimma was just one of thousands of individual conflicts that are the manifestation of a collision between two forces struggling for dominance of the world.

Those two forces are ideas about how society should be organized, about how people should behave, and about man's relationship to the planet. The conflict is not new. It has raged for centuries. Until the 20th century, however, the conflict was lop-sided in favor of human superiority. The last half of the 20th century has seen a shift of power in favor of the idea that nature is supreme and that human beings must be prevented from assuming dominance over nature.

To appreciate the magnitude and the significance of the conflict, it is necessary to understand the opposing forces. On the one hand, "anthropocentrists" believe that human life is the supreme value in the universe, that humans are the top of the food chain, that human beings are nature's crowning jewel, and as such, have a special responsibility, as stewards of the planet, to care for and nurture all of nature. On the other hand "biocentrists" believe that humans have no special value greater than any other life form, that humans are equal in value and importance to all other species, that all species - including plants - have equal rights, and that humans have, in fact, wrongfully usurped the rights of other species. For the purpose of this discussion, we will refer to anthropocentrists as the "prevailing" view, and to biocentrists as the "green" view.

The green view is enticing. It appeals to people emotionally and to the basic human desire to be good, fair, and correct. It is, on the surface, logical and colored with just enough science to appear to be legitimate. The green view contends that biodiversity - all of nature - is the bank account from which all species draw resources for their sustenance. One species, humans, are withdrawing more than they need, and are thereby depriving other species of their due. Moreover, the green view contends that the rate of human withdrawal will soon overdraw the account and leave the entire planet bankrupt.

This view has been advanced for most of the century by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, by Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, and hundreds of others whose body of literature is generally referred to as "deep ecology." The green view was discounted by the prevailing view and seen to be nothing more than the rantings of the lunatic fringe of the burgeoning environmental movement. During the decades of the 70s and 80s, the green view quietly gained dominance of the United Nations.

Maurice Strong chaired the first Earth Summit in 1972. Then he founded the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1973 and served two years as its

Executive Director. The World Resources Institute (WRI), of which Strong is now Chairman of the Board, was created in 1982 and Gustave Speth was appointed to head the organization. Speth now heads the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). These two UN organizations are advancing the green view through treaties and international agreements around the world.

The green view, which for most of the century could be found only in eclectic "deep ecology" literature, is now the official position of UNEP, UNDP, and is becoming the official position of governments around the world. Maurice Strong also chaired the second Earth Summit in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro, officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The conference attracted thousands of people including heads of state from more than 100 nations. The conference produced several documents that lifted the lunatic fringe, deep ecology ideas out of eclectic libraries and deposited them squarely before the governments of the world. The green view is only suggested in Agenda 21, the "soft law" overview of objectives. The green view is only slightly illuminated in the two primary treaties presented at the Summit: the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The United States ratified the Convention on Climate Change, but has not yet ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Both of these Conventions, or treaties, are rather bland in their language and identify objectives more than procedures. Both, however, create a new enforcement mechanism called the Conference of the Parties (COP) which is empowered to develop regulations called "protocols" which are legally binding upon the nations that ratified the treaty. The Convention on Biological Diversity requires (Article 25) that the COP develop a Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA). That document has been developed and is scheduled for release in June/July, 1995. It is this document that expresses the green view in vivid detail and gives the green view the legitimacy of the United Nations. It is this document that attempts to validate the premise that humans are overdrawing nature's resources. It is this document that sets forth recommendations to guide the COPs of all treaties as they develop binding protocols to stop the overdraft and to protect biodiversity from future intrusions by humans.

Human influences on Biodiversity

Section 9 of the GBA describes how humans are destroying biodiversity: "The root causes of the loss of biodiversity are not in the forest or on the savanna, but are embedded in the way modern civilization uses resources. They lie in human social organization, burgeoning human numbers, the way in which the human species has progressively broadened its ecological niche and appropriated ever more of the earth's biological productivity, the excessive and unsustainable consumption of natural resources...economic systems that fail to set a proper value on the environment, inappropriate social structures, and weaknesses in legal and institutional systems."

Section 10 describes the measures that must be taken to correct each and every "root cause." The most visible corrective measure is the creation of "protected areas" (required by Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity) based on the "recently proposed Wildlands Project" developed by Dr. Reed F. Noss. This plan would set aside "at least fifty percent" of the total land area as wilderness and "most" of the remaining fifty percent would be available for limited use by permit only. Other corrective measures include reducing consumption by as much as 75%, reducing global population to three to five billion, imposing taxes on resource use, endowing biodiversity with legal rights, and elevating NGO's (non-grovernment organizations) standing to sue in behalf of biodiversity.

The green view is gaining ascendency over the prevailing view. The green view ascendency is programmed to occur over several decades, perhaps as much as a century. As one proponent put it: "we are not concerned about setting speed records, but about staying the course." The green view has permeated the United Nations. The two treaties discussed here are but a fraction of the initiatives that are underway by dozens of UN and other international organizations. Treaties are being developed on sustainable development, population control, and poverty, all of which have as their goal the ascendency of the green view.

At the national level, the green view is gaining ascendency through federal and state legislation, expansion of regulatory authority, and through the proliferation of foundation-funded environmental organizations (NGOs) that drive hundreds of local and regional projects. Schools are flooded with material which advances the green view. The media, particularly cartoons, advance the green view. Green Force, a fifty-million dollar project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, seeks to greenwash children around the globe. The green view is permeating churches. Spearheaded by the Temple of Understanding, a global effort has been funded by a special trust fund created by the UNDP to enlighten religious leaders to the reality of gaia. The green view is gaining ascendency.

Response to the Green View

New ideas are powerful. People, especially young people, like to embrace new ideas. New ideas, however, are not necessarily correct. The green view, while not new, is new to a generation of Americans who are encountering an old idea dressed in new, high-tech clothing. Adherents to the prevailing view are at a disadvantage. We have been caught off guard. We have mobilized to respond to situations such as Ocie Mills' without recognizing that his delimma is only a symptom of a much more serious disease. Our response must focus on the inherent flaws of the green view.

The green view is flawed, fatally flawed. That fact alone cannot prevent its ascendency unless those flaws are revealed. Every conclusion presented by the green view must be challenged, beginning with the basic assumption that biodiversity loss is devastating the planet.

The very term "biodiversity loss" may be a mischaracterization of what is occurring. "Biodiversity change" is probably more accurate. No one can question the fact that humans have altered the landscape. Cities now rise from the wetlands that once were Chicago and Washington DC. Rich harvests are now gathered from river bottoms. Millions of people now live in homes that once were "old-growth forests." Biodiversity has changed as a result of human activity.

Biodiversity has also changed as the result of natural activity. Mt. Saint Helens altered vast reaches of the landscape, as did the Yellowstone fires. Glaciers devastated the biodiversity of Canada and the northern tier of American states - long before humans had anything to do with it.

Biodiversity changed. Nature accommodates the activity of

nature and of the species it produces. What the green view calls unsustainable resource use resulting in the unacceptable loss of biodiversity may be nothing more than biodiversity changing to accommodate the activity of species produced by nature. The conclusion reached by the green view limits the power of nature. The green view necessarily concludes that nature cannot accommodate the species it has produced and therefore must be managed by people who have more wisdom than nature. It is a flawed notion that assumes any collection of human beings have more wisdom and power than nature. Any attempt to manage biodiversity on a global scale, to achieve a vision of what a handful of people believe nature should be, is ludicrous on its face.

Management of biodiversity is the control of people. Biodiversity cannot be managed unless people are controlled. Therein lies the fatal flaw; people cannot be controlled by any force except nature. Historically, under one guise or another, people have been controlled by forces other than nature - for relatively short periods of time. Throughout history, each and every time people have been controlled by man-made authority, the people have broken free. Each and every time people have been controlled by man-made authority, the people have been forced to endure suffering, misery, and death before the indomitable human spirit rises to throw off the control. America rose to greatness because it was founded on the idea that people should be free and should not be controlled by man-made authority. American greatness wanes in direct proportion to the loss of that individual freedom. The green view seeks to subordinate individual freedom to the authority of a handful of people who seek to manage biodiversity.

It is ironic that the green view insists that non-human species live free of control by humans, but insist with equal vigor that the human species be controlled by a small handful of elite humans. The human species alone recognizes its dependence upon other species. That distinction imposes a heavy responsibility upon humans. Humans have not always met the responsibility of stewardship. Nature, though, provided humans with the ability to learn from mistakes. Humans continue to learn and to modify their behavior to meet their own self-interest -as does virtually every other species. When the stewardship of natural resources serves the self -interest of humans, humans become vigilant stewards. The question facing this generation is this: can individual humans, serving their own self-interest, be stewards of natural resources, or must the stewardship of natural resources be planned and managed by a handful of elite, self-appointed, people who assume they have more wisdom than nature?

The UN at 50

The 50th anniversary of the UN...provides a unique opportunity to restructure and revitalize the UN...to prepare for the vastly increased role it must have as the primary multi-lateral framework of a new world order." So says Maurice Strong, speaking to the Swedish Royal Academy in 1994. The United Nations Conference convened in San Francisco on June 26, 1945. Fifty nations signed the Charter which came into force October 24. This year, 1995, is the 50th anniversary of the UN, and Strong's restructuring and revitalization of the UN is definitely underway. There are no news reports. There are no Congressional debates. There is overwhelming silence about the profound changes that are taking place at the UN.

For three years, the 26-member Commission on Global Governance has been working on a document which embodies a vision of Global governance to guide civilization into the 21st century. Their recommendations include:

• a permanent volunteer world army;

• conversion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to a world central bank;

• adoption of the concept of global taxation.

Maurice Strong is a member of the Commission, along with Adele Simmons, President of the MacArthur Foundation, and Oscar Arias.

These recommendations appear to be so extreme that no serious consideration should be wasted on them. Wrong! The World Summit for Social Development (WSSD), recently concluded in Copenhagen, may well be the vehicle for global taxation. The Summit is working toward a Convention on Poverty. The concept is buried deep within the draft document and is manifested in the Plan of Action.

