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Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
WISE USE: WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
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DEFENDERS WISE USE BOOKSTORE ARCHIVE
The following essay by Ron Arnold is regarded by many as the
seminal expression of the ideas that have
evolved into the richly diverse wise use movement.
Overcoming Ideology
by Ron Arnold
From A Wolf in the Garden : The Land Rights Movement and
the New Environmental Debate
Edited by Philip D. Brick and R. McGreggor Cawley, Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham,
Maryland, 1996 ISBN 0847681858
It was 1964, the year of the Wilderness Act. Historian Leo Marx
began his classic, The Machine in the Garden, with the
assertion that "The pastoral ideal has been used to define the
meaning of America ever since the age of discovery, and
it has not yet lost its hold upon the native imagination."
1
A little more than thirty years after, we have the present
volume, A Wolf in the Garden, echoing Marx less than tolling a
sea-change in American notions of exactly what is meant by the
pastoral ideal.

Marx saw it as a cultivated rural "middle landscape," not urban,
not wild, but embodying what Arthur O. Lovejoy calls
"semi-primitivism"; it is located in a middle ground somewhere
between the opposing forces of civilization and nature.
2
The pastoral ideal is not simply a location, but also a psychic
energy condenser: it stores the charge generated between
the polarities of civilization and nature. Ortega y Gasset
recognized this as long ago as 1930 in The Revolt of the
Masses: "The world is a civilized one, its inhabitant is not: he
does not see the civilization of the world around him, but he
uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man wants his
motor-car, and enjoys it, but he believes that it is the
spontaneous fruit of an Edenic tree."
3
There was a certain truth to this blind sight: producers in the
middle landscape invisibly yielded the raw materials for the
motor-car (and everything else). The labor power of dwellers in
America's middle landscape has always been reified as
an Edenic tree to be plucked by distant capital and
unappreciative consumers, and the dwellers felt it keenly.
Since 1964, the rise of environmentalist ideology has pushed
the pastoral ideal increasingly toward nature, striving to
redefine the meaning of America in fully primitivist terms of
the wild. Eco-ideologists have thrust their metaphoric raging
Wolf into every rank and row of our civilized Garden to rogue
out both the domesticated and the domesticators. The
Wolf howls Wild Land, Wild Water, Wild Air. Whether Wild
People might have a proper place in Wolf World remains a

subject of dispute among eco-ideologists.
4
Public policy debate over the environment and the meaning of
America has been clamorous these thirty years. Its terms
were succinctly put by Edith Stein:
The environmental movement challenges the dominant Western
worldview and its three assumptions:
Unlimited economic growth is possible and beneficial.
Most serious problems can be solved by technology.
Environmental and social problems can be mitigated by a
market economy with some state intervention.
WiseUse http://www.eskimo.com/%7Erarnold/wiseuse.htm
1 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
Since the 1970s we've heard increasingly about the competing
paradigm, wherein:
Growth must be limited.
Science and technology must be restrained.
Nature has finite resources and a delicate balance that humans
must observe.
5
That fairly delineates the public debate. However, in order to
critique an ideology, one needs an accurate statement of
that ideology. The environmentalist ideology striving to
redefine the meaning of America was expounded most
realistically
by author Victor B. Scheffer in a Northwest Environmental
Journal article, "Environmentalism's Articles of Faith." The five

tenets Scheffer proposed appear to be the core of shared beliefs
actually held most widely by environmentalists:
1) All things are connected. "[N]ever will we understand
completely the spin-off effects of the environmental changes
that we create, nor will we measure our own, independent
influence in their creation." Scheffer adds, "I use the word
nature for the world without humans, a concept which--like the
square root of minus one--is unreal, but useful."
2) Earthly goods are limited. "As applied to people, carrying
capacity is the number of individuals that the earth can
support before a limit is reached beyond which the quality of
life must worsen and Homo, the human animal, becomes
less human. One reason we humans--unlike animals in the wild-
-are prone to exceed carrying capacity is that our wants
exceed our needs."
3) Nature's way is best. "Woven into the fabric of
environmentalism is the belief that natural methods and
materials
should be favored over artificial and synthetic ones, when
there's a clear choice. Witness the vast areas of the globe
poisoned or degraded by the technological economy of our
century."
4) The survival of humankind depends on natural diversity.
"Although species by the billions have vanished through
natural extinction or transformation, the present rate of
extinction is thought to be at least 400 times faster than at the
beginning of the Industrial Age. Humankind's destruction of
habitats is overwhelmingly to blame."
Scheffer adds, "No one has the moral right, and should not have
the legal right, to overtax carrying capacity either by
reducing the productivity of the land or by bringing into the

world more than his or her 'share' of new lives. Who is to
decide that share will perhaps be the most difficult social
question for future generations."
5) Environmentalism is radical "in the sense of demanding
fundamental change. It calls for changes in present political
systems, in the reach of the law, in the methods of agriculture
and industry, in the structure of capitalism (the profit
system), in international dealings, and in education."
6
One can see the Wolf skulking in each of Scheffer's five tenets
of eco-ideology.
Actual organizations and individuals comprising the
environmental movement stress different clusters of these
tenets.
Although the environmental movement's structure is complex
and amply textured, three distinctive axes of influence
dominate environmental politics in America:
1. Establishment Interventionists - acting to hamper property
rights and markets sufficiently to centralize control of many
transactions for the benefit of environmentalists and their
funders in the foundation community, while leaving the market
economy itself operational. They tend to emphasize the need for
natural diversity and in some cases to own and manage
wildlife preserves. Notable organizations in this sector are the
Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, National
Audubon Society.
2. Eco-Socialists - acting to dislodge the market system with
public ownership of all resources and production,
commanded by environmentalists in an ecological welfare state.
They tend to emphasize the limits of earthly goods.

Greenpeace, Native Forest Council, Maine Audubon Society are
representative groups.
3. Deep Ecologists - acting to reduce or eliminate industrial
civilization and human population in varying degrees. They
tend to emphasize that nature's way is best and
environmentalism is radical. Earth First!, Sea Shepherd
Conservation
2 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
Society, Native Forest Network are in this category.
7
The Wolf in these varieties of sheep's clothing is rapacious, not
simply protecting nature, but also annihilating the
livelihoods of dwellers in the middle landscape.
Today the Wolf is firmly entrenched in Washington, D. C.,
where important environmental groups have established
headquarters or major operating bases. Eco-ideologists have
written many laws, tested them in the courts and
pressured many administrative agencies into compliance with
their ideology. They have, in brief, become the
Establishment. The apparatus of environmentalism is no longer
represented merely by non-profit organizations, but has
grown to encompass American government at all levels.
Since the inception of the Environmental Grantmakers
Association (EGA) in 1985, the foundation community has
usurped
substantial control of the environmental movement. The

standard philanthropic model, "non-profit organization submits
its
proposal to foundation for funding," has given way to "a
combine of foundations selects and dictates grant-driven
programs to non-profit organization." In the instance of the
Ancient Forest campaign in the Pacific Northwest, a cluster of
six EGA foundations even went so far as to create their own
projects because of dissatisfaction with the capabilities of
the Washington, D.C. environmental community. The
foundations derive their income from managed investment
portfolios
representing the power elite of corporate America.
8
As the environmental debate developed during the late 1980s,
the "dominant Western worldview" gained an organized
constituency and advocacy leadership: the wise use movement.
Incipient and gestating more than a decade in the
bosom of those who had been most wounded by environmental
ideology, the new movement congealed at a conference
in Reno, Nevada in 1988. It was centered around a hodgepodge
of property rights groups, anti-regulation legal
foundations, trade groups of large industries, motorized
recreation vehicle clubs, federal land users, farmers, ranchers,
fishermen, trappers, small forest holders, mineral prospectors
and others who live and work in the middle landscape.
9
It came as a shock to environmentalists. The "competing
paradigm" unhappily found itself confronted with a competing
paradigm. The free ride was over. A substantial cluster of non-
profit grass roots organizations now advocated unlimited
economic growth, technological progress and a market
economy. They opposed the eco-ideologists' proposals using the

