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Ron Arnold has been the Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise from 1984 to present, and is considered the "Father of the Wise Use Movement." He is one of the harshest opponents of environmentalism.

Biographical information

Arnold was born in Houston, Texas in 1937 and studied business administration at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.

According to a biographical note he founded Northwood Studio, "a consulting firm for business and industry, in 1971" has "produced more than 130 films on natural-resource and social-conflict subjects" and authored a 1979 magazine series "The Environmental Battle" which was winner of the American Business Press 1980 Editorial Achievement Award.

Between 1978 and 1981 Arnold was a contributing editor of Logging Management Journal. In the early 1980's Arnold's activism was primarily around pesticide issues. In a biographical note reproduced on a website for his book Undue Influence, Arnold states his political affiliation as Republican.

In 1988 Arnold was one of the catalysts for the founding conference of the Wise Use movement in Reno, Nevada and published its policy wish-list, the 'Wise-Use Agenda'.

Arnold on the environment

In an interview for Playboy in 2004 Arnold recounted the key policies the Wise Use movement espouses: "Number one was educate the public about the use of natural resources. Immediately develop petroleum resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cut down remaining old-growth forests on public lands and replace with new trees. Cut down 30,000 acres (120 km²) of the Tongass National Forest each year to promote economic forestry practices. Open all public lands, including national parks, to mining and oil drilling. Construct roads into all wilderness areas for motorized wheel chair use. Stop protecting endangered species, such as the California condor...Force anyone who loses litigation against a development to pay for the increase in costs for completing the project, plus damages. But the idea of wise use has become embedded. It's no longer a list like that," he said.

"We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members," Arnold told New York Times reporter Timothy Egan in mid-December 1991. While CDFE IRS returns states Arnold works 20 hours a week without any compensation, Egan reported that in 1991 he charged $3,000 a day as a speaker or organizer of anti-environmental groups.

It was a theme he re-stated within days to Toronto Star reporter Katherine Long. "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement ... We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore. We're dead serious - we're going to destroy them," he said. "We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely ... and we want people to understand that is a noble goal," he said.

According to Long, Arnold claimed that spotted owls weren't on the verge of extinction but preferred regrowth forests and said he suspected the hole in the ozone layer had always existed: "If chlorofluorocarbons really destroy ozone, why isn't there a hole over chlorofluorocarbon factories?" he asks. As for the greenhouse effect he was emphatic: "There isn't any such thing".

While Arnold denies the reality of environmental problems, he has been aimed - not at persuading the middle ground - but at mobilising those receptive to his polemical rhetoric equating policy debates as being a war. "We are sick to death of environmentalism and so we will destroy it. We will not allow our right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind to be stripped from us by a bunch of eco-fascists," he told the Boston Globe.

Arnold is credited with coining the term eco-terrorist, which he uses to position environmentalists engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience as being the equivalent of those damaging property. While he often states his fear that someone will be hurt as a result of 'eco-terrorism' he doesn't shy away from using inflammatory rhetoric himself.

In a 1993 interview with CNN, Arnold described the role of a 'wise user' as being akin to a warrior wielding a sword. "And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards." Asked to describe how he would like others to think of him, he said "People in industry, I'm going to do my best for you. Environmentalists, I'm coming to get you."

"We're out to kill the fuckers. We're simply trying to eliminate them. Our goal is to destroy environmentalism once and for all" Ron Arnold, as quoted in The War Against the Greens by David Helvarg, p.7.

On a 1986 visit to New Zealand, sponsored by the Agricultural Chemical and Animal Remedies Manufacturers, Arnold described himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution" and defended the use of the carcinogenic chemical 2,4,5-T claiming that chemical manufacturers wanted to make sure their chemicals were used safely (1).

Arnold warned New Zealanders that the US was experiencing a dangerous "upsurge in eco-terrorism. We have had power stations blown up, bridges burned, electrical transmission towers collapsed, forest trails booby trapped with wired shotguns, attacks on forestry pesticide application crews, Forest Service officers shot to death and numerous other acts of violence in the name of the environment", he told the New Zealand Herald.

In his book on the Wise Use movement, The War Against the Greens, David Helvarg reported that Arnold was subsequently cross-examined on the claims he made in New Zealand as part of a lawsuit brought against the government by activists. The activists claimed that they were being targeted as marijuana growers because of their anti-pesticide work, which was an industry strategy suggested by Arnold.