As is typical with Convention documents, the grand language expresses hope, optimism, motherhood and apple pie: "...improved quality of life and sustainable livelihoods for all." Well past the introductory banality comes the nitty-gritty reality. Paragraph 86(g) says "United Nations development efforts should be supported by adequate financial resources...." Commitment 8 promises to "...increase financing for operational activities...in order to fulfill their responsibilities [under] the World Summit for Social Development." The Plan of Action calls for international taxation on "financial transactions, air travel, and telecommunications."

As is often the case, the real information is contained in support documents, reports, and proposals that never get to the public. Several international taxation ideas have been studied: Demilitarization funds are estimated to produce $14 billion. This plan, known as the Arias Peace Plan (for which he, Oscar Arias, received the Nobel Peace Prize) would tax military spending at three percent for five years with the money going into a Global Militarization Fund.

Pollution taxes of several varieties have been suggested. A $1 per barrel tax levied on oil and coal consumption would produce an estimated $66 billion per year. The tax would be collected by an international authority. A Global Income Tax of 0.01% has been proposed on nations with a per capita income of $10,000 or more. This tax would produce an estimated $20 billion per year. Other objects of international taxation suggested by the Commission on Global Governance include: ocean transport, a surcharge on airline tickets, user fees for ocean fishing, parking fees for geostationary satellites, and user fees for the rights to the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Tobin Tax is the blockbuster. James Tobin, who won the 1981 Nobel Prize for Economics, has proposed a 0.5 percent tax on foreign exchange transactions. The proposal appeared in the Human International Development Report 1994 which said that proceeds should be "devoted to international purposes and be placed at the disposal of international institutions." He says there has been a "major surge" of interest in his proposal by those interested in raising international revenues. No wonder. The tax would produce an estimated $1.5 trillion per year. The total UN operating budget for 1995 is $1.1 billion and total worldwide expenditures are approximately $11 billion per year; the Tobin Tax would produce an immense windfall for the United Nations.

Also buried within the WSSD document is Paragraph 75, which says: "effective implementation of the Programme of Action requires strengthening of...non-government organizations (emphasis added) enabling them to participate actively in policy making...." Money will be required for "establishing legislative and regulatory frameworks, institutional arrangements and consultative mechanisms for involving these organizations in the design, implementation and evaluation of social development strategies and specific programmes [and for] supporting capacity-building programmes for these organizations in critical areas such as participatory planning, programme design, implementation and evaluation, economic and financial analysis, credit management, research, information and advocacy."

Here it is: the "restructure and revitalization" of the UN that Maurice Strong announced last year. International taxing authority, and the elevation of selected NGOs to official UN status is the final shift of power from sovereign nations to the United Nations, with the effective real power in the hands of those who influence and control the NGOs.

The UN is now constrained only by the threat or practice of member nations refusing to pay voluntary contributions and assessments. The United States has refused to fund a variety of specific activities, including population control activities between 1985 and 1992. The UN is dependent upon voluntary contributions and for that reason, concerns of member nations, especially the developed nations, must be accommodated. With its own taxing authority, the UN, which now consists of 185 nations, would not be influenced by the opinion or concerns of developed nations, particularly the concerns of the United States.

Al Gore addressed this World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. The San Francisco Examiner reported that the audience, consisting mostly of non-government organizations, sat on their hands. But when Fidel Castro addressed the same audience, he received a rousing ovation, the longest ovation given to any speaker during the week.

Americans need only to consider the change that occurred in the federal government after the 16th Amendment - the income tax. It took a very few years, after the federal government was no longer dependent upon the states, to make the states dependent upon the federal government. Once the United Nations is no longer dependent upon its member nations, those member nations, including the United States, will be dependent upon the United Nations.

Although the United Nations relies upon the United States for nearly a quarter of its total funding, the United States is not respected by the vast majority of UN member states nor the NGO triumvirate that so heavily influences UN activity. In fact, the United States is held to be the culprit by those who drive the global environmental agenda. The charge that with 5% of the world's people, the United States consumes 30% of the world's resources is regurgitated endlessly throughout United Nations environmental propaganda. It is the reason cited by Maurice Strong that American lifestyles are not sustainable. The global environmental agenda targets the United States specifically for the reduction of consumption. The ability to tax energy by an international authority would most certainly by used primarily to increase the cost of every consumer product to the point that people could no longer afford to buy those products. Energy taxation is the quickest way to reduce consumption; all goods and services are dependent upon energy. Taxes levied by international authority would be beyond the reach of accountability. Americans could not vote the tax assessors out of office. America would have only one of 185 votes at the restructured, independent UN. Most of the other 184 votes would be receiving the benefit of the taxes levied on Americans and not very likely to repeal the taxes.

While these proposed changes are written into the documents relating to the World Summit on Social Development, should they become a part of a ratified Convention, the ideas would quickly be duplicated in all other Convention development activities. The currently evolving Convention on Sustainable Development is the most likely place to see these ideas emerge. The 50th anniversary of the UN, if Maurice Strong has his way, will be seen as the beginning of the third millennium, the new age that ushered in a new world order of global government funded by global taxation. National governments will be secondary; state governments will be irrelevant, county and municipal government will be unnecessary, and individuals will be educated, overseen, and directed, by NGOs representing the authority of a global army. Such is the vision of the global environmental agenda.

NGOS: A Formula for Success

UNCED came and went with hardly a ripple raised across the American consciousness. A generous guess would be that less than 2% of the population can now translate the acronym into United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Even fewer have any idea of the significance of the event. When the dust settled from the departure of 40,000 souls from Rio de Janeiro in 1992, three exceedingly important documents entered the world: the Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Agenda 21. More important than all the documents combined is a new procedure for shaping policy that incubated for 15 years, reached maturity at Rio, and was delivered alive and well through UNCED. The foundling procedure is now rapidly passing through the toddler stage, robust and healthy, enroute to becoming the ruler of the world.

The procedure has no name. It is not democratic. It is not totalitarian, nor dictatorial. It is perhaps best described as controlled consensus, or coerced conformity, or affirmative acquiescence. It is a procedure that insures the desired outcome, without bloodshed. It is the procedure used to advance the global environmental agenda.

The procedure utilizes four elements of power: international government organizations (United Nations), national governments, non-government organizations (NGOs), and philanthropic institutions. In 1968, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted resolution 1296 which grants "consultative" status to certain NGOs. Procedures have evolved which allow UN organizations to choose which NGOs will be allowed to participate in UN activities and which will be excluded. (The Temple of Understanding and the Lucis Trust are both accredited NGOs). From the beginning, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), was the key NGO, along with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). When the World Resources Institute was founded in 1982 by WWF's Russell Train, it became the third leg of an NGO triumvirate that is, indeed, the unholy trinity. The IUCN, WWF, and WRI are the primary instigators of the global environmental agenda as well as the designers of the procedure for its implementation.

The NGOs are the element that makes the procedure work. The policy idea originates with the NGO triumvirate. The IUCN, for example, first proposed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1981. The policy idea is then adopted by one or more UN organizations for consideration at a regional, then at a World Conference. Each Conference is preceded by an NGO Forum designed specifically to bring NGO activists to the conference location prepared with position papers and lobbyists to influence the official conference delegates. Only selected "accredited" NGOs can participate in the process. For months, and sometimes for years, as in the case of UNCED, the NGOs prepare through extensive training sessions and lobby delegates within their respective nations long before the conference.

The ultimate goal of the conference is to produce a Convention, which is a legally drawn policy statement relating to a particular issue. The Convention is intended to influence the policy of all nations, but when ratified formally by a sufficient number of nations, the policy statement is legally binding upon all nations that ratify the convention. Conventions are enforceable through the International Court of Justice, and in some cases, through other specified sanctions.

Conventions are rarely specific. Those advanced at, and since UNCED, are masterfully written in "soft law" with language that few could possible fault. For example, Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity simply says that each nation shall create a system of "protected areas." Conventions are deliberately written in soft-law, often inspiring language to avoid controversy and to insure positive media coverage. Conventions developed under the UNCED procedure provide for the creation of a Conference of the Parties (COP) whose responsibility it is to define and implement the Convention.

The implementation toll available to the COP is called "Protocols," which are very specific regulations with which participating nations are legally bound to comply whether they agree or not. COP meetings, like major conferences, are preceded by an NGO forum. Only selected accredited NGOs are allowed to participate in the lobbying process. Frequently, COP delegates are chosen from among the NGOs because of their interest and their expertise. The COP of the Convention on Biological Diversity is expected to adopt a protocol to define Article 8 protected areas to be modeled after the Wildlands Project which seeks to return 50% of North America to wilderness.

Protocols often require legislative or administrative action by the participating national government. Again, the NGOs are the essential element. Combining efforts and resources in a variety of ad hoc coalitions, environmental NGOs have dominated domestic policy since the 1970s, that is, until 1993, when they encountered their first serious opposition.

NGOs are effective because they have money. The Environmental Grantmakers Association, consisting of more than 125 philanthropic institutions, coordinate an estimated $500 million each year in gifts to NGOs in the United States alone. NGOs get money in response to proposals that advance some aspect of the overall agenda. It is the

availability of money to NGOs that determine whether wetlands or global warming will be the hot issue. By controlling the purse strings, philanthropic institutions control the throttle, brakes and steering wheel of the vehicle(s) that implement the agenda. NGOs are responsible for writing into environmental laws the concept of the third-party law suit. NGOs now regularly sue the government and private citizens and have their legal fees and often damage awards paid to them by the government or the victim. NGOs are responsible for the creation of special Trust Funds such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, providing hundreds of millions for grants and land acquisition. Through the coordinated funding process, hundreds of NGOs are at work in every community advancing some component of the global environmental agenda.

The NGO process is no accident. In June, 1995, ECOSOC will consider a proposal to vastly expand the power and influence of accredited NGOs. The proposal was developed by a Working Group of NGOs at the behest of the IUCN. The proposal, among other things, authorizes NGOs to participate in tax revenue generated by any of the several proposals now being circulated. NGO oversight and administrative authority would also be vastly expanded. This expansion of power is necessary to implement the provisions of several Conventions that now exist or are in the making. NGOs are designated in the Global Biodiversity Assessment as the entity to oversee and implement protocols in the bioregions to be required by the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The new procedure for shaping policy cannot fail. It can be delayed and frustrated, but it cannot fail unless the machinery is dismantled. A policy idea is massaged through as many conferences as it takes to develop a Convention. Then protocols are massaged until adopted. Armies of NGOs exist to do the bidding of philanthropic institutions. NGOs, led by the IUCN, WWF, and the WRI are shaping the policies of the world.