tactics of social change movements, such as mobilizing grass
roots constituencies, staging media events including
protest demonstrations and orchestrating letter-writing
campaigns to pressure Congress.
It was a pivotal shift in the debate. No longer were eco-
ideologists able to face off against business and industry,
pitting
greedy for-profit corporations against environmentalism's non-
profit moral high ground. Now it was urban
environmentalists defending their vision of the pastoral ideal
against those who actually lived the pastoral ideal in the
middle landscape.
This simple structural rearrangement of the debate went
virtually unnoticed, but was crucial: Now it was non-profit
against non-profit, one side promoting economic growth,
technological progress and a market economy, the other
opposing.
The emergent wise use movement held up a mirror to the
embarrassing questions posed by the "competing paradigm":
Just who will limit our economic growth? Who will restrain
America's science and technology? Who will decide what
"delicate balance humans must observe"? The answer was clear:
only environmental ideologists, and not those who
create economic growth, science, technology or the market
economy.
Asserting such onerous control over others was not attractive
and clarified the environmental movement as just another
special interest protecting its selfish economic status.
Economics is not about money, it is about the allocation of
scarce
resources. The wise use movement bared the environmental
movement's ambition to be resource allocator for the

world.
10
Environmentalism's efforts to turn America's pastoral ideal wild
stood out in sharp contrast to the wise use movement's
actual stewardship of the land, the water and the air. Wise users
were not perfect, to be sure, but they were down to
earth, real, and necessary. They created economic growth,
employed science and technology, and drove the market
economy.
3 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
Environmentalism, by contrast, appeared in the same light as
pastoral literature in critic William Empson's Some
Versions of Pastoral: "about the people but not by or for them."
11
Environmentalism, like pastoral literature, was about those
pastoral rural dwellers who produced dinner, dress and
domicile for everyone, but was generated by the educated elite,
not by those who lived the pastoral ideal.
Environmentalism's ideology was promulgated for the ruling
elite, not for the farmer or rancher or family forest owner or
mineral prospector.
When the wise use movement arose to demystify eco-fetishism,
the environmental movement lost its grip on the debate.
It was as if history had played a huge joke on environmental
ideology.

The environmental movement was not amused.
The first environmentalist reaction to the emergence of the wise
use movement was passive denial--ignore it and it will
go away. That lasted from 1988 to early 1992. The present
phase of active denial began with a study of the wise use
movement by the W. Alton Jones Foundation dated February,
1992, portraying the rising social force as a mere front for
industry, created by industry, paid for by industry, controlled by
industry. The fact that foundation analysts sincerely
believed this assessment points up how unprepared the
environmental movement was to lose its favored "non-profit
versus for-profit" moral high ground in the debate. Industry had
to be the opponent. The wise use movement had to be a
mere front. So that's what they saw.
12
This humbuggery lasted only half a year. Further research,
sponsored by The Wilderness Society and conducted by the
Boston-area media strategy firm MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider,
disclosed a disturbing truth: "What we're finding is that
wise use is really a local movement driven by primarily local
concerns and not national issues.... And, in fact, the more
we dig into it, having put together over a number of months a
fifty state fairly comprehensive survey of what's going on,
we have come to the conclusion that this is pretty much
generally a grass roots movement, which is a problem, because
it means there's no silver bullet."
The words are those of Debra Callahan, then director of W.
Alton Jones Foundation's Environmental Grass Roots
Program, at the 1992 Environmental Grantmakers Association
annual fall retreat. Her session, titled "The Wise Use

Movement: Threats and Opportunities," capped off the three day
convocation of foundation executives.
13
Callahan's source, the MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider report,
titled "The Wise Use Movement: Strategic Analysis and
Fifty State Review," affirmed that the wise use movement was
the greatest threat the environmental movement had ever
faced.
14
"What people fundamentally want, what people fundamentally
believe about environmental protection," Callahan said
polls revealed, "is that no, it's not just jobs. And no, it's not just
environment. Why can't we have both?
"The high ground is capturing that message, okay? The wise use
movement is trying to capture that message. What
they're saying out there is that 'We are the real
environmentalists. We are the stewards of the land. We're the
farmers
who have tilled that land and we know how to manage this land
because we've done it here for generations. We're the
miners and we're the ones who depend for our livelihood on this
land. These environmentalists, they're elitists. They live
in glass towers in New York City. They're not
environmentalists. They're part of the problem. And they're
aligned with big
government. And they're out of touch. So we're the real
environmentalists.'
"And if that's the message that the wise use movement is able to
capture, we are suddenly really unpopular. The minute
the wise use people capture that high ground, we almost have
not got a winning message left in our quiver."

Judy Donald of the Washington, D.C.-based Beldon Fund, and
Callahan's co-presenter, took the conclusion another
step. "There are, as Deb has made clear, ordinary people, grass
roots organizations, who obviously feel their needs are
being addressed by this movement,; said Donald. "We have to
have a strategy that also is addressing those concerns.
And that cannot come simply from environmentalists. It can't
come just from us. That's the dilemma here. It's not simply
that people don't get it, it's that they do get it. They're losing
their jobs."
4 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
Barbara Dudley, then executive of the Veatch Fund, now head
of Greenpeace, stated: "This is a class issue. There is no
question about it. It is true that the environmental movement is,
has been, traditionally ... an upper class conservation,
white movement. We have to face that fact. It's true. They're not
wrong that we are rich and they are up against us. We
are the enemy as long as we behave in that fashion."
These commanders of environmentalism had acknowledged they
were destroying jobs and hurting those who produce
our material goods. They admitted themselves the enemy. This
moment of self-comprehension was a tremendous
opportunity to repent and reach out to wise users, dwellers in
the middle landscape who felt betrayed by big government
and big business.
Instead, the foundations and their environmental cohort
deliberately fell back on their stereotype, portraying wise use as

a front for corporations, and risking a frontal assault against
wise use with new tactics: "Attack Wise Use.... Find
divisions between Wise Use and Wise Use and exploit them....
We need to ... talk about the Wise Use agenda. We need
to expose the links between Wise Use and other extremists...."
In other words, a smear campaign would be mounted to tie wise
users to unpopular extremists such as the John Birch
Society, the Unification Church, Lyndon LaRouche, and to
violent factions such as the militias. They knew they couldn't
shoot the message, so they settled for shooting the messenger.
To implement the smear campaign, W. Alton Jones Foundation
helped found the Clearinghouse on Environmental
Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) in 1993 with two grants
totaling $145,000. In the same year Jones gave numerous
grants in the $20,000 to $30,000 range to small local
organizations that agreed to conduct smears against wise use.
15
The Sierra Club engaged private investigator David Helvarg to
write an anti-wise use tirade titled The War Against the
Greens claiming a conspiracy of violence by wise users against
environmentalists. Helvarg's sponsors also funded a
road show for him to tie wise use to an alleged far-right
terrorist network.
16
The EGA foundations and their grant-driven environmentalist
dependents spent millions on related media saturation
projects designed to identify the words "wise use" with
"violence" in the public mind. Reliance on The Big Lie revealed
grant-driven environmentalists as intellectually and morally
bankrupt, and the technique backfired, just as EGA members

Donald and Dudley foresaw.
Grass roots environmentalists saw that big-money foundations
controlled the "mainstream" environmental movement,
which they felt had sold out true reform for pallid
incrementalism. They deserted by the hundred thousand,
preferring to
form scattered local and regional groups of their own. The
Wilderness Society and Sierra Club were hit particularly hard,
losing 125,000 members and 130,000 members, respectively, in
1994.
17
Most devastating for the foundations, an icon of the Left, author
and syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn, aired
their dirty laundry in the progressive flagship, The Nation. "For
years now," wrote Cockburn in August 1995, "David
Helvarg has been backed by environmental groups such as the
Sierra Club to investigate and smear the Wise Use
movement by any means necessary. This goes back to the early
1990s when the Environmental Grantmakers
Association offered a de facto bounty for material discrediting
Wise Users as (a) a front for corporations or (b) part of a
far-right terrorist network."
Cockburn--an equal opportunity critic who routinely berates the
wise use movement for its failings--deplored the smear
tactic. He wrote, "And so we have the unlovely sight of Helvarg
behaving like an F.B.I. agent. He prowls across literature
tables at Wise Use meetings and ties all the names on the
pamphlets, letterheads and books into his 'terror network.'
The trouble is, he never makes his case. Helvarg never comes
up with the terrorist conspiracy he proclaims, because
there hasn't been one."