When asked in the court for the sources of his claims, Arnold referred to a government report and claimed the incident occurred in Southern Oregon and was in relation to a marijuana patch. When pressed about the connection to someone involved in campaigning for the environment he referred to another article he had written years earlier in a conservative magazine. When the article was retrieved and examined it had no connection with marijuana growing at all or the claimed incident but Arnold said that the connection was the similarity between incidents such as damage to logging machinery and the ideological views of environmentalists who used marijuana. He gave up trying to connect environmentalists with the killing of a Forest Service official.

When a small group, Green Anarchists, organised a tour in 2002, Arnold latched on to their support of people such as the imprisoned 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski as a 'political prisoner' to call for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to investigate the group. Arnold told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour "presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of."

The following year Arnold, long considered a fringe player, landed a role as an "expert consultant on ecoterrorism" to a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center project to study terrorism cases in the US. The project was funded to the tune of $343,885 by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

In Arnold's view, the threat of 'eco-terrorism' warrants more far-reaching investigative powers for law enforcement agencies than were even allowed for under the Patriot Act. "It's easy to throw rocks at industry, because everybody can think of a corporate abuse. But there are also problems with ecoterrorism, both in giving too much and not enough power to law enforcement. Under the Patriot Act the FBI can't keep a database of people suspected of being subversive or working with enviro-terrorists unless they've been convicted. Some nonprofits have assembled databases on ecoterror. The mink farmers have done it. We want to be able to make this information accessible to police," he said in an interview with Playboy magazine.

More recently Arnold coined the term 'rural cleansing' in an attempt to starkly portray environmental movement campaigns as being only in the interests of urban elites. Arnold explained 'rural cleansing' as being "the deliberate use of environmental laws - by appeals, lawsuits and administrative actions - to remove all the resource workers from rural America. All of them. It's essentially an effort to dismantle rural America so that there no longer are loggers, miners, fishermen, ranchers or farmers, with the intent of "offshoring" these jobs and industries to other nations.

Arnold's views on philanthropic foundations

Where in earlier years Arnold worked on rallying the 'Wise Use' movement against Clinton administration environmental policies, more recently he has taken aim at foundations that fund environmental campaigns.

Arnold complains that as a result of Internal Revenue Service regulations against corporate foundations 'self-dealing' that corporations also fund environmental groups. "That's why the wise-use movement gets almost nothing from industry, and why the total corporate donations received by the whole wise-use movement - all 3,000 or 4,000 grass-roots groups - is not as much as one environmental group gets in that same year," he said.

Arnold's complaint though, is not that foundations fund projects out of touch with the views of the American public but in tune with them, depriving right wing groups of resources. "But it's also a result of the overall liberal cast of American society, which has thoroughly permeated many big foundations, so you find that $3 out of every $4 given by foundations go to left-leaning groups rather than to right-leaning groups," he said.

Testifying before a U.S House of Representatives committee in February 2000, Arnold invoked Newt Gingrich's 'iron triangle' analogy, originally coined to describe Congressional liberals helping advocacy groups gain federal funds, to portray the environmental movement as doing the bidding of foundations. "The foundations direct their funds to the second leg of the triangle, environmental groups with insider access to the third leg, executive branch agencies. This powerful 'iron triangle' unfairly influences federal policy to devastate local economies and private property," he said.

Arnold is also viewed favorably by some other conservative think tanks. In April 2004 the "Earth Day Information Center", a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research, listed Arnold as one of eight "public policy experts" available for interviews for Earth Day. "Arnold is an expert in eco-terrorism, the funding of the establishment environmental movement, the Endangered Species Act, federal land management and property rights," the media alert stated.

While Arnold's last book was attacking foundations funding environmental groups Arnold has been stumping around energy industry conferences touting his next book, Freezing in the Dark - The Green Energy Plan for Your Future.

In May 2004, Arnold addressed the GasMart 2004 conference in Denver, Colorado. Ahead of the conference a media release stated that "an elite group of foundations is creating hysteria in the general public over environmental issues and undermining development of the energy infrastructure".

According to the media release, Arnold would advise participants that the energy industry was not doing enough to aggressively counter environmental groups. "Industry is not doing anything but defense, and in football, the defensive team doesn't score any touchdowns. Anything you do that isn't aimed at putting these groups out of business is a total waste of time. You cannot fight this huge amount of money if you don't frontally attack," the media release stated.