What in the World is going on?

Almost every week, somewhere in the world, an international meeting is going on to advance some element of the global environmental agenda. Here is a partial summary of what's going on in the world.

Convention on Biological Diversity - ratified by 106 of the 169 signatory nations (US has not ratified). First Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Naussau November 28-December 9, 1994. Next COP meeting in Bali, Indonesia, November 6-17, 1995. Preceding the COP, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) hosted a Global Biodiversity Forum for non-government organizations (NGOs) to enable participants to lobby COP delegates. The COP adopted a three-year work program and developed a statement to be delivered to the Commission on Sustainable Development meeting in April urging that the international legal framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity be adopted by the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Convention on Climate Change - ratified by 66 nations (including US, October 15, 1992). Became international law December 21, 1993. First COP met in Berlin March, 1995. Eleven sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) prior to the COP meeting. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created by the convention, received $865,000 directly from the US between 1991 and 1993, in addition to more than $30 million contributed to the World Meteorology Organization (WMO) during the same period. The Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund (responsible for the CFC ban to protect the ozone layer) received $25 million from the US in 1993. Five meetings of various IPCC working groups are scheduled between April and December, 1995.

Convention to Combat Desertification - opened for signature October 15, 1994. Negotiating Committee met in New York in January, 1995 and will meet again in Nairobi in August. Fifty NGOs have formed an International Network to develop an action plan to "bridge the gap between the community of government officials and the people whom the convention is meant to benefit."

Convention on the Rights of the Child - adopted by the General Assembly of the UN November 20, 1989. Ratified by 169 nations. The United States is one of eight signatories that has not yet ratified the Convention.

International Conference on Population and Development - convened in Cairo, September, 1994. It was the third conference on population control but the first to focus on the concept of population control in the context of sustainable development. Developed countries were asked to pay two-thirds of the cost of population control activities. Through 1985, the US had contributed $1.4 billion to population control activities. No contributions were made until 1993 (after the Clinton/Gore victory) when contributions resumed at $14,500,000 in 1993. A network of NGOs to support population control activities is coordinated by Zero Population Growth in Washington, DC.

UN Commission on Sustainable Development - Met in New York April 10-28, 1995. NGOs have created an Intersessional Steering Committee (ISC) to facilitate dialog, oversee and actively promote national governments' commitments to sustainable development. The agenda will include: trade and the environment; patterns of consumption; financial resources and mechanisms; technology transfer; indicators of sustainable development; and progress toward the implementation of Agenda 21, adopted in Rio de Janeiro. (Results of this meeting are not available as this issue goes to press.)

Regional Ecological Summit - in Managua, Nicaragua, October 12, 1994, Vice President, Al Gore signed a regional Alliance for Sustainable Development which calls for master energy plan, and inventory of local flora and fauna, and the creation of a regional biodiversity corridor in Central America. Prior to the meeting, Maurice Strong's Earth Council convened a meeting of the members of national councils on sustainable development from throughout the western hemisphere. The group identified four goals to achieve global cooperation in promoting sustainable development. Earth Council, in cooperation with the Natural Resources Defense Council, released a new directory of National Councils for Sustainable Development which states that 45 such councils are now in existence.

World Summit on Social Development - 184 nations were represented at the meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark in March, 1995. Combatting poverty in the context of protecting the environment was the primary theme. The NGO network is coordinated by the Overseas Development Council, Washington, DC.

Fourth World Conference on Women - September, 1995, Beijing, China. Convened under the auspices of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. An NGO Forum, heavily influenced by Women for Environment and Development (WEDO), will advance an agenda of choice and gender equality. WEDO's parent organization is Women USA Fund, Inc., founded by Bella Abzug, Congresswomen Patsy Mink and Maxine Waters, and Gloria Steinem. WEDO's major funders are the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Turner Foundation. Their basic budget is $630,000 plus special projects.

Cosmolatry: The Worship of Gaia

At least two powerful, motivating forces drive the global environmental agenda. One is the pure quest for power to control; the other is deep religious conviction. The quest for power is the subject of other, extensive studies. Here, the religious motivation is explored.

Religion is a matter of faith. No proof, or disproof, is necessary to arrive at a religious conviction. One "believes" or disbelieves; that's all there is to it. Differences in religious beliefs have caused, and continue to cause, the bloodiest wars, and the most atrocious injustices in the human experience. America recognized the need to allow individuals to believe whatever they chose to believe and the absolute necessity of avoiding a state-sanctioned religion or belief system. The ongoing school prayer debate is an example of just how strongly Americans feel about keeping government out of religion. Government vouchers that may be used in private, "religious" schools, also unleash heated debate and controversy. Americans want government to stay out of the religious affairs of individuals. Period.

Americans are unaware, however, that their tax dollars are regularly supporting the spread of religion, in America, and around the world. Moreover, the gospel being preached seeks to swallow up every other religion. The new religion is cosmolatry - the worship of gaia. The religion is being promoted through the United Nations structure and through the maze of non-government organizations (NGOs) that dominate the global environmental agenda.

The United States contributes about $2 billion each year to United Nations organizations. More than $100 million goes directly to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), now headed by Gustave Speth, formerly head of the World Resources Institute. The UNDP set up a special Trust Fund to "work with networks set up by the Global Committee." The "Global Committee" is the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (GCPPD) created in 1982.

Follow this carefully: in 1960, Juliet Hollister founded the Temple of Understanding at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York city, listing among their "Founding Friends" such dignitaries as: the XIV Dalai Lama, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, and Secretary-General U Thant. In 1988, the Temple of Understanding co-founded the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival. Twelve individuals listed on the Board of Directors or Advisors of the Temple of Understanding are also listed as members of the Global Forum Council, including the Very Rev. James Parks Morton who is the Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and co-chair of the Global Forum Council. A spokesman for the UN's GCPPD said in a phone interview that the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders for Human Survival is the same organization as the GCPPD.

The first Global Forum in 1988 featured James Lovelock, author of The Ages of Gaia. An official UN report of the conference entitled Shared Visions, says: "James Lovelock's contribution is to suggest...that life on earth regulates its environment as if it were one huge organism. The name given to the organism - and the idea - is that of Gaia, the Greek earth goddess," The report quotes Lovelock: "She is of this Universe and, conceivably, a part of God. On Earth she is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are a part of her." The report continues: "He likened the current global warming to the first signs of a fever, but is worried that we are not allowing Gaia to recuperate. `She may be unable to relax because we have been busy removing her skin and using it as farm land, especially the tree and forests....'"

Geologian, Passionate Priest, The Rev. Thomas Berry, is the most outspoken evangelist for the gaia hypothesis. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Temple of Understanding. Berry and Father Matthew Fox, both former Catholic Priests, have whipped up a gaia stew that is, in fact, a new, burgeoning, global religion. Donna Steichen, in her book UnGodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, says: "...In common with Thomas Berry, Fox holds that the world is being called to a new `post-denominational,' even `post-Christian' belief system that sees the earth as a living being - mythologically, as Gaia, Mother Earth - with mankind as her consciousness. Such worship of the universe is properly called cosmolatry."

Berry himself says, in Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, "The sacred character of the natural world as our primary revelation of the divine is our first need, our second need is to diminish our emphasis on redemption experience in favor of a greater emphasis on creation processes. Creation must now be experienced as the emergence of the universe as a psychic-spiritual as well as a material-physical reality from the beginning."

In his publication, Creation, Matthew Fox refers to Berry as "...the herald of what he calls the Ecozoic age (who) speaks of the need to recapture the unassimilated elements of paganism that can help us experience the spirit that is forming the new era and hear the voices of the Earth that is calling us into the future."

Writing for the Amicus Journal, (Winter, 1993) Berry says: "...The dominant issue of the immediate future will be between the Entrepreneur and the Ecologist, between those who would continue their plundering, and those who would truly preserve the natural world...between the anthropocentric and the biocentric norms of reality and value."

He says in his widely acclaimed book, The Dream of the Earth, "Our secular, rational, industrial society, with its amazing scientific insight and technological skills, has established the first radically anthropocentric society and has thereby broken the primary law of the universe...." What is needed, he says, "...is the change from an exploitative anthropocentrism to a participative biocentrism. This change requires something beyond environmentalism."

The Temple of Understanding is providing a ministry far beyond environmentalism. The 100-year old Gothic Cathedral has been transformed. A blue crab, striped bass, mussels and other animals and plants live in a specially constructed Earth Shrine habitat. One wall, 25 feet high, is decorated with real tropical rain forest flora consisting of bromeliads, orchids, ferns, mosses and aquatic plants as an example of "sacred ecology." Cathedral, the newsletter of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (Fall, 1994) describes the celebration of the tenth annual feast of St. Francis. "In the moments before the first celebration got underway, no one was sure what to expect. Many of us - who regarded ourselves as `serious' - looked forward with fear to a kind of epic petting zoo that would trivialize both St. Francis and the great Gothic space. I saw children lying in the laps of large dogs, and a boy bringing his stuffed animals to be blessed. I saw the not-yet-famous elephant and camel march up the aisle...." The Writer in Residence at the Cathedral, William Logan, goes on to say: "It is equally appropriate to pray for the Earth, to adopt a pet, to organize to fight incinerators, to plan education in sacred ecology, or to lie down and admire the grass. Intimate moments - a lawyer who scoops poop; a volunteer gardener marching to the altar with a bowl full of compost and worms - vie with the grandeur that only the Gothic can invoke - soaring hymns; a sermon by Al Gore, in which he called on the congregants to recognize that `God is not separate from the Earth'...."