18
Indeed. What there has been, and what environmentalists cannot
confront, is a potent movement subversive of
environmentalism's articles of faith. That is why they resort to a
hoax rather than lively debate on the issues.
Although it would be rash to propose wise use's articles of
faith--it is a diverse movement--some of the following
principles would probably find wide agreement among those
who provide the material goods to all of humanity:
5 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
1) Humans, like all organisms, must use natural resources to
survive. This fundamental verity is never addressed by
environmental ideology. The simple fact that humans must get
their food, clothing and shelter from the environment is
either ignored or obliquely deplored in quasi-suicidal plaints
such as, "I would rather see a blank space where I am--at
least I wouldn't be harming anything."
If environmentalism were to acknowledge our necessary use of
the earth, the ideology would lose its meaning. To grant
legitimacy to the human use of the environment would be to
accept the unavoidable environmental damage that is the
price of our survival. Once that price is acceptable, the moral
framework of environmental ideology becomes irrelevant
and the issues become technical and economic.
2) The earth and its life are tough and resilient, not fragile and
delicate. Environmentalists tend to be catastrophists,

seeing any human use of the earth as damage and massive
human use of the earth as a catastrophe. An
environmentalist motto is "We all live downstream," the
viewpoint of hapless victims.
Wise users, on the other hand, tend to be cornucopians, seeing
themselves as stewarding and nurturing the bountiful
earth as it stewards and nurtures them. A wise use motto is "We
all live upstream," the viewpoint of responsible
individuals.
The difference in sense of life is striking. Environmentalism by
its very nature promotes feelings of guilt for existing, which
naturally degenerate into pessimism, self-loathing and
depression.
Wise use by its very nature promotes feelings of competence to
live in the world, generating curiosity, learning, and
optimism toward improving the earth for the massive use of
future generations.
The glory of the "dominant Western worldview" so scorned by
environmental ideologists is its metaphor of progress: the
starburst, an insatiable and interminable outreach after a
perpetually flying goal. Environmentalists call humanity a
cancer
on the earth; wise users call us a joy.
If there is a single, tight expression of the wise use sense of
life, it has to be the final stanza of Shelley's Prometheus
Unbound. I think wise users will recognize themselves in these
lines:
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seem omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope itself creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
19
3) We only learn about the world through trial and error. The
universe did not come with a set of instructions, nor did our
minds. We cannot see the future. Thus, the only way we humans
can learn about our surroundings is through trial and
error. Even the most sophisticated science is systematized trial
and error. Environmental ideology fetishizes nature to the
point that we cannot permit ourselves errors with the
environment, ending in no trials and no learning.
There will always be abusers who do not learn. People of good
will tend to deal with abuse by education, incentive, clear
rules and administering appropriate penalties for incorrigibles.
4) Our limitless imaginations can break through natural limits to
make earthly goods and carrying capacity virtually
infinite. Just as settled agriculture increased earthly goods and
carrying capacity vastly beyond hunting and gathering, so
our imaginations can find ways to increase total productivity by
superseding one level of technology after another. Taught
by the lessons learned from systematic trial and error, we can
close the loops in our productive systems and find
innumerable ways to do more with less.
5) Humanity's reworking of the earth is revolutionary,
problematic and ultimately benevolent. Of the tenets of wise
use,
this is the most oracular. Humanity is itself revolutionary and

problematic. Danger is our symbiote. Yet even the timid are
6 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
part of the human adventure, which has barely begun.
Humanity may ultimately prove to be a force of nature
forwarding some cosmic teleology of which we are yet unaware.
Or not. Humanity may be the universe awakening and becoming
conscious of itself. Or not. Our reworking of the earth
may be of the utmost evolutionary benevolence and importance.
Or not. We don't know. The only way to see the future
is to be there.
As the environmental debate advances to maturity, the
environmental movement must accept and incorporate many of
these wise use precepts if it is to survive as a social and
political force.
Establishment Interventionism, as represented by the large
foundation and their grant-driven client organizations, must
find practical ways to accommodate private property rights and
entrepreneurial economic growth.
Eco-socialism's collectivist program must find practical ways to
accommodate individual economic liberties in its
bureaucratic command-and-control approach.
Deep Ecology's biocentrism must find practical ways to
accommodate anthropocentrism and technological progress.
To accomplish this necessary reform, environmentalists of all

persuasions will have to face their ideological blind spots
and see their own belief systems as wise users see them, i.e., in
a critical and practical light.
This is a most difficult change for ideological
environmentalists. Failure to reform environmentalism from
within will invite
regulation from without or doom the movement to irrelevancy
as the wise use movement lives the pastoral ideal in the
middle landscape, defining the meaning of America.
1. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the
Pastoral Ideal in America, Oxford University Press, New
York, 1964, p. 3.
2. Arthur O. Lovejoy, et al., A Documentary History of
Primitivism and Related Ideas, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore,
1935, p. 369.
3. José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, trans. anon.,
(first published in Spanish, 1930), reissued 1993 by
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p. 82.
4. Bill Devall and George Sessions, eds., Deep Ecology: Living
as if Nature Mattered, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake
City, 1985, passim.
5. Edith C. Stein, The Environmental Sourcebook, Lyons &
Burford, New York, 1992, p. 6. Victor B. Scheffer,
"Environmentalism's Articles of Faith," Northwest
Environmental Journal, Vol. 5:1, Spring/Summer 1989, pp. 99-
108.
7. Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy: How
Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Free
Enterprise Press, Bellevue, Washington, 2nd ed., 1994, pp. 57-

67 et passim.
8. Taped sessions of the Environmental Grantmakers
Association 1992 Annual Fall Retreat, Conference Recording
Service, Berkeley, California, 1992. Session 2: "North
American Forests: Coping With Multiple Use and Abuse;"
Session
19: "Environmental Legislation: Opportunity for Impact and
Change;" Session 23: "Media Strategies for Environmental
Protection."
9. Alan M. Gottlieb, ed., The Wise Use Agenda, Free Enterprise
Press, Bellevue, Washington, 1989. This document
was the result of the 1988 Wise Use Strategy Conference and
consists of recommendations for natural resource use
from 125 of the 250 conference participants.
10. Michael Kelley, "The Road to Paranoia," The New Yorker,
Vol. LXXI, No. 17, June 19, 1995, p. 60. 11. William
Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral, New Directions, New
York, 1974, p. 6 et passim.
12. W. Alton Jones Foundation, The Wise Use Movement,
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1992. 13. Taped session of the
7 of 8 4/3/2009 10:35 AM
Environmental Grantmakers Association 1992 Annual Fall
Retreat, Conference Recording Service, Berkeley, California,
1992. Session 26: "The Wise Use Movement: Threats and
Opportunities."

