The wise use movement in the United States is a loose-knit coalition of groups promoting the expansion of private property rights and reduction of government regulation of publicly held property. This includes advocacy of expanded use by commercial and public interests, seeking increased access to public lands, and often opposition to government intervention. Wise use proponents describes human use of the environment as"stewardship of the land, the water and the air" for the benefit of human beings. The wise use movement arose from opposition to the environmental movement, and critics see it as anti-environmentalist.
Some organized opposition efforts have included environmental legislation such as wetland protection, and the Endangered Species Act. The group critiques most environmentalist ideology as radical, and argues that most such ideology aims to make fundamental changes to the mainstream political order.
Read more about Wise Use: Background To The Movement, Ron Arnold and Wise Use, Wise Use and Political Ecology, Criticism, History
Famous quotes containing the word wise:
“Then I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?” And I said to myself that this also is vanity. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 2:15-16.