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine appears to be the center of cosmolatry, or gaia worship. It houses not only the Temple of Understanding, but the Lindesfarne Association, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and the Gaia Institute. Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of both Earth Summits, founder and first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and founder of the Earth Council, has served as Finance Director of the Lindesfarne Association. Lindesfarne also built a Babylonian Sun God Temple on Strong's Colorado ranch, Baca Grande. Strong's ranch is also home to a monastery, and a variety of New Age religious activities.

Converts to cosmolatry, or gaia, are said to experience an "enlightenment" that can be compared to the "salvation" experience of Christianity. The Lindesfarne Association published G-A-I-A, A Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology. The "knowing" that comes from the enlightenment is the basis of the Precautionary Principle now being written into domestic environmental policy, as well as the basis for the statement in the preamble of the Convention on Biological Diversity that says the absence of complete scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason to postpone action in the face of a threat to biodiversity. The alleged "threat" to biodiversity, i.e. global warming, for example, need only be the declaration of an "enlightened" one to warrant draconian policies that affect every American. The ban on CFCs enacted by the Senate is a classic example of such action based on the "knowing" of the enlightened, rather than clear scientific evidence. Science is not necessary in the minds of the enlightened. Corrective action is fully justified on the basis of "knowing" that comes from the religious convictions spawned by the enlightenment of gaia. Berry says: "...we might say that the next phase of scientific development will require above all, the insight of shamanic powers."

Americans are unwittingly supporting the proliferation of cosmolatry - the worship of gaia - through our contributions to the UN and to Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs) that subscribe to its New Age ideas. It is the explicit objective of the Temple of Understanding, through the UN organizations it influences, to embrace and swallow all the world's religions into cosmolatry.

A Manifesto by Dr. Thomas I. Ellis, circulated on the Internet, describes The Quiet Revolution. "The Gaia Movement includes but transcends the Environmental Movement. The Gaia Movement is essentially philosophical and transformative. Gaians seek not only to pass legislation, but to promote active inquiry into the very terms of the environmental debate.... The shibboleth of `economic growth' as a goal of public policy is, from a Gaian perspective, obviously `the ideology of a cancer cell.' Gaian economics would therefore seek to evolve toward a steady-state, sustainable and just economy. There is no alternative if we wish to survive.

"We can propagate the Quiet Revolution by using it as a collaborative fundraising campaign for environmental groups, community groups, churches. We can supplement this by organizing community events, public access television programs, and Internet initiatives, all to propagate "The Quiet Revolution."

The Wildlands Project

In his 1991 book, Confessions of an Eco Warrior, Dave Foreman said: "It is not enough to protect our few remaining bits of wilderness. The only hope for Earth is to withdraw huge areas as inviolate natural sanctuaries from the depredations of modern industry and technology...identify big areas that can be restored to a semblance of natural conditions, reintroduce the Grizzly Bear and wolf and prairie grasses, and declare them off limits to modern civilization.

"Move out the people and cars. Reclaim the roads and plowed land. It is not enough any longer to say no more dams on our wild rivers. We must begin tearing down some dams already built....

"If the dying industrial empire tries to invade our sacred preserves, we resist its incursions...by using our guerrilla wits, we can use its own massed power against itself. Delay, resist, subvert, using all available tools: file appeals and lawsuits, encourage legislation - not to reform the system but to thwart it. Demonstrate, engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, monkeywrench."

In his introduction to the 1992 Wildlands Project, he says: "Our vision is simple: we live for the day when Grizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska; when grey wolf populations are continuous from New Mexico to Greenland...."

His vision is becoming a reality.

With funding from The Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society, Dr. Reed F. Noss developed the Wildlands Project which was published in Wild Earth, a publication of the Cenozoic Society, on whose board of directors, both Foreman and Noss serve. With a grant from the Ira Hiti Foundation for Deep Ecology, 75,000 copies of the plan were printed and distributed.

Foreman's vision has now become the vision of the United Nations. The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by President Clinton (but not yet ratified by the Senate) requires the establishment of "protected areas" (Article 8) and the development of a "Global Biodiversity Assessment" (Article 25). The Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) defines what "protected areas should be. Section 10.4.2.2.3 states: "This basic design is central to the recently-proposed Wildlands Project in the United States."

Anticipating a speedy ratification process after the Clinton/Gore victory, the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency began developing the Ecosystem Management Policy which adopts the fundamental biocentric philosophy of the Wildlands Project by elevating the protection of ecosystems to the same priority as the protection of human health, and by instructing field teams to "consider humans as a biological resource." The National Biological Service (NBS) was created by administrative fiat to begin the process of implementing the Wildlands Project. It should come as no surprise that NBS selected Dr. Reed F. Noss to produce the first recommendations on how to proceed. His report is simply a continuation of the Wildlands Project, except this document carries the weight of the U.S. government.

Noss describes the Wildlands Project as a coalition. Actually, it is a not-for-profit corporation (NGO) with a board of directors (see below) and a growing assembly of Green Advocacy Groups (GAGS) that are doing all the things Foreman suggested in his book. Foreman identified 35 roadless areas where road closures would result in more than a million acres of wilderness. The Wildlands Project has expanded that vision to 38 areas that would result in 75 million acres of wilderness. Some of the GAGs affiliated with the Wildlands Project are actively pursuing measures in the field to close the roads and move the people out.

Endangered species listings and law suits are the primary tools being used, along with an enthusiastic campaign of intimidation, guerrilla tactics, and monkeywrenching. Here is some of the recent activity:

Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla National Forests - Oregon Natural Resource Council, Hells Canyon Preservation Council and the Oregon Natural Desert Council have been involved in litigation to shut down multiple use in these forests.

Hells Canyon National Recreation Area - Hells Canyon Preservation Council is involved in litigation to stop grazing in this area of Oregon and Idaho.

Eleven National Forests in the southwest - are under attack by an appeal to shut down multiple-use instigated by Gila Watch and Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.

Medicine Bow National Forest - Friends of the Bow are involved in litigation to stop grazing in this Wyoming forest.

Rawlins and Rock Springs Wyoming - Friends of the Bow are also involved in litigation to stop grazing in these areas.

Lewis & Clark National Forest - Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed an appeal to stop grazing in this area of Montana.

All National Forests in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and northern Nevada - were targeted for shut-down by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in a suit that charged that the Forest Service failed to provide for the long term viability of the bull trout.

Six National Forests in Idaho - the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and the Pacific Rivers Council initiated litigation to shut down these forests.

Foreman's instruction to "file appeals and lawsuits" is being heeded. So is his instruction to demonstrate. Several GAGs organized a convoy "...heading east from the Puget Sound, Portland and Eugene areas; converging on Missoula, Montana for a Rally for the Land! at noon on Sunday, February 19." The Wild Forest Review, Taxpayer Assets Project (Ralph Nader), Wilderness Society, Western Ancient Forest Campaign, and Wildlands Action Research Group were some of the sponsors. Forman's instruction to "subvert," and "monkeywrench" are being heeded as well.

Mike Roselle, who now edits the Earth First! Journal, the publication formerly edited by Foreman for the organization he co-founded, says in the December 94/January 95 edition:

"Monkeywrenching is more than just sabotage...it's jihad, pal. There are no innocent bystanders, because in these desperate hours, bystanders are not innocent. As I write this, I am looking up at a three-pound hammer that Spicer used to nail the Post Office Timber Sale in the Salmon-Selways green forests. Everyone knew these magnificent trees had to be spiked high and low. Why? Because it would save them? No! Because it was necessary to send a message to those butchers in green uniforms, those cowards with forestry degrees."

Gil Murray was killed when he opened a shoe-box size package, delivered by mail to his California Forestry Association office on April 24th. According to the FBI, the bomb was the work of the "Unabomber" who has killed three victims in a series of 16 bombings since 1978. One of three letters, postmarked April 20, was reported by the New York Times. The letter says the bombing was the work of a terrorist group referred to as "FC," that claimed responsibility for all 16 bombings.

The letter said the group would like to break down society into "...very small completely autonomous units. Our immediate goal which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system." (Emphasis added).

John Davis, editor of Wild Earth, in an article entitled "The role of Wild Earth in the Wildlands Project" says" Does all the foregoing mean that Wild Earth and the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly." (Wild Earth, Special Issue, 1992, page 9). Section 10 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) describes the ideal "protected areas" as similar to the plan set forth in the Wildlands Project. The GBA discusses a system of governance in which "bioregional councils" oversee the activities of people who live in self-sufficient bioregions which Science magazine described as "...nothing less than the transformation of America to an archipelago of human-inhabited islands surrounded by natural areas." (Science, June 25, 1993).

The bomber's letter said they wanted a lengthy article published by the national media. If the article is published, they promise to "permanently desist from terrorist activities." If not, they promise to step up their bomb-building.

On March 30, the U.S. Forest Service in Carson City, Nevada was bombed. On April 6, a cabin, cookhouse and corrals were burned on the Stillwater range near Fallon, Nevada on land used for grazing for nearly 100 years by the Kent family. Other acts of violence and ecoterrorism are increasing across the country.

Dave Foreman was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, one of the nation's largest, most prestigious environmental organizations. A year ago, a special edition of Sierra announced their "Ecoregions" program in a massive publication which outlines 21 Ecoregions they have targeted in America to transform into precisely what Noss calls "Bioregions" in the Wildlands Project.

"The Sierra Club has wholeheartedly embraced ecoregionalism as a context for our work during the coming decades, and has devoted significant energy to recasting the maps of the United States and Canada.... We here describe 21 ecoregions that, while embracing all 50 U.S. states and 12 Canadian provinces and territories, are not defined by them. Rather, they are distinguished by common watersheds and river basins, forest types and flyways."

The Wildlands Project is being implemented in America without legislative authorization, without Congressional debate, and without public awareness of the consequences. We have written extensively about the project in two special reports: Federal Land Use Control through Federal Ecosystem Management, and The Convention on Biological Diversity: Cornerstone of the New World Order. Here are some of the people and organizations that are working daily to transform America into wilderness.

The Wildlands Project

P.O. Box 5365

2721 W. Calle Carapan

Tucson, AZ 85703

(602) 884-5106

Board of Directors:

John Davis, Canton New York: editor of Wild Earth, also serves as a Director for Preserve Appalachian Wilderness and the Cenozoic Society. He edited The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism.