At the actual conference Arnold was reported as stating that industry needed to "point the finger" at activist groups responsible for shutting down gas and oil projects. Natural Gas Week reported Arnold warned companies against developing 'partnerships' with environmental groups. "Instead", he said, "the energy industry must learn to develop a corps of supporters, mobilize them when the time comes, and learn 'to fight when it comes to fight'," it reported.

The December 2003 edition of Oil & Gas Investor reported that Arnold spoke to the Independent Petroleum Association of America warning them against the role of foundations in funding environmental groups in the US and overseas. "You may say 'Thank God we're going overseas.' Well, you won't be alone," the magazine reported. Arnold warned that in Russia there are more than 90 environmental activist groups.

Arnold told the IPAA that its plans for a PR campaign to allow exploration in the Rocky Mountains wouldn't be easy. "You are a day late and a dollar short. Who loves big corporations? You don't hug trees. You don't even kiss babies." Arnold advised that it would need professional assistance if it was going to win in the Rockies. "If you think you're going to do this with just your friends, count your friends," Arnold said.

(1) 2,4,5-T comprised half of the chemical mixture found in Agent Orange, the other being 2,4,D

Publications by Arnold

• James Watt and the Environmentalists, 1981
• Ron Arnold, Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant-Driven Green Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future, Free Enterprise Press, October 1999.
• Ron Arnold, EcoTerror The Violent Agenda to Save Nature - The World of the Unabomber, Free Enterprise Press, April 1997
• Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America Merril Press; 2nd edition October 1998
• Ron Arnold, Ecology Wars: Environmentalism as if People Mattered, Merril Press; Reissue edition, October 1998.
• Politically Correct Environment, 1996
• Battered Communities, 1998
• Ron Arnold, "Tides Foundation's Activist Network exerts 'undue influence'", Foundation Watch, April 2000.
• Ron Arnold "The Heinz foundations and the Kerry campaign: one has money, the other needs money", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, April 2004.
• Ron Arnold, "The Pew Charitable Trusts: global warming power nexus", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, May 2004.

Other references

• David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens, Sierra Club Books, October 1994, pages 407-8.
• Brian Glick, War at Home : Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, South End Press
• Sean Paige, Arnold Pulls Back the Veil of 'Green' Tyranny, Insight on the News, October 16, 2000.
• Dean Kuipers, "Guru of Wise Use: the spiritual father of the Bush Administration's environmental policies says we shouldn't be timid about timber", The Playboy Forum", May 1, 2004.
• Marc Morano, "Eco-Terror Expert Calls For Inquiry of Green Anarchists", CNSNews.com, July 18, 2002.
• Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, "Ron Arnold named as ecoterrorism expert in major study: Researchers will examine planning and preparation of terrorist attacks", undated, 2003.
• Bill Berkowitz, "Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists'", TomPaine, June 25, 2004.
• "New, militant anti-environmentalists fight to return nature to a back seat", Boston Globe, January 13, 1992.
• "Interview with Ron Arnold", CNN, May 30, 1993.
• Phil Stewart, "Warning on 'environmentalism", The Press (Christchurch), April 4, 1986.
• "'Green campaign just cover' says 'Hit man'", New Zealand Herald, March 19, 1986.
• Timothy Egan, "Fund-Raisers tap Anti-environmentalism", New York Times, December 19, 1991.
• Katherine Long, "A Grinch who loathes green groups: our goal is to destroy the environmental movement' says affable Ron Arnold, champion of Wise Use'", Toronto Star, December 21, 1991.
• "Wise Use Coalition"
• Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism
• Wise Guys Down Under: PR's Eco-front Moves on Australia
• LaRouche and "Wise Use"
• Crimes against Nature
• Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (about)
• Briefing Paper #1: "Wise Use Movement" Background
• Conservatives target the Rainforest Action Network
• "Wise Use" or Abuse?
• Ron Arnold, "Testimony before the U. S. House of Representatives, Committee on Resources, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health", February 15, 2000.
• Allen Gottlieb
• Earth Day Information Center, "Free 'Earth Day Interview Locator Service' and Earth Day Fact Kit Available to Journalists;Experts Available for Earth Day 2004", U.S. Newswire, April 19, 2004. (Earth Day Information Center