BIG SKY, Mont. – Industries involving livestock and water are the next targets of environmental groups, says Bruce Vincent, a former logger and industry advocate.
That puts farming and ranching squarely in the sights of an environmental movement that has lost its “saving the planet” focus and become a money-making machine that markets only one product.
“That product is fear,” Vincent told a recent meeting of the National Bison Association.
“They started marketing fear, they’ve been marketing for decades now and they’re very, very good at what they do.”
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Vincent, whose family logging business near Libby, Montana, was decimated by public distaste for logging and by pleas to save trees, speaks highly of laws and regulations spawned in the early days of the environmental movement.
“But the movement we empowered and the laws that came out of it are 40 years old and they are both showing their age,” he said.
Now it is time for people to reject the spectre of fear presented by some activists and start leading the discussion on animal agriculture, mining and other industries that are often targeted.
Vincent said the activists need new fear-inducing scenarios as they continue their efforts to raise money.
“They’re after a new piata, and for the last 10 years, it’s been clear to me that the next piata is anything that has to do with water and anything to do with animals, and that puts you squarely in the crosshairs.”
He said the demise of the American logging industry is an object lesson for other industries.
Demand for wood was high and the logging industry profitable, but log-g ing still lost its social licence because of public misunderstanding of its benefits.
“Sadly, public policy, whether it’s for bison or for trees, is not based on reality. Its based on the public’s perception of reality,” Vincent said.
Activists tend to present issues as either/or situations, such as a choice between logging and complete forest protection, with no other options.
And media and the movies reinforce the idea of only two choices.
Vincent said the public seeks a scenario that doesn’t exist. A diet of Bambi-like movies is common, in which a bad actor, capitalist man, shows up to destroy nature.
“Man is the destroyer of harmony, man is the destroyer of balance, and they’ve been now seeking this Disneyesque ecotopia that has not and cannot ever exist.”
Vincent said the good early intentions of environmentalism have evolved into regulations that are “protecting us to death” because there’s such a thin line between environmental sensitivity and environmental insanity.
“We want things like (electricity). We’d like it immediate, we’d like it cheap, we’d like it at the switch. It’s just dams we don’t like, coal we don’t like.”
Similarly, people want good roads but not asphalt plants, wood but not stumps.
“And we love bison because it is the green choice,” but to get it into a supermarket, animals have to be killed. Groups such as the Humane Society of the United States don’t like that. “How did we get so crazy on this issue, the environment?”
Vincent talked about the need to educate the public not by telling them what the industry wants them to hear but by asking the public what they want to know and then supplying the answers.
“I have more hope now than I did when I first started speaking out because I think America is ready to hear our message,” he said.
“I think they are tired of the doom and gloom, bongo drum beating, incense burning, planet is dying crap that they’ve been getting for decades. They’re tired of hearing what’s wrong and ready to start hearing about what can be right. We can be part of the answer they’re looking for, if we lead.”
Vincent has become a sought-after speaker by businesses, industries, universities and school classrooms. He talks about an environmental movement that has failed to develop beyond a three-word vision of “stop doing that.”
“The new movement is going to be led by rural people because we live too close to the ground to pretend.”
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