Bill Devall, Arcata, California: has taught ecophilosopy and environmental studies at Humboldt State University since 1968; co-author of Deep Ecology and author of Simple in Means, Rich in Ends. He has been involved in wilderness issues particularly in the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregions of northwestern California and southern Oregon.

Jim Eaton, Davis, California: served as California's representative to The Wilderness Society from 1976 to 1980 and founded the California Wilderness Coalition and served as its Executive Director.

Dave Foreman, Tucson, Arizona: co-founded Earth First!, is Chairman of the Wildlands Project and Executive Editor of Wild Earth; edited the Earth First! Journal and Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching and authored Confessions of an Eco Warrior.

Mitch Friedman, Bellingham, Washington: is Executive Director of the Greater Ecosystems Alliance; he also serves on the boards of North Cascades Conservation Council, North Cascades Audubon Society, and Hells Canyon Preservation Society.

Monte Hummel, Toronto, Canada: is President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada, and is the author of Wild Hunters, and Endangered Species.

David Johns, Portland, Oregon: is President of The Wilderness Project and on the Board of the Cenozoic Society which publishes Wild Earth. He teaches politics at Portland State University.

Roz McClellan, Boulder, Colorado: is coordinator of the University of Colorado Wilderness Study Group Forest Mapping Project; is a Director of the University's Environmental Center, and is involved in several Southern Rocky Mountain environmental groups.

Rod Mondt, Tucson, Arizona: is a former Park Ranger, Vice President of The Wildlands Project, a Director of the National Off-Road Vehicle Task Force and Hunters and Fishers for Environmental Ethics.

Reed F. Noss, Corvallis, Oregon: is a research scientist at the University of Idaho, a research associate at Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology, author of The Wildlands Project, and lead scientist for the Department of Interior's "Endangered Ecosystems of the United States: A Preliminary Assessment of Loss and Degradation," and serves on board of the Cenozoic Society and the advisory board of the Greater Ecosystem Alliance.

Roxanne Pacheco, Tucson, Arizona: is treasurer of The Wildlands Project and business manager for "Books of the Big Outside."

Jamie Sayen, Groveton, New Hampshire: is founder of Preserve Appalachian Willderness (PAW). He is co-editor of Northern Forest Forum and is considered to be the radical voice of the Northern Forest Alliance.

Michael Soulé, Santa Cruz, California: is chair of Environmental Studies at University of California-Santa Cruz and is the founder and first President of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the co-author of Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity.

Terry Tempest Williams, Salt Lake City, Utah: is the Naturalist in Residence at Utah's Museum of Natural History and author of Refuge.

George Wuerthner, Livingston, Montana: is the author of 13 books on wilderness issues and is on the board of Rest the West and Restore the North Woods, and is President of the National Wolf Growers Association.

Groups affiliated with The Wildlands Project (partial)

Alliance for the Wild Rockies: Box 8731, Missoula MT 59807; primary support behind the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

Biodiversity Legal Foundation: P.O. Box 18327, Boulder CO 80308; provides legal assistance to other groups who challenge agency plans and other land use proposals.

California Wilderness Coalition: 2655 Portage Bay East, Suite 5, Davis CA 95616; primary instigator of the California Wilderness bill.

Environmental Ethics: Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, University of North Texas, P.O. Box 13496, Denton, TX 76203; an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the philosophical aspect of environmental problems.

Finger Lakes Wild: P.O. Box 4542, Ithaca, NY 12932; agitates for protection of the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Forest Guardians: 612 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501; fights to block timber sales in Arizona and New Mexico and lead the campaign to list the Mexican spotted owl and the northern goshawk.

Forest Reform Network: 5934 Royal Lane, Suite 223, Dallas TX 75230; focuses on reforming the Knutson-Vandenberg Act and Salvage Timber Sale Act, and on banning clearcutting.

Friends of the Bow: P.O. Box 6032, Laramie, WY 82070; conducts workshops and local meetings and initiates litigation to protect the Medicine Bow National Forest in southeast Wyoming.

Gila Watch: P.O. Box 309, Silver City NM 88062; organized expressly to oppose Forest Service plans to expand grazing in the Gila Wilderness.

Great Old Broads For Wilderness: P.O. Box 527307, Salt Lake City, UT 84152; women over 45 who are dedicated to saving large wilderness areas.

Greater Ecosystems Alliance: P.O. Box 2813, Bellingham, WA 98227; working in the Cascades and the Columbia River Basin to create the northwest bioregion.

Heartwood: Rt. 3, Box 402, Paoli, IN 47454; works to stop logging in the National Forests of the Central Hardwoods region.

Hells Canyon Preservation Council: P.O. Box 908, Joseph, OR 97846; is working to preserve Hells Canyon of the Snake River as a National Park.

Idaho Conservation League: P.O. Box 2671, Ketchum, ID 83340; lobbies to expand roadless and wilderness areas in Idaho.

Klamath Forest Alliance: P.O. Box 802, Etna, CA 96027; promotes watershed protection in northwestern California.

Lighthawk: P.O. Box 8613, Santa Fe, NM 87504; specializes in aerial photos of human impacts on biodiversity. Known as the "environmental air force."

Native Forest Council: P.O. Box 2171, Eugene, OR 97402; authored the National Forest Protection Act, and promotes native forest ecosystems throught the US.

Oregon Natural Desert Association: 16 NW Kansas, Bend, OR 97701; is proposing a 5 million acre "cattle free" zone for Oregon, launched a nationwide boycott of beef and calls for a total phase-out of grazing on public lands.

Oregon Natural Resources Council: 1050 Yeon Building, 522 Southwest Fifth Ave., Portland OR 97204; coordinates wilderness activities in Oregon.

Planet Drum Foundation: P.O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131; promotes the bioregional perspective through Raise the Stakes, and A Green City Program for the San Francisco Area and Beyond.

Preserve Appalachian Wilderness: 117 Main St., Brattleboro, VT 05301; PAW has stopped countless timber sales in the east.

Public Lands Action Network: P.O. Box 5631, Santa Fe, NM 87502; is fighting to end grazing on public lands.

Rest the West: P.O. Box 10065, Portland OR 97210; fighting to end grazing on public lands in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

Save America's Forests: 4 Library Court SE, Washington, DC 20003; lobbies to promote bioregional legislation.

Siskiyou Regional Education Project: P.O. Box 220, Cave Junction, OR 97523; seeks to preserve 300,000 acres of Siskiyou wilderness through litigation and endangered species listings.

Southeast Alaska Conservation Council: P.O. Box 021692, Juneau, AK 99802; was named Conservation organization of the year in 1991 by the National Wildlife Federation for their work in passing the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990.

Sky Island Alliance: 1639 E. 1st Street, Tucson, AZ 85719; concentrates on the Sky Island area of Arizona and New Mexico in support of the Mexican wolf and the jaguar.

Society for Ecological Restoration: 1207 Seminole Highway, Madison WI 53711; serves landscape architects, land managers and academics relative to restoration of degraded ecosystems.

Sonoran Arthropod Studies, Inc.: P.O. Box 5624, Tucson, AZ 85703; produces educational material to promote appreciation of arthropods.

Superior Wilderness Action Network: c/o Biology Dept., University of Wisconsin Oskosh, Oshkosh, WI 54901; provides academic and legal support to efforts to create upper Great Lakes bioregion.

Tatshenshini Wild: 843-810 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V524C9; working to create a 25 million acre wilderness in the largest contiguous wilderness ecosystem of its type in the world.

Virginians for Wilderness: Rt. 1, Box 250, Staunton, VA 24401; working to preserve wilderness in central Appalachia.

Wildlife Damage Review: P.O. Box 2541, Tucson, AZ 85702; working to eliminate the USDA's Animal Damage Control agency's predator control program.

The Xerces Society: 10 Southwest Ash Street, Portland, OR 97204; this group works to promote the protection of invertebrates in the scientific and academic communities.

Organizations Supporting Wildlands Project objectives, but not listed in Wildlands Project Documents:

Biodiversity Project (Boulder, CO)!

Coalition Against Fur Farms (Ashland, OR)!

Columbia River Conservation League

Defenders of Wildlife

East Kootenay Environmental Society

Eco-climber Action Network (Victoria BC)!

Forest Conservation Council*

Granby Wilderness Society

Great Pacific Patagonia

Greater Gila Biodiversity Project*

Grizzly Bear Task Force (Bozeman, MT)!

Kootenay Lake Environmental Education Centre

National Audubon Society*

Native Forest Network

Pacific Rivers Council

Pew Charitable Trusts

Predator Project (Bozeman, MT)!

Pro Terra

Rainforest Action Groups (San Francisco, CA)!

Ranching Task Force (Tucson, AZ)!

Redwood Action Team (Gabersville, CA)!

Restore the North Woods

Revelstoke Environmental Action Committee

Shrub-Steppe Ecosystem Alliance

Sierra Club*

Sierra Legal Defense Fund

Silva Forest Foundation

Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance*

Southwest Center for Biological Diversity*

The Nature Conservancy

The Tides Foundation

The Lazar Foundation

Valhalla Wilderness Society

West Arm Watershed Alliance

Western Canada Wilderness Committee

Western Ancient Forest Campaign

Wilderness Society*

Wolf Action Group (Missoula, MT)!

* Instrumental in the closure Kaibab Forest Products Company and eight other mills in Arizona through litigation and agitation to stop logging on federal lands.

Involved in litigation to close national forests in Oregon and Idaho. PRC received $143,500 in grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to which the Department of Interior may contribute up to $25 million per year.

Follow the Money Trail

The Pacific Rivers Council (PRC) is one of several NGOs that initiated litigation to close six national forests in the Northwest. Since 1992, the PRC has received $143,500 in grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). The NFWF is not your normal foundation; it is authorized to receive up to $25 million per year from Congress and the Secretary of Interior (Bruce Babbitt) has the sole authority to appoint members of the Board of Directors. The NFWF has leveraged its $37.7 million in federal funds to solicit an additional $81.4 million in non-federal funds which has been used to fund 286 NGOs. Many of those NGOs funded by the NFWF have been actively involved in litigation, lobbying, and other activities that advance the Wildlands Project and ignore private property rights. Here are some of the grants awarded by NFWF in 1994 (multiple listings means multiple grants):

Alaska Conservation Foundation

American Forest Foundation

American Rivers

($20,000 to assess habitat quality in Gila River and produce database of watershed species.)

