Wise Use - Ron Arnold and Wise Use

Ron Arnold and Wise Use

The Wise Use movement first gained prominence when Ron Arnold helped organize a Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada, in 1988. Arnold, a vice-president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and advocate of the "right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind" helped produce a 25-point Wise Use Agenda. The 25-point Agenda included initiatives seeking to ban commercial use of public lands for timber, mining, and oil, and to open recreational wilderness areas for easier access by the general public. Critics point out that Ron Arnold has been quoted as saying his goal is to "destroy the environmental movement".

According to Arnold, many in the wise use movement believe the possibility of unlimited economic growth, in which environmental and social problems can be mitigated by market economy and the use of technology. In his book Ecology Wars, which has been called the "Bible" of the wise use movement, Arnold writes: "Environmentalism is an institutionalized movement of certain people with a certain ideology about man and nature" and that "the goal of our ecology wars should be to defeat environmentalism." Arnold claims that environmentalism is "the excess baggage of anti-technology, of anti-civilization, of anti-humanity, and of institutionalized lust for political power."