14. The Wilderness Society, The Wise Use Movement: Strategic
Analysis and Fifty State Review, prepared by
MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider, Boston, 1992. …
Write an Essay
You are employed as an assistant to the President at your
company. The President has heard about a company called
Barry Wehmiller that has a unique way of dealing with
personnel called Truly Human Leadership. The company said
their success was earned by treating every “team member” as
though they mattered. He has learned that while still privately
held they have grown from 400 employees and $18 million in
sales to over 12,000 employees and $7 billion in sales. Your
boss has learned that Barry Wehmiller had grown through
acquisition. Your company is financially stable and the
President is thinking about going on an acquisition campaign
himself.
Your company does about $25 million in sales and has 490
employees. The company makes electric pumps for a variety of
industrial applications and case packers that take finished
consumer products like light bulbs or packages of hand soaps
and automatically stuffs them into a shipping box and then
passes the finished package to a palletizing machine.
You are to explain to your boss what you see as characteristics
Barry Wehmiller looked for in a good acquisition candidate. Be
as detailed as the material in the case study will allow.
Once Barry Wehmiller acquires a new company, they must
integrate the employees in the company being acquired into
Barry Wehmiller’s way of doing business. How has Barry
Wehmiller been able to bring the new company’s employees
into Barry Wehmiller’s “team member” approach? Use the
material in the case and anything else you can think of that
would make that transition successful.
You are to make a recommendation to the President whether
your company should go on an acquisition campaign or not. Be
decisive in your recommendation. If you believe your company

should go on an acquisition campaign what changes would you
recommend the company make in its people handling methods
prior to beginning that campaign.
Here are the rules
Put your name on the top of the paper
Use only the case study and any personal knowledge you have
in writing your response.
In your paper present your recommendation to the President
first. Your president doesn’t like to read so get to the answers
quickly
The President hates footnotes. You normally will not have
footnotes in a report to the President
9-717-420
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 1 6
Professor Dylan Minor (Kellogg School of Management) and
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Minor and Rivkin
contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. The case was
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designate. Funding for
the development of this case was provided by Harvard Business
School and not by the company. HBS cases are developed solely
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class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as
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D Y L A N M I N O R
J A N W . R I V K I N
Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller
Ryan Gable had not slept soundly for months. The company that
Gable led, Machine
Solution
s Inc.
(MSI), made equipment that medical device makers used to
produce heart catheters. From its founding
in 1999 until 2013, the company had grown to employ 85 people
and book annual revenue of $21
million. But in January 2013, MSI lost customers that accounted
for a third of its business. By that
September, Gable feared that he would soon have to lay off
20%–25% of his employees. The layoff
decision, difficult under any circumstances, was made even

harder by the fact that MSI was a member
of the Barry-Wehmiller family of companies.
To most outside observers in 2013, the Barry-Wehmiller Group
appeared to be a maker of industrial
equipment, a provider of engineering consulting services, and
an acquirer of manufacturers, with total
revenue of $1.6 billion. But chief executive Bob Chapman
defined the company not in terms of its
products, services, and acquisitions but in terms of its “team
members,” a phrase Chapman always
used instead of “employees.” “We’re in business so that all our
team members can have meaningful
and fulfilling lives. . . . We do that through the building of
capital equipment and offering engineering
consulting.”1 Separately, he explained: “I won’t go to my grave
proud of the machines I’ve built. I’ll be
proud of the people we built—who we allowed to find their
gifts, develop their gifts and be appreciated
for their gifts.”2
With an undergraduate degree in accounting and an MBA,
Chapman took a fairly typical approach
to management for the first 30 years of his career. Around 1997,
however, he and his corporation started

a journey toward what he termed “Truly Human Leadership,” in
which success was measured “by the
way we touch the lives of people.” During that journey, from
1997 to 2013, Barry-Wehmiller grew
revenue at a 14% compounded annual rate and sustained a 16%
compounded annual return to its
investors, a level of financial performance few companies
achieved over the same period.
In line with Truly Human Leadership, Barry-Wehmiller had
gone to great lengths to avoid layoffs
during the recession of 2007–09. Now, in 2013, Ryan Gable had
to decide whether to downsize at MSI,
even though it was part of Barry-Wehmiller. The possibility
made it hard to sleep.
The Barry-Wehmiller Journey
Origins Barry-Wehmiller traced its roots to a machine shop that
Thomas Barry opened in Saint
Louis, Missouri, in 1885. Joined by his innovative brother-in-
law Alfred Wehmiller, Barry was soon
selling machines to local breweries like Anheuser-Busch—
equipment to wash refillable bottles and
pasteurize beer. Wehmiller’s death in 1917 and the onset of

Prohibition in 1919 brought the company
For the exclusive use of M. JIN, 2020.
This document is authorized for use only by MINYU JIN in 490
Strategic Management April - June 2020 taught by WILLIAM
DONOHOO, University of California - Riverside from May
2020 to
Oct 2020.
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1997年改变管理方式
结果：增长
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外界与自我定义不同
为员工骄傲而不是the machines they have built。
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避免裁员
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姐夫Alfred Wehmiller开厂，Barry后加入。姐夫的去世是第一个危机。
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717-420 Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller
2
the first of what would be many crises. Barry-Wehmiller
struggled through Prohibition, surviving by

selling its equipment overseas where alcohol continued to be
sold legally.
In 1953, the family-held company hired Bill Chapman.
Chapman succeeded Fred Wehmiller as
president in 1957 and invested $30,000 in the Wehmiller-
family-controlled business. With breweries
shifting from returnable bottles to cans and with German
competitors on the rise, Barry-Wehmiller
often found itself operating on the edge of the risk its banks
would tolerate. Ownership of the
struggling firm passed to Bill Chapman in 1963 when the
Wehmiller family was bought out with debt
and Bill Chapman’s $30,000 investment came to represent 57%
of the company’s equity. Six years later,
Chapman asked his son Bob to join the business from Price
Waterhouse as “someone he could trust.”
Equipped with a CPA degree and a Michigan MBA, Bob moved
rapidly through various functional
roles in what he called “my own leadership development
program.” This would turn out to be a
significant factor in his development, he reflected, as he learned
firsthand the challenges and
interaction of the key business functions. The younger Chapman
was running much of the company

as Executive Vice President by 1975, when his father died
suddenly of a heart attack.
A young leader’s rollercoaster education At age 30, Bob
Chapman found himself atop a
family firm with nearly 400 employees, $18 million in annual
revenue, an operating loss of $477,000,
and $2-3 million of secured bank debt. Barry-Wehmiller
depended heavily on credit, but the company’s
bankers responded to Bill Chapman’s death by calling in their
loans. Bob Chapman recalled:
The combination of my father’s sudden death and the loss of the
bank line of credit
motivated me to do whatever it took to cut costs and achieve
our budget. For example, I
went to the production supervisor in the plant and asked him,
“How many expeditors do
you have?” He said, “Eight.” I said, “We can only have four.”
He said, “No. You don’t
understand. We need eight.” I responded, “You don’t
understand. I can only afford four.
So we can only have four.” The human cost of this was
something I just didn’t think much
about.3

After nine months of what Chapman called “a single-
mindedness and intensity that the company
had never experienced before,” Barry-Wehmiller reported a
profit of $2.2 million on sales of $22
million, the company’s best year ever.4 Five years of rapid
growth followed, as Philip Morris, the
consumer products marketing powerhouse, entered the beer
market by acquiring Miller Brewing
Company. An ensuing marketing and market share battle with
Anheuser-Busch transformed the
brewing industry. As Anheuser-Busch and Miller expanded
quickly, they needed equipment that
Barry-Wehmiller uniquely provided. An ecology movement that
favored returnable bottles added to
the company’s organic growth. Barry-Wehmiller’s strong
market positon led it to explore new ideas:
solar heating of pasteurizers, new products for bottle inspection,
and beverage fillers made under an
Italian licensing agreement. By 1981, Barry-Wehmiller’s
revenue soared to $71 million. “Everything I
touched seemed to turn to gold,” Chapman recalled.5
But then, in the early 1980s, the market turned suddenly against
the company: growth in beer

consumption faded; Anheuser-Busch and Miller shifted from
building new breweries to buying old
ones; technical challenges arose in the innovative businesses;
and warranty and inventory issues
surged. Sales fell to $55 million in 1983, and the company lost
$5 million. Chapman recalled, “Bankers
who had fully supported the growth initiatives and provided
ample credit to support it suddenly
changed their view of the risk and froze Barry-Wehmiller’s
credit.” Chapman met frequently with the
firm’s attorney to discuss declaring bankruptcy. In a Harvard
Business School case written on the
company in 1989, Chapman explained:
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bill死后银行家要求偿还贷款
Bob开始不得不layoff裁员
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导致不得不雇佣更多工人
Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller 717-420
3
I had to fire a lot of people during that period. I remember one
of the analogies one of
the directors shared with me. . . .”When an airplane starts losing
altitude and is headed