American Rivers

Association of State Wetland Managers

Chesapeake Audubon Society

Colorado Conservation Foundation

Colorado Wildlife Federation

Columbia-Pacific Resource Conservation & Development Council

($50,000 to develop restoration strategy for Pacific Northwest.)

Defenders of Wildlife

Environmental Defense Fund

($100,000 to monitor and assist in restoring California's Central Valley. This organization is a leader of the coalition to stop the Contract with America. CEO salary: $234,573 per year.)

Florida Audubon Society

Georgia Wildlife Federation

Island Press

IUCN - (International Union for the Conservation of Nature)

Maine Coast Heritage Trust

($50,000 to acquire conservation easements on 3.7 miles of Grand Lake Stream.)

Massachusetts Audubon Society

Mississippi Wildlife Federation

($25,000 to equip and train citizens in monitoring biological and chemical parameters of state's streams and estuaries.)

National Audubon Society

($25,000 to develop materials to empower grassroots conservation organizations.)

National Biological Survey, CO

National Biological Survey, OR

National Wildlife Federation

($72,000 to recruit Detroit high school teachers to participate in environmental studies.)

Rainforest Alliance

($40,000 to train 30 Central American and 30 American journalists in environmental reporting.)

Rainforest Alliance

($28,000 to measure effectiveness of their recommendation on Costa Rican banana plantations.)

Tennessee Conservation League

(This organization sued Annie Laurie James for cleaning out a drainage ditch on her own farm. Her action allegedly reduced the organization's "bird-watching" capability. James settled the suit by agreeing to place 189 acres of her best bottom-ground in a perpetual conservation easement. See eco-logic column #118.)

The Conservation Fund

($40,000 to assemble panel of experts to review ecosystem fisheries management.)

The Nature Conservancy, FL

The Nature Conservancy, AZ

The Nature Conservancy, MI

The Nature Conservancy, SD

The Nature Conservancy, CO

The Nature Conservancy, CA

($250,000 to implement conservation plan for two watersheds in California, featuring acquisition and restoration.)

The Nature Conservancy, MI

The Nature Conservancy, WA

The Nature Conservancy, ID

($100,000 to acquire 1,450 acres of private property and water rights on Snake River.)

The Nature Conservancy, NV

The Nature Conservancy, FL

(The Wildlands Project was developed with grants from The Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society.)

Tides Foundation

Tides Foundation

The Tides Foundation funds igc.apc.org, and several small NGOs that are actively advancing the Wildlands Project, particularly in the Columbia River Basin.)

Trout Unlimited

($60,000 to gather baseline data on New York's Beaverkill and Willowemoc Rivers for use in watershed conservation.)

WaterWatch of Oregon

UNEP's view on sharing resources

(Elizabeth Dowdeswell is the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This piece was prepared by her for The Earth Times. It reveals the mind-set that permeates the global environmental agenda.)

W e live in the midst of startling paradoxes. We have it within ourselves to abolish hunger, yet we feel nobler rganizing charities for starving children. We have the power to banish ignorance, yet we feel virtuous in buttressing ancient prejudices and hatreds. We have the power to heal the sick and bring health to all. We have the power to liberate people from the fear of unexpected death. We have the power to let peoples and nations come together in peace to realize the true potential of humankind, yet we are even now busy spending trillions of dollars on armaments.

The 1980s and 1990s saw fundamental changes in the way international relations were addressed. We saw the development of new paradigms of development. We began to realize with increasing clarity that peace, development and environment were essentially indivisible and that we lived in an interdependent world. Should this amazing upsurge of global awareness and understanding still make us helpless in the face of human predicaments - poverty, environmental degradation and explosive population growth?

I do not think so. The impressive gathering of so many heads of states and representatives of non-governmental organizations at the Copenhagen Conference is evidence that there are thousands of people who care about life, who care about the future, who care about the environment, who care about humanity.

The consideration of the fundamental questions facing humanity is a moral and an ethical one. So far ethics and morality have been side-shows in the drama of restless change. Now, they have to step on to the center stage. Morality comes from having a sense of responsibility to others, which, in turn, derives from a sense of recognition that we essentially share the same space with others, that we are interdependent and part of a community with other beings. This community encompasses the entire planet. We are all part of nature, not its master.

Operating from this perspective, the impoverishment of people is linked to environmental degradation. Although the rich and the poor may live in separate worlds, they share the same planet, the same environment. There is as much poverty in some neighborhoods of New York as there is great wealth in some neighborhoods of Sao Paolo. Humankind cannot survive one-third wealthy and two-thirds destitute.

The confluence of two issues - alleviating poverty and protecting the environment - has set up one of the great challenges for development policy in the coming decades.

The classical argument is that poverty is the cause of environmental degradation. Less attention is paid to the environmental causes of poverty. The poor are, then, both the victims and the cause of environmental degradation.

Seen in the perspective of fulfilling their short term needs, each decision taken by the poor has meaning. Whether it is consuming next year's seed corn to stay alive, over-exploiting the soil cover merely to subsist or even cutting trees for fuel wood supply. For the poor these are the only means of survival.

How can we then suggest that the poor must remain mired in poverty just to conserve the environment? I think this notion [is] against the canons of universal justice and human solidarity that we are trying to invoke.

When one examines the various forces in the world that contribute to poverty one can talk about such things as unfair terms of trade, wildly fluctuating commodity prices, the pitting of poor nations against each other in the competition for markets, and so on. But, from the environmental perspective, the causes of poverty include soil erosion, a huge problem which is seriously compromising the planet's ability to feed itself. It means addressing habitat destruction, over-fishing, and agriculture that involves intensive export oriented monocultures instead of diversified self-sufficiency.

Noss Report to the NBS

Reed F. Noss, author of the "Wildlands Project," has completed his study for the National Biological Service (NBS). The report, entitled Endangered Ecosystems of the United States: A Preliminary Assessment of Loss and Degradation, is designed to justify radical policy decisions by the Department of Interior (DOI) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The report will undoubtedly be circulated in Congress and in the media to "prove" that the environment can be saved only through government command and control policies that override both human and property rights. The study was funded by the Pew Scholars Program in Conservation and the Environment, and by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Biological Service.

The study is not a study of ecosystems, but is in fact, a study of the literature about ecosystems.

"Our methodology consisted of a literature review and a survey of conservation agencies and professionals. This approach was laborious and crude and depended on data of highly variable quality.... As anticipated, estimates of ecosystem decline from published sources and heritage programs correspond to no consistent classification, level of classification hierarchy, or spacial scale. Data for estimates were collected in different ways, and some estimates were simply best guesses by experts familiar with a state or region."

Despite the crudeness of the "study," Noss begins his report with this declaration:

"Loss of biodiversity is real. Biologists have alerted each other and much of the general public to the contemporary mass extinction of species."

Loss, according to Noss, can be quantitative, as when a native prairie is converted to a parking lot, or qualitative, as when an old growth forest is converted to a tree farm.

"In some cases, as in the conversion of an old-growth forest to a tree farm, the qualitative changes in structure and function are sufficiently severe to qualify as outright habitat loss."

Decline in ecosystems is defined "to include degradation of structure, function, or composition as well as areal losses." In other words, any human-induced change to an ecosystem is considered to be a decline, ranging from degradation to outright loss.

Noss' repetition of the popular language "mass extinction of species" is a continuation of the myth which gives urgency to the ecosystem management/biodiversity scare. The mass extinction myth originated with The Sinking Ark by Norman Myers, in 1979. It gained credibility in a the Global 2000 Report by Thomas Lovejoy of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Lovejoy is now a scientific advisor to the Department of Interior. Lovejoy extrapolated from The Sinking Ark and projected 40,000 extinctions by the year 2000. Julian L. Simon and Aaron Wildavsky, leading scientists in the field, developed a response to the Global 2000 Report in which they pointed out that the historical extinction rate between 1600 and 1900 was one extinction every four years, and that the estimated extinction rate between 1900 and 1980 was one extinction every year. A more complete response appears in Endangered Species Blueprint, published by the National Wilderness Institute, Fall, 1994 (P.O. Box 25766 Georgetown Station, Washington, DC 20007).

Noss says: "as a general strategy, the top-down planning of ecosystem conservation is a strong complement to a species-by-species approach." It is not clear whether "top-down" refers to the federal government or to the global environmental agenda. It is clear, however, that state and local governments are not considered the top. The report says: "Many environmentalists have been skeptical of the state's motives. Some have condemned the Natural Community Conservation Planning, especially because it lacks effective interim control and leaves many crucial decisions to local authorities." What is abundantly clear is that Noss wants control of ecosystem management at a level above the owner, above local and state government, and that management means restoring ecosystems to their pre-settlement condition.

"We believe that distinctness [of ecosystem type] should remain secondary to magnitude and immediacy of threat for setting priorities." The report says that population numbers are a function of scale of the protected area. Bigger is better. The more land protected from human activity, the better ecosystems can recover. In Noss' "Wildlands Project," he recommends that at least 50% of the land area be protected as wilderness, and most of the remaining 50% be managed for conservation objectives. Noss suggests:

"Old-growth forests, for example, have declined greatly because their timber is economically valuable; that same value puts remaining unprotected stands at high risk. If remaining stands are granted legal protection - as conservationists propose - that threat would be largely removed." In general, the report concludes: "...that the most endangered ecosystems are typically at low elevations and have fertile soils, amiable climates, easy terrains, abundant natural resources, and other factors that encourage human settlement and exploitation."

These are the ecosystems that should have the highest priority for protection.

Noss recognizes that management of the non-wilderness protected areas

"provide for biodiversity and direct human uses. Precisely what types of use are compatible with conservation objectives in any given case will always be a contentious issue, but is it not reasonable to propose that the burden of proof for compatibility fall on those who propose human activities in natural areas?"

Historically, the purpose of owning land has been to acquire the power to use the land and its resources for personal gain. Under the Noss proposal, ownership is meaningless; the owner would have to prove to some high authority that the proposed use was compatible with conservation objectives. The restoration and preservation of non-human biodiversity is clearly more important to Reed Noss than any rights humans may have to the property they own.

It is the goal of the Noss report to establish the foundation to justify the protection of ecosystems in vast bioregions - before they are degraded by humans, and to restore those that have already been degraded.

"An advantage of the native-ecosystems concept and of the sustainable-ecosystem idea...is that they are not restricted to ecosystems that have already suffered massive declines. Instead, ...they seek proactively to sustain healthy samples of all native ecosystems nationwide. A similar goal was adopted by the Wildlands Project, a coalition of scientists and conservationists that hopes to restore a network of wild landscapes, replete with all native species, across North and Central America."

How the GAGs do it

Two major forces have joined to create a formidable communications network around the world. The Institute for Global Communications (IGC), and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) are the pipeline through which flows the information that constitutes and drives the global environmental agenda. Here follows a description of their activities, taken from the Internet.

The Association for Progressive Communications is a growing international partnership of member networks providing low-cost computer communications services to individuals and non-government organizations (NGOs) working for peace, environmental sustainability, universal human rights and economic justice. APC empowers local organizations and indigenous groups by encouraging expertise in computer networking. With 17,000 users in 94 countries, citizen activists and organizations, ranging in size and scope from local public schools to international NGOs, contribute to 1200 on-line conferences covering virtually every environmental and human rights topic.

Partner networks of APC are: AlterNex (Brazil), GlasNet (Russia), Chasque (Uruguay), Web (Canada), Pegasus (Australia), PeaceNet/EcoNet/ConflictNet/LaborNet (USA), NordNet (Sweden), GreenNet (England), ComLink (Germany), Nicarao (Nicaragua), Ecuanex (Ecuador), SangoNet (South Africa), Wamani (Argentina, GLUK (Ukraine), LaNeta (Mexico), and Histria (Siovenja). As well as exchanging information with one another, these networks also exchange information with small affiliated networks serving NGOs in over 50 other countries.

UN Projects using the APC Networks

The APC networks have directly benefitted from several United Nations projects. In 1987, the APC grew substantially when it began collaborating with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) which allocated program funding to establish computer network services for NGOs and academics in Latin America. Two early additions to the expanding APC family were AlterNex and Ecuanex - both of which were formed out of that effort. Currently the APC is working closely with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on their ChildNet project. In addition, several UN offices use the APC networks to communicate extensively and to fulfill their mission in collecting and disseminating information on global issues. These include:

UN Association International Service (UNAIS)

UN Centre for Human Rights

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)

UN Development Programme (UNDP)

UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW)

UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

UN Information Centre (UNIC)

UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)

UN International Emergency Network (UNIENET)

UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS)

UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

UN Secretariat for the Fourth World Conference on Women (UNWCW)

UN University (UNU)

UN Volunteers (UNV)

In the two years of meetings in preparation for the UNCED, the Secretariat for UNCED collaborated with the APC to provide documentation during the Preparatory Committee (PrepComm) negotiations. More than a dozen computer conferences were created within the APC system that carried information on a variety of the issues under debate during this period. APC provided telecommunications services at Riocentro, the Governmental site, and the NGO Global Forum. At UNCED itself, APC operated extensive communications and information centers where news and official documents were exchanged between participants and sent out to the activist and NGO community not attending the conference. Member activists can retrieve virtually all the UN documents and supporting information through the APC system.

Announcing: eco.freedom.org

IGC began with a substantial grant from the Tides Foundation. APC is substantially funded by American taxpayers through the UNDP. We are starting with bailing-wire and chewing gum - an old computer, a lot of know-how, a burning desire, and faith in the future: we are launching freedom.org.

The project will ultimately cost more than $20,000. Thanks to a small, initial grant from the Texas Farm Credit Property Rights Foundation, we are beginning, hopeful that some of the other proposals floating around will receive favorable consideration. Here's how it will work and what we hope to build.

Phase One

Those organizations and individuals that wish to be "on the freedom Net" may apply for a mailbox at freedom.org. During the start-up period, there will be no charge for this connection. For security purposes, however, all participants must be approved by ECO. A relatively small number of participants will be selected for the initial network to allow us the time to develop and test procedures and get all the kinks worked out. By the end of summer, we hope the net will be available to all who wish to participate.

Those on the net will need (1) a computer with a modem, (2) a telephone, and (3) communications software such as ProComm, or other software that allows your computer to call our computer. Those on the net can communicate with each other using e-mail. For example, when we have an action alert, it will be posted in every e-mail box on the net. When others on the net have an action alert, they too may post it in every e-mail box. Other information, including lengthy documents such as the Noss report, or the GBA summaries, can also be delivered via e-mail. All you need to do is call freedom.org periodically to check your messages. Documents can be downloaded into your computer to be edited or printed as you wish. This is just the first phase of the program. Much, much more is planned.

After phase one

Our databases are filled with information needed at one time or another by virtually every organization affiliated with ECO. Duplication and postage costs, and the time it takes to get information across the country, are major deterrents to the rapid exchange of important information. For those who are on the freedom.org net, the information in our databases will be available for a phone call (from your computer, of course). The 1996 budget, for example, or the name, address, and description of thousands of GAGs, or The Iron Mountain Report, or House and Senate bills, or proposed federal regulations, or any number of other hard-to-find documents will be searchable, and readily downloadable. "Data-mining" will also be available to participating organizations. Request a document and our staff will search the Internet for you, find it (if it exists) and deposit it in your e-mail box. Special searches can be tailored to meet special needs.

Of particular importance to organizations is the "news group" database that will be available. Every day, we monitor hundreds of GAG transmissions. We screen and select those transmissions that relate to issues of importance to us and to our affiliates. Freedom.org participants will be able to search and download from the most recent five-days of accumulated transmissions. Our "From the Internet" section is taken from these transmissions.

Eventually, there will be a charge for the services available on freedom.org. The charge will be based on individual usage. The user may choose the level of service as well as the length of time the service is needed. Whatever the cost, it will be considerably less than the cost of faxing and postage, to say nothing of the increased speed of communications.

From the Internet...

NASA Release #95-43 (kcowing@aibs.org <Keith L. Cowing>). Evidence that clouds absorb more solar radiation than previously believed should improve researchers' ability to predict climate change, according to NASA scientists. The work resulted from simultaneous flights of NASA's ER-2 and DC-8 aircraft above and below cloud decks. By using identical instruments on the aircraft, scientists were able to measure solar radiation as it reached the clouds and after the clouds had scattered it.

The team found conclusive evidence that existing computer models significantly underestimate the amount of solar energy absorbed by clouds. Theoretical estimates of cloud solar absorption are substantially smaller than what actual measurements show. "This finding directly impacts our understanding of present climate and, therefore, our ability to predict future climate," said atmospheric physicist Peter Pilewski of NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA. "Existing global climate models are unreliable when it comes to predictive capability," he said. (Strangely, this NASA report failed to make the national news.)

Ozone Ethics by Michael Tobis (arussell@BIX.com <Andrew Russell>). While the evidence of an "organized conspiracy" is too weak to be believable, there is certainly a mindset by the principle proponents of the ban on CFCs that deceit, dishonesty, and suppression of opponents are acceptable tactics. And there is a considerable body of evidence to support an assertion that many of the principal proponents of the CFC-ozone depletion theory are more interested in political or financial gain than in scientific honesty. And many clearly don't like being questioned and will use whatever power or influence they have to suppress the questioners. Examples:

When Joseph Scotto tried to get funding in 1986 to continue his ozone levels to ground level UV studies, he was subjected to, in his words, "an inquisition" and his funding was cut off. Since then, there has been no coordinated wide scale UV measurement project to see if the claims of UV increases have any validity. (Access to Energy, May, 1992)

In December 1987 the EPA issued a paper that said without CFC controls, there would be 154 million new skin cancers, and 3.2 million deaths; cataract cases would increase by 18 million. (Ozone Crisis, Sharon Roan, p227)

The 1991 press release by William Reilly, head of the EPA, that claimed there had been a 5% decline in the ozone layer from CFCs, and that this would cause 200,000 skin cancer deaths in the United States. (Nature, April 11, 1991, p451)

The NASA/James Anderson press conference in early 1992 (just before budget hearings) that falsely and loudly proclaimed an imminent ozone hole over North America, with ozone depletion of 30%. ("The Ozone Scare," Insight Magazine, April 6, 1992)

Melvin Shapiro (chief meteorologist at NOAA-Boulder) was silence by senior NOAA officials when he spoke up after the 1992 NASA press conference and said, "What you have to understand is that this is about money. If there were no dollars attached to this game, you would see it played on intellect and integrity. When you say the ozone threat is a scam, you're not only attacking people's scientific integrity, you're going after their pocketbook as well. It's money, purely money." (Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse, Ronald Bailey, p120)

In 1992 (also after the NASA press conference) Alber Gore gave a speech on the floor of the United States Senate, calling CFCs "an immediate, acute, emergency threat" and made claims that there would be "ozone holes over Kennebunkport." He demanded that a ban on CFCs, scheduled to go into effect in 2000, be moved up to 1995. (Insight, April 6, 1992)

When Walter Komhyr of NOAA published data showing a correlation between the seasonal antarctic ozone reduction and sea surface temperatures, he says that "a number of angry atmospheric chemists called him on the carpet, arguing that his findings threatened their funding for further research on CFCs." (Eco-Scam, Ronald Bailey, p136)

The Toronto Studies that claimed to have measured a trend of decreasing ozone and increasing UV-B. A trend that turned out to be four years of no ozone decrease, and one period of ozone decrease/UV-B increase caused by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. A report that also claimed UV-B decreases that were eight times the known ratio between ozone and UV-B absorption.(Science, November 12, 1993, and May 27, 1994)

When William Hopper, director of research at the Department of Energy, said in 1993 that the evidence does not support the CFC ban and that UV measurements need to be made, both nationally and internationally, Vice President Gore had him fired. ("Al Gore Leads a Purge," Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993)

Steven Schneider of NOAA to a 1989 Smithsonian conference on environmentalism: We need to get some broad-based support, to capture public imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make some simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have....Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Remarks of President Bill Clinton, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Dallas Texas, April 7, 1995. "...I cannot and I will not compromise any clean water, and clean air, any protection against toxic waste. The environment cannot protect itself. And if it requires a presidential veto to protect it, then that's what I'll provide. I will also veto the House-passed requirement that government pay property owners billions of dollars every time we act to defend our national heritage of seashores or wetlands or open spaces. The people do not have to vote - do not have a vote on this issue in Congress. But I do, and I'll use it."