for the mountains, it is clear that you have to get rid of excess
weight to clear the
mountains. . . .” Some individuals couldn’t adjust to this
environment and others proved
to be luxuries we couldn’t afford.6
After nine months of day-to-day cash management, the company
gained a fragile lease on life in
1983 with a new asset-based loan. Seeking to escape financial
troubles, Chapman turned to an unusual
course of action inspired by his study of Emerson Electric’s
successful acquisition strategy in mature
markets:
I went to our finance department and said, “We need to start
making acquisitions so
we can access markets and technology that can give us a better
future.” They looked at
me very professionally and said, “Bob, that is a great idea. We
have only one problem.” I
said, “What’s that?” They said, “We have no money. Do you
understand that? We have
no money.” I looked at them—this was a defining moment—and
said, “Don’t tell me what
we can’t do. I didn’t tell you we needed money. I said we need

to do acquisitions.”7
Lacking money, Barry-Wehmiller focused on the only
companies that it could consider—ones that
“nobody else wanted.” Chapman recalled:
Given our fragile financial situation, I knew every deal was
critical. Fortunately, that
brought about a “must do, can’t fail” attitude and created
exceptional learning
opportunities because I was fully engaged in every deal. In
1986, given the continuing
challenges of the core business, the U.K. team surfaced a
remote idea of spinning off the
U.K.-led part of Barry-Wehmiller on the London Stock
Exchange. If successful, this would
allow us to pay off our asset-based debt, have $2 million in the
bank, retain our legacy
business of equipment for the brewing industry, and own 30%
of a publicly traded U.K.
company. While the idea seemed extremely remote, our team
shifted its focus to meeting
the criteria for a successful flotation.
To Chapman’s surprise, the spinoff’s initial public offering was

35 times oversubscribed. The
flotation left Barry-Wehmiller with $28 million in cash, a 30%
stake in a U.K. public company, and, at
last, some liquidity.
An acquisition strategy emerges
Chapman reflected:
My learning from this sequence of experiences was that you can
create value in mature
markets by seeing value where others don’t and being open to
developing and
implementing unique strategies for value creation. We didn’t
get to this outcome by
traditional thinking; the precariousness of our financial
situation created the motivation
for unconventional thinking and led to an outcome beyond
anyone’s imagination.8
In 1988, with the opportunity to “suit up one more time,” our
team stepped back and
reflected on the dramatic growth, traumatic decline, and
unexpected outcome of a wildly
successful IPO. We considered our mistakes and learnings and

articulated a “Strategy for
Growth, Value and Liquidity.” The strategy called on Barry-
Wehmiller to grow by
selectively acquiring equipment makers that fit our
competencies and created a balance
among the markets we served, to reduce the risk from being
overly dependent on a single
market or technology. Pausing to capture our learnings and
integrate these unique
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在获得新的贷款后，为摆脱困境，转向一个unusual course of action

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由于没钱，准备收购没人想要的公司
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to pay off debt, spin off part of the UK led part.
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困境造就了不同的motivation，获得了远超预期的结果
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通过有选择地收购适合我们能力的设备制造商并在我们所服务的市场之间建立平
衡，以减少过度依赖单一市场或技术的风险来实现增长
4
experiences into the design of a business model created the
foundation for us to grow
from $20 million to $1.6 billion.
Tim Sullivan, director for corporate development in 1989 and
group president by 2000, explained:
Many of our companies have large aftermarket product lines
that typically don’t get the
attention of traditional business leaders. When searching for
companies to buy, we looked
for businesses with large bases of installed equipment as our
experience was that these
income streams were more resilient and predictable in the
capital equipment investment
cycles and would reduce the cyclical nature of capital spending.
In every company we

considered buying, senior management said, “Oh yes, our
aftermarket products are a very
important aspect of the business.” But some of them couldn’t
even remember the names of
the team members who handled these products. Whenever we
sensed this lack of
leadership attention, we knew we had a promising acquisition
target.9
Epiphanies Execution of this strategy resulted in significant
growth (Exhibit 1). At the
beginning of this growth period, the company took a
conventional approach to its team members.
Starting around 1997, however, Chapman had three epiphanies
that led toward “Truly Human
Leadership.” Chapman described the first:
I’d bought a company in South Carolina and flew down there to
be there on the first
day that I owned it. It was March of 1997, and you know what
happens in every office
around this country in March: March Madness. I walked in a
little before the office opened
and everybody was talking about their basketball team. They
were having fun. But the

closer it got to 8 o’clock when the office opened, you could see
the joy go out of their
body.10
Asking himself “Why can’t work be fun?” Chapman proposed a
game: whoever sold the most parts
in a week would win a small cash prize, and if the team made its
goal for the week, everybody would
get a monetary team award. Within the first quarter, sales were
up more than 20%. “When people
started having fun in their roles, we saw transformation in their
customer service skills,” Chapman
observed.11
A second awakening came in church:
My mentor, Ed [Salmon], was the rector of our church, and I
was always in awe that
he could stand up each week in church and inspire us. I realized
on Sunday that Ed only
had us for an hour a week, and we have people in our care for
40 hours a week. I realized
the significant impact we could have on people’s lives. I
understood that day that business
could be the most powerful force for good if it could only

accept the profound
responsibility it has for impacting the lives of people who work
in organizations.12
A third epiphany came at a wedding, as Chapman watched a
close friend escort his daughter down
the aisle. “It occurred to me, ‘Everybody that works for us is
somebody’s precious child, and we have
a chance to profoundly impact their lives.’”13
Guiding Principles of Leadership These moments came to a
head in 2002. Chapman was
producing a video for internal distribution, and the marketing
team leader asked him to talk about the
company’s success in traditional financial terms. Chapman
ignored the financial metrics and replied,
“We are going to measure success by the way we touch the lives
of people.” A few weeks later, the
company convened a cross-section of 20 leaders in Florida.
Chapman and Chief People Officer Rhonda

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注重售后产品线，收购那些领导层不关注售后产品线的公司。
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顿悟
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chapman有三次顿悟
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让工作变得开心：销售最多可得小的现金奖励；团队目标实现则每人获得。
-->销售额sales增长20%
-->客户服务技能转变
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如果它只能接受它对影响组织工作人员的生活所承担的深刻责任，那么商业可能
是最强大的力量。
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为我们工作的每个人都是某个人的宝贝孩子，我们有机会深刻影响他们的生活。
Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller 717-420
5
Spencer challenged the group to construct a statement of Barry-
Wehmiller’s approach to leadership.
The result, the Guiding Principles of Leadership (GPL), started
with and elaborated on Chapman’s
definition of success (Exhibit 2).
Soon afterward, a division president sent Spencer the values
statement of Enron, the scandal-ridden
and discredited energy-trading company (Exhibit 3). In some
ways, Enron’s statement resembled
Barry-Wehmiller’s Guiding Principles. Spencer challenged
Chapman about the GPL: “How is this not

just going to be something that’s on the walls?”14
Chapman’s reply was that they were going to place these values
in their team members heads and
hearts, and he subsequently started a series of in-person
dialogues with “team members” (no longer
called “employees”) across the organization—showing them the
GPL and asking, “This is what we
believe. What does this mean to you? What are we doing that
doesn’t match up to what we say here?”15
Mismatches were addressed rapidly: for instance, time clocks
and inventory cages that signified
mistrust were removed quickly, often over the objections of
middle management. Chapman estimated
that he devoted 25% of his time to such dialogues. In
subsequent years, recognition programs were
established to honor team members who acted in the spirit of
the GPL, and Barry-Wehmiller University
was set up, in part to convey the GPL. (See more below.)
The Great Recession The staggering economic downturn of
2007–09 put Barry-Wehmiller’s
GPL to the test. In 2009, the company saw a 35% downturn in
new equipment orders, and the company’s
backlog declined rapidly as customers canceled orders.