From: Workers World Service <ww@nyxfer.blythe.org>. "There are differences over environmental issues between the Republican-led Congress and the Clinton administration. The point, however, is not to fight the profiteers a little - but to overturn capitalism's legacy of environmental destruction completely."

From: Peoples Weekly World <scottt@rednet.org> by Virginia Warner Brodine (Chair of the Communist Party USA's National Environmental Commission) "...The Contract's "takings" legislation elevates private property over environmental needs. It is a scheme to pay polluters not to pollute. "Takings" for example [is] a gift to owners of farmland and timberland and to real estate developers, and a gift to the owners of every mine, mill, and factory, and a danger to every worker. A danger, not only because it threatens workplace health and safety. It is a step backward toward the time when the owner's "property rights" included the right to determine wages and hours without "interference" from either government or unions. There is no recognition of the U.S. imperialism that is a major cause of the conditions in the home countries that are driving people across the U.S. border....All living things, including humans, exist in an interconnected web. Our present economic and political system is pushing profit-making roads through that network, destroying it in the process."

From: PeaceNet-info@igc.apc.org. Gregory S. Wetstone, Natural Resources Defense Council's Legislative Director: "Congress has launched an assault on this country's most important health and environmental protection laws. If these bills are enacted into law, efforts to interpret, apply and enforce America's 19 leading environmental laws will be brought to a halt by a maze of new bureaucratic delays and legal challenges."

From: PeaceNet-info@igc.apc.org, Native Forest Network. "A proposal to open up all U.S. national forests to so-called salvage logging has been passed by Congress. This is the first major round of the Republican plan to sell off nearly all public lands including national parks and wilderness areas - to private interests, and to open all public lands to mining. They must be stopped now!"

From: Defenders of Wildlife. "Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen joined other CEOs of leading environmental organizations at the National Press Club today to kick off their largest joint public education campaign in history. The campaign is intended to let the American people know that special interests have taken control of Congress and are in the midst of rolling back 25 years of environmental progress."

From: Dan Yurman <dyurman@igc.apc.org> STOP THE CONTRACT - Will the "Contract with America" succeed in reversing 25 years of environmental progress? Not if the nation's leading environmental organizations can help it. An unprecedented coalition of national and local environmental groups announced plans today for a massive grassroots demonstration at a Washington rally on Earth Day. Fred Krupp, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said: "We've called this rally because legislation which has already passed the House of Representatives undermines 25 years of health and safety protections for the American people."

Organizations represented in the coalition include: American Oceans Campaign; Defenders of Wildlife; Environmental Defense Fund; League of Conservation Voters; National Parks and Conservation Association; Native American Rights Fund; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund; The Wilderness Society; Zero Population Growth; Center for Marine Conservation; Environmental Action Foundation; Friends of the Earth; National Audubon Society; National Wildlife Federation; Natural Resources Defense Council; Sierra Club; U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and World Wildlife Fund.

From: Western Ancient Forest Campaign <wafcdc@igc.apc.org> The Forest Service established a team of staff representing all the Deputy Chiefs that over the next 18 months will develop a set of criteria and indicators for measuring sustainable forestry in the U.S. to be linked with a similar set being developed internationally, pursuant to Agenda 21 and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio. The criteria will be presented for incorporation into the 1995 Resource Planning Act Program documents. The team will also develop a strategy to institutionalize the concept in the Forest Service.

From: Environmental Investigation Agency <ndallen@io.org> (Nigel Allen) A new report released to coincide with the opening of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in New York calls for urgent efforts to establish an International Forest Convention. EIA's new report accuses the international forest and timber products industry, with an estimated annual trade value of $400 billion, of being completely out of control and of obstructing every effort to promote international regulation. Wasteful and excessive consumption of timber products by northern societies, led by the U.S..., is driving an ecological catastrophe as forests are destroyed.

Beat the Devil

BOOK REVIEW

By Irene Lamb

Beat the Devil: How to Get Government Regulators Off Your Back - Permanently! By Richard Mackie. 280 pages.

Richard Mackie was a writer of government regulations for 22 years, but most of his rules were put into practice before the advent of federal mandates to the states which dictated precisely how environmental problems were to be solved. Richard has watched in awe, and horror, as he realized the extent to which regulatory agencies have expanded their jurisdictions, and exceeded their lawful boundaries of authority after Congress gave them the responsibility of cleaning up the messes that were indeed, part of the landscape of America.

The EPA, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Forestry Service, Department of Agriculture, and many other federal agencies had no doubt, felt hampered in their ability to do anything to solve the obvious problems that were evident when rivers burned, and toxic wastes were handled cavalierly, or at least apparently so. America watched, aghast, as the nightly news shows broadcast footage of the Cuyahoga River in flames on the surface. "Somebody needs to do something - quick!" we said, to each other, and maybe some of us said the same thing to our Congressmen.

We got more than we asked for, of course, and that was only the beginning. The Delaney Clause, which makes any substance that has a one-in-a-million cancer-causing rate when tested on animals be labelled as a carcinogen, is resposible for the banning of many of the very substances that made longer, healthier lives possible all over the world. DDT is a prime example.

Richard was a country representative to the World Health Organization when DDT was banned. He fought the ban, along with other conscientious scientists who cared more about real soutions to health hazards than about political correctness. The State Department tried, unsuccessfully, to remove him.

In chapter 9, Mackie reveals that most of the laboratory rats used for testing are the descendents of a pair he named Horace and Harriet; and almost all of the mice descended from a pair he named Morton and Mable. What is unique about these rats and mice, their ancestors and progeny is that they are going to die of cancer, most likely within 6 to 18 weeks after their birth. This convenient trait has been selectively bred into them, and no matter what they are exposed to, they will almost certainly develop cancer and die. Richard assures us that these mice and rats have been very life-sustaining for the EPA and other public health regulatory agencies.

There are numerous examples of the ways regulation is being used in this country to prevent us from exercising our constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms and liberties, some of which you have read about in the pages of ecologic, and others you may have seen in other property rights publications, but Mackie goes on from the sagas of the bereft to ways to redress the wrongs that have occured, and help prevent further theft by regulation. He includes samples of letters to be used to correspond with every level of encroaching bureaucracy, spelling out which rights are being violated by the regulation, what precedents exist that favor the property owner, and suggests options to include to tailor your letters specifically to suit your situation. He also insists that you keep records of every contact, phone call, visit or letter, and also all your expenses that result from dealing with compliance efforts, or resistance to knuckling under. Keep phone logs, bills, correspondence (or copies) legal and accounting documents, in a workable filing system. Also don't assume you've won if one agency stops harassing you - there are many others which have some overlapping interests. There are regulations that anyone in the country may be in violation of, without knowing what they are. Get this book before you get wrapped in red tape.

Wilderness Society's Chief Accused

(This is a special story taken from the Internet, from The Nation <nation@igc.apc.org>, prepared by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of Wild Forest Review. The story appeared under the headline: Wilderness Society President in "Chainsaw Massacre" on his own land.)

At a time when environmentalists have their backs to the wall against an assault on forests, the head of one of America's biggest environmental organizations has been logging off old-growth and mature forest on his own land, according to an article in the April 24, 1995 issue of The Nation magazine. Wilderness Society president, Jon Roush, has accomplished a timber cut nearly identical to one he prevented from occurring on adjoining federal land in 1983, citing the disastrous effects it would have on streams and rivers.

According to authors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in late February and early March, Roush logged off an 80-acre patch of old-growth and mature forest on his $2.5 million Bitterroot Valley, Montana ranch. Furthermore, the timber was sold to Plum Creek, once accused by an adviser to Roush's own Society of practicing "Nazi forestry." While the Wilderness Society rails against timber companies "that measure the value of land only in dollars, in board-feet of lumber," Roush sold more timber in this single 400,000 board-foot sale than did the entire surrounding northern half of the 1.6 million-acre Bitterroot National Forest last year.

In 1983, Roush successfully sued to stop the U.S. Forest Service from cutting in the Bitterroot Forest, which borders his land, amassing scientific testimony that the area was unsuitable for logging. Now the trucks hauling off his ponderosa pine and Douglas fir are leaving "compacted soil, sedimentation in rivers, increased likelihood of landslides, lost habitat for elk, owls, and northern goshawk." An ecologist who visited the site described the damage, and said "this isn't "thinning" or eco-forestry; it's just an attempt to cash in on valuable trees."

But the darkest irony concerns the timber's purchaser, Plum Creek, a leading exporter of raw logs whose reckless treatment of land has made it "the nation's most ecologically deviant timber company." Arnold Bolle, a longtime adviser to the Wilderness Society, once described Plum Creek's operations in Montana as "Nazi Forestry."

Roush claims the logging was part of a separation agreement with his wife, but admitted to Cockburn and St. Clair that he had approved the cut, and, astoundingly, said that if Forest Service timber sales resembled his, the Wilderness Society would not have much of a problem with the agency. He claimed his land was "less sensitive" than adjacent land in the Bitterroot National Forest. In fact, the site cut over by the Roushes is low-elevation ponderosa pine, one of the rarest habitats in the Rockies.

"Roush's chainsaw massacre strips the Wilderness Society of any shreds of moral authority still adhering to a name [founder Robert] Marshall and his colleague Aldo Leopold made glorious," conclude Cockburn and St. Clair. "It is time for Roush to go, and for the Wilderness Society to close its doors. They are the wilderness's active foes."