Chapman was visiting a subsidiary in Italy when
word arrived that a major order was being put on hold. Layoffs
seemed inevitable. He recalled:
Beyond the impact on our culture, if we let people go in that
brutal economic
environment, it would devastate them and their families and
even some communities.
There were simply no other jobs to be had. Many people would
lose their homes, some
their marriages. Children would have to drop out of college.
The human toll was almost
too painful to contemplate. . . .
I asked myself, “What would a caring family do when faced
with such a crisis?” The
answer soon came to me: All the family members would absorb
some pain so that no
member of the family had to experience dramatic loss.16
Ten days later, Barry-Wehmiller’s leadership team rolled out a
program of shared sacrifice. There
would be no layoffs. Instead, each team member was instructed
to take an unpaid furlough for four
weeks at a time of his or her choosing. All team members were

given a furlough, even those in divisions
that were faring relatively well. The company suspended
executive bonuses, stopped its program of
matching personal contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts,
offered generous payments to team
members who agreed to retire early, and ordered reductions in
travel expenses. Chapman cut his salary
from $875,000 to $10,500, the amount he earned decades earlier
as a first-year CPA. Education and
recognition programs continued, albeit with some cost-cutting.
Management heard only positive reactions to the furlough
program. Some team members stepped
up to take extra time off on behalf of colleagues who couldn’t
afford unpaid furloughs. Unions agreed
quickly to the program.
The company rallied from the Great Recession faster than
expected and reported record financial
results in 2010. Barry-Wehmiller marked the strong results by
paying team members extra to cover any
401(k) matching contributions that were lost during the
downturn. Chapman reflected:

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查普曼的回答是，他们将把这些价值观放在他们的团队成员的头脑和心中，随后
他开始了一系列与“团队成员”(不再是cal)的面对面对话领导整个组织的“员工”-
向他们展示GPL并问：“这就是我们所相信的。这对你意味着什么？
我们所做的与我们在这里所说的不相符
化学品安全方案得到了迅速的解决：例如，表明不信任的时间时钟和库存笼子被
迅速消除，通常是由于中层管理人员的反对。查普曼估计是他干的
他有25%的时间参加这样的对话。
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大衰退

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该公司暂停了高管奖金的发放，停止了将个人捐款与401(k)退休账户相匹配的
计划，向同意提前退休的团队成员提供慷慨的报酬，并下令减少旅费。
查普曼将他的薪水从87.5万$降至10,500美元，这是他几十年前作为一名注册
会计师的收入。教育和表彰计划继续进行带着一些成本削减。
6
The 2008–2009 global financial crisis was a traumatic
experience for most companies.
It started out that way for us as well. But because we had our
deeply rooted Guiding
Principles of Leadership in place, and because we indeed do
measure success by the way
we touch the lives of people, our way forward became quite
clear to us early on. Because
of the way we chose to respond, the financial crisis actually
ended up being a blessing in
disguise for us.17
Barry-Wehmiller in 2013
Having weathered the Great Recession, Barry-Wehmiller

continued to grow: revenue rose from $1.2
billion in 2008 to $1.6 billion in 2013. The company’s stock,
which was privately held (see below),
appreciated at an annual rate of 16% over the same period.
Total employment had grown to 8,000 by
2013. See Exhibit 1 for a summary of financial and other
results.
Organization and ownership Barry-Wehmiller operated the ten
divisions shown in Exhibit 4.
The divisions, in turn, were organized around four sectors, or
“platforms”: packaging automation
equipment, …
Week 3 (B) Narratives - History of Environmental Political
Thought Part 2
· Read the essay "Wise Use: What Do We Believe?" by Ron
Arnold.
No discussion of environmental policy development would be
complete without acknowledging those who rebelled against the
environmental movement and the sweep of new regulations of
the 1960s and 1970s. This revolt has been dubbed the Wise-Use
Movement. Though this label didn’t stick until the late 1980s,
the movement really began in the late 1970s.
This movement was the counter to pastoralism’s deep ecology;

it swung the political pendulum to a more anthropocentric view
of environmental policy. It particularly manifested itself in the
western United States, where a majority of lands are managed
by the federal government. Ranchers, miners, loggers, private
property owners all began to reassert their belief that human
ingenuity can solve environmental problems. This western
specific part of the wise use movement was dubbed the
Sagebrush Rebellion. This movement revolted against the
federal oversight of natural resources they claimed to have been
managing properly for generations. This movement manifests
itself in the state and federal government rights debate which
will be discussed later this semester. For more information
about the history of the Rebellion, click here (Links to an
external site.).
The following case study will help illustrate what the Wise-Use
movement is, its potential impact, and will be the focus of this
week's discussion.
Case Study: Utah prairie dog
Some of the battles in the wise-use movement are being played
out right here in southern Utah. One of these cases is the Utah
prairie dog. Because it is right in our own backyard (no pun
intended), the Utah prairie dog is an interesting case study in
the wise use movement and the issue of private property rights,
and environmental protection and stewardship.
The purpose of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Links to

an external site.) “is to protect and recover imperiled species
and the ecosystems upon which they depend.” The Utah prairie
dog was placed on the endangered species list in the 1970s and
then upgraded to “threatened” in the 1980s. To manage the
species, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issues “takings”
permits to remove the prairie dog from private lands. There are
only so many permits issued per year so as to not adversely
impact the species population.
Many see this as an overreach of federal powers especially as it
pertains to private property rights. A group of Iron County
citizens began PETPO and won a favorable decision in 2014 to
allow more “takings” of the Utah prairie dog from private
property because it is found in only one state (hence, the
constitutional interstate commerce clause does not apply
according to the appellants). The case is on appeal. In the
interim, it is being hailed as a victory for the wise-use
movement and environmentalists decry it as a weakening of
important protections for endangered species. For more
information about the case, click here (Links to an external
site.).
For more information about PETPO, click here (Links to an
external site.).
For a copy of the 2014 ruling, click here (Links to an external
site.).
Supplemental information:

· Environmentalism's Article of Faith
Actions
· More information about the Sagebrush Rebellion
ENVIRONMENTALISM: ITS ARTICLES OF FAITH
Northwest Environmental Journal Vol. 5:1, (1989) p. 100
Victor Scheffer
Here I offer an interpretation of environmentalism, a body of
principles and practices so recently manifest in national thought
that its meanings are still disputed. It is called, for example, "a
theology of the earth," "a religion of self restraint," and "a
science rooted in resource management and ecology." I define it
broadly as "a movement toward understanding humankind's
natural bases of support while continuously applying what is
learned toward perpetuating those bases."
The word environmentalism entered the American vernacular
during the 1960s. An editorial in Science (Klopsteg 1966) noted
that "one of the newest fads in Washington-and elsewhere-is
'environmental science.' The term has political potency even if
its meaning is vague and questionable." Environmentalism was
at first perceived by the public as merely a response to a crisis,
but it quickly proved more than that. As Lord Ashby (1978:3)
explained to a Stanford University group:

A crisis is a situation that will pass; it can be resolved by
temporary hardship, temporary adjustment, technological and
political expedients. What we are experiencing is not a crisis, it
is a climacteric. For the rest of man's history on earth . . . he
will have to live with problems of population, of resources, of
pollution.
The vision of environmentalism is to preserve those things in
nature which will allow the human enterprise, or civilization, to
endure and improve. (I use the word nature for the world
without humans, a concept which-like the square root of minus
one-is unreal, but useful.) Because civilization depends
absolutely on surroundings that are healthful and stimulating,
environmentalism aims to protect both material and spiritual
values. At the risk of oversimplifying, 1 review five articles of
faith which support and energize the environmental movement.
They reflect ideas developed by "earthkeepers" from the time of
George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) down to the present.
1) All things are connected. The cosmos is a set of
dependencies so complex that its boundaries lie forever beyond
understanding. Simply lifting a spadeful of garden soil disturbs
a trillion protistan lives, impinges on the lifter's muscles and
mind, and changes the landscape. The poet who mused, "Thou

canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star," was struck
by the unitary connectedness of all matter (Thompson 1966
[1897]:19). He was an environmentalist before his time. Now
we technological beings have Spun a web of change around the
whole earth and nearby space. Our artifacts range in scale from
radiations and molecules to mountains and lakes. Yet never will
we understand completely the spinoff effects of the en
vironmental changes that we create, nor will we measure Our
own,' independent influence in their creation. Consider the
mysterious decline in the numbers of fur seals breeding on
Alaska's Pribilof Islands. Their population has fallen to about
38 percent of its 1956 level (Chapman 1981:200; Kozloff
1986:14; Scheffer and Kenyon 1989). Six reasons proposed for
the decline are:
1. unintended harassment by the biologists who study the seal
herd;
2. overkill, or wasteful commercial cropping of the herd;
3. decreased resistance to disease, or decreased fertility, or
both, as a result of anthropogenic poisons in the feeding waters
of the seals;
4. deprivation of seal foods by eastern Bering Sea commercial

fisheries, which have growl explosively since 1959 (now taking
1.5 million tons a year);
5. entanglement in, or ingestion of, plastic debris floating in the
wake of commercial vessels; and
6. Changes in weather, such as those attending El Nino Norte,
which depress the survival rate of the younger seals.
While none of these reasons has convinced the fur-seal
biologists, they are betting even that human fouling of the ocean
was the cause versus the concealed forces of nature.
Consider also the foxes, the geese, and the rats of Kiska Island,
Alaska. In the spring of 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service dropped 50,000 poison, baits on windswept, treeless
Kiska to eliminate its fox population and thereby pave the way
for the reintroduction of Aleutian Canada geese from fox-free
Aleutian Islands (Alaska Magazine 1986). The Kiska foxes were
not native; they had been introduced decades earlier by fur
trappers. Some years after their introduction, they extirpated the
local geese. The government's poison campaign was successful.
Unfortunately, Kiska also supports a rat population that
originated in military traffic during World War Two. So, up for
question is whether the rats, now free of predation by foxes,

will multiply and themselves become an even greater menace to
a restored goose population than the foxes could have been.
2) Earthly goods are limited. This truth finds expression in the
term carrying capacity. As applied to people, carrying capacity
is the number of individuals that the earth can support before a
limit is reached beyond which the quality of life must worsen
and Homo, the human animal, becomes less human. One reason
we humans unlike animals in the wild-are prone to exceed
carrying capacity is that our wants exceed our needs. This is
what essayist Wendell Berry means when he writes (1987:15)
that "whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of
physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far
more gross and capacious. . . ." Persons who understand
carrying capacity and its rule of limits will (I believe) generally
accept two kinds of government interference: (1) control of land
uses such that no use destroys the recuperative powers of the
land; and (2) control of the birthrate.
Land-use control, based on use classification (zoning) and
enforcement, is expanding to include ocean-use control. In
1958, the United Nations opened a series of conferences aimed
at protecting the health and permanence of the territorial seas,
the high seas, the deep sea bed, and marine living resources.
And, in 1982, a Convention on the Law of the Sea was signed

by 119 nations; the United States, regrettably, was not among
them (United Nations 1983). Not to say that the United States
was unconcerned; witness (among other laws) the Marine
Mammal Protection Act of 1972; the Marine Protection,
Research, and Marine Sanctuaries Act of 1972; and the Fishery
Conservation and Management Act of 1976. The implications of
ocean-use control are notably striking in the Pacific Northwest,
where a rapidly growing population (Morrill and Downing
1986) is bringing problems of resource allocation in offshore oil
production, fisheries, and saltwater recreation. Common to all
these problems is the question: What decisions can we make
without foreclosing the right of future generations to make
other, and probably wiser, decisions?
Nations have been notoriously unsuccessful in limiting their
birthrates. Governments are usually conceded the right to inter
fere-for the common good-with citizen use of land, but not with
citizen use of the bedroom. Yet world population has surged to
over five billion and is growing at about 1.6 percent per year.
On the premise that Homo habilis originated 2.5 million years
ago, about 4 percent of all humans who have ever lived are still
alive (Exter 1987). "Nearly 40% of [the earth's] potential
terrestrial net primary productivity is used directly, co-opted, or
foregone because of human activities" (Vitousek et al.
1986:368).

No one has the moral right, and should not have the legal right,
to overtax carrying capacity either by reducing the productivity
of the land or by bringing into the world more than his or her
"share" of new lives. Who is to decide that share will perhaps
be the most difficult social question for future generations.
3) Nature's way is best. Woven into the fabric of environmen
talism is the belief that natural methods and materials should be
favored over artificial and synthetic ones, when there's a clear
choice. Witness the vast areas of the globe poisoned or
degraded by' the technological economy of our century.
Moreover, biological discoveries are daily revealing new
aspects of the remarkable fit of every wild plant and animal to
its environment. The wild things seem to know ways of survival
that we have never learned, or have forgotten. E. B. White
(1962:67) said it best: "I would be more optimistic about a
bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can
outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and
respecting her seniority."
Many environmentalists, professing their faith in natural
wisdom, endorse a method of agriculture variously known as
organic, alternative, regenerative, sustainable, or low-input

(U.S. Department of Agriculture 1980). It is a thrift not fi r
from peasant agriculture insofar as it rejects those conventional
farming practices which bring soil erosion, exhaustion of soil
fertility, salination from irrigation water, desertification, and
the pollution of soils (as well as downstream water) by chemical
fertilizers and persistent biocides. Conventional farming,
especially on the large areas that support agribusiness, also
brings increased susceptibility to the diseases and pests of high-
yield varieties grown in monocultures. Organic farming, by
contrast, maintains healthier soils and crops. It is suited to crop-
livestock interdependence and is not limited by size. While it is
more labor intensive than conventional farming, it is less energy
consumptive. "The best farming," writes Berry, "will continue
to rely on the attentiveness and particularity that go with the
use of the hands" (1987:132).
In listing the virtues of organic farming, I don't mean to imply
that the simple agrarian and pastoral economies of the early
nineteenth century in America will, or should be, revived. I do
mean that the practices within those economies which express
deep concern for the future of the land will be adopted.
The recent bioregional movement, rooted in awareness of place,
is one expression of concern for natural values. In 1984, at the
first bioregional congress, in Missouri, a committee reported

that "bioregionalism recognizes, nurtures, sustains and
celebrates our local connections with: land, plants and animals;
rivers, lakes and oceans; families, friends and neighbors;
community; native traditions; and local systems of production
and trade" (Sale 1984:724). A utopian concept, though useful.
Wilderness regions demonstrate with beautiful clarity that Na
ture's way is best. To the supporters of environmentalism they
are sacred shrines. The Wilderness Act of 1964 declared that a
wilderness "is an area where the earth and community of life are
untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does
not remain" (P.L.88-577, Sec. 2). To enjoy a wilderness is a
privilege by no means confined to a camping-under-the-stars
elite. "It is," explains commentator George F. Will, "an
aristocratic pleasure, democratically open to all" (1982:18).
Wilderness lies very close to the core of the environmental
ethic.
4) The survival of humankind depends on natural diversity.
Until yesterday, geologically speaking, the earth was incredibly
rich in landforms and habitats, peculiarities, and commonalities.
It was the stage for evolutionary experiments which produced a
bat weighing only 0.07 of an ounce (less than the dry weight of
tea in a tea bag) and a whale weighing 200 tons (Scheffer 1974;
Wood 1976:51). As a result of those and other experiments, the

earth now hosts 10 million (or more?) species representing a
range of genetic diversity that strains the imagination. Although
species by the billions have vanished through natural extinction
or transformation, the present rate of extinction is thought to be
at least 400 times faster than at the beginning of the Industrial
Age (Myers 1985; Raup 1986). Humankind's destruction of
habitats is overwhelmingly to blame.
Diversity, or species richness, is an ancient and accomplished
pattern; it "works." Its maintenance calls for protecting critical
habitats such as tropical rainforests and temperate old-growth
forests; wetlands; deep primeval lakes; prairies; marine
estuaries, reefs and islands; fragile tundras and deserts. Even
where habitats now enjoy some degree of protection, special
care for the imperiled species within them is vital. Witness the
desperate, multimillion-dollar campaigns in our own generation
to save the California condor and the black-footed ferret. We
cannot hope to save all the endangered species. But, in the pure
act of trying, we (as the only planning animal) can employ our
unique talents to keep the earth livable for as many other
species as possible. Their future is our future; their destiny is
ours.
Ongoing efforts to protect the spotted owls inhabiting thirteen
national forests of the Pacific Northwest illustrate the

difficulty, within an atmosphere of strong controversy, of
saving a rare wildlife species (U.S. Forest Service 1988). What
is at stake is more than the survival of owls, it is the survival of
commercially valuable, old growth or mature timberland where
the owls nest and feed, The thirteen forests contain 4.1 million
acres of "currently suitable spotted owl habitat" having a
carrying capacity for about 1,290 breeding pairs. The Forest
Service plan for protecting the owls calls for a ban on logging
and other development on 347,700 acres having a carrying
capacity for about 270 pairs. If the plan carries, owl protection
will "cost" annually 163 million board feet of timber having a
net value of $28 million, while 455 to 910 jobs will be lost. And
the plan will "cost" a thousand pairs of owls.
.
Public interest in the plan remains high, especially on the part
of environmentalists and persons dependent on logging. The
Forest Service reports that, between mid-1986 and mid-1988, it
received nearly 42,000 comments on a draft version of the plan.
The Case of the Owls in the Old-Growth remi.lds us that
publicity focused on one symbolic species like the spotted owl
(or the gray wolf, or trumpeter swan, or desert pupfish) can
impart a far broader message: Saving habitat must precede the
saving of diversity.

5) Environmentalism is radical in the sense of demanding fun
damental change. It calls for changes in present political
systems, in the reach of the law, in the methods of agriculture
and industry, in the structure of capitalism (the profit system),
in international dealings, and in education. Thus, biology, the
science of living, must receive greater support. Here I mean
biology as broad enlightenment aimed at increasing, among
other things, personal responsibility for the biosphere.
The implementation of environmentalism will be extremely dif
ficult. It will require, in the words of philosopher J. Baird
Callicott (1980:338), "discipline, sacrifice, retrenchment, and
massive economic reform, tantamount to a virtual revolution in
prevailing attitudes and life styles." The United Nations World
Commission on Environment and Development recently
emphasized that "it is impossible to separate economic
development issues from environmental issues; many forms of
development erode the environmental resources upon which
they must be based, and environmental degradation can
undermine economic development" (United Nations 1987:3).
The Commission's central point is that the "macroeconomic
system" must change and, by implication, that environmentalism
must eventually be accepted as the best of all economies.
Although the goals of environmentalism and exploitation are
poles apart, many environmentalists believe that a middle

ground is attainable, if indeed it must be unquiet ground.
Environmentalism, along with the liberation movements of the
1960s, grew rapidly while we Americans were struggling to
change outmoded attitudes and institutions. The sweeping
question we asked ourselves was this: If we believe that a
permanent, sustainable biosphere is possible, how must we treat
the one we now inhabit? So we planned to make wiser use of
materials and energy; to live less wastefully and more
sparingly. The blueprints we drafted were radical, but
necessary. They described a future in which:
· We will, by reducing at the source and by recycling, cut back
the tonnage of unused materials or "wastes" that now end up in
dumps, waterways, and incinerators.
· We will force manufacturers to build goods that are longer
lasting and more easily repaired and, thus, will we attack
planned obsolescence for profit.
· We will substitute plentiful materials (such as aluminum and
iron) for scarcer ones (such as copper and lead). Minerals in the
earth's crust are finite. According to a Brookings Institution
estimate published in 1977, the median life expectancy for 29
important minerals was only 40 years at that time (Tilton

1977:6-7).
· We will apply triage in exploiting the fossil fuels-petroleum,
coal, and natural gas-which have long driven our economy.
What fraction should we leave untouched for persons yet
unborn? Should we quit burning these fuels solely for cheap
energy and ration them for future use as unique chemical bases?
· We will use groundwater no faster than it accumulates.
Witness the alarming decline in volume of the great Ogallala
Aquifer which underlies six states from Texas to Nebraska.
· We will save energy by lowering house and office
temperatures, by installing thermal insulation, and by switching
to hour-budgeted
heating.
· We will increase tenfold or more our dependence on renewable
sources of energy: solar (including biomass conversion), wind,
ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), tidal and wave, and
geothermal. Hydropower will lose its appeal as, one by one, we
lose our rich valleys and rushing streams to reservoirs. Energy
from nuclear fission will lose its appeal as we realize its
awesome costs in building new generators and dismantling old
ones, in paying safety-insurance premiums, and in storing lethal

radwastes through millennia to come. The bitter experience of
the Washington Public power Supply System (WPPSS) with
nuclear power generation is the story of a crunch between an
older kind of planning based largely on trends in power demand
and a newer kind based on "econometric forecasting" (Hill
1981:110). The newer kind brings into the planning equation
factors such as citizen participation, consideration of en
vironmental impact, conservation (in the special sense of energy
saving) and, in the end, better understanding of the real costs of
nuclear power generation. For example, in the early 1970s,
WPPSS had drawn plans for five nuclear plants to be financed
by the sale of bonds. By 1983, outstanding bonds amounted to
$8.3 billion, and WPPSS had become the largest issuer of tax-
free bond!! in American history (Bull 1983). In mid-1983,
however, WPPSS defaulted on a $2.25 billion debt (Blumenthal
1984). Only one plant, at Hanford, was ever completed.
Lawsuits generated during the history of WPPSS (known to
Wall Street as Whoops!) continue as I write in 1989.
· As we move to protect our planetary bases of support we will
keep steadily in mind the priceless value of human health. The
harmful effects of human-introduced poisons-heavy metals and
a host of synthetic chemicals-loom ever more dangerous. Many
effects are time delayed and hence difficult to trace to their
causes. Many surface with shocking impact in the body's
nervous and reproductive systems, and as neoplasms. Witness

the finding that airborne lead (Pb) reaching the brain of a young
child can depress his or her IQ, and that the incidence of
testicular cancer among Caucasians doubled in a recent 40-year
period (Schottenfeld and Warshauer 1982:947 -957; Needleman,
Geiger, and Frank 1985). To study environmental poisons is to
study their sources, their pathways into the body, and their
impacts-both immediate and postponed. Special targets of
concern are the hundreds of modern biocides: the chemicals that
we use recklessly to kill unwanted plants and animals. Better
ways are known of keeping pests in check-including more
efficient methods of land management and biocontrol (the
control of life with life).
If I have rightly interpreted the message of environmentalism,
the foregoing articles of faith are a morality of life or death for
civilization. They are guidelines which, if not followed during
the next global energy crunch, or economic recession, or
pandemic, or military crisis, will again delay us in reaching that
steady-state economy which has always been the goal of the
environmental movement. Those who will lead the movement-
the thoughtful and considerate in many walks of life-will
continue to teach that the future of humanity depends on
knowing the planet where humanity evolved. Knowing will
bring respect, and respect will bring healing and perpetual care.

Victor Scheffer worked for the United States Fish and Wildlife
Service for over thirty years. He studied Alaska fur seals of the
Pribilof Islands, is an authority on whales and was the first
chair of the Marine Mammal Commission. Scheffer wrote The
Year of the Whale (1969) which received the Burroughs Medal.
His last two books were Natural History of Marine Mammals
(1981) and Spires of Form: Glimpses of Evolution (1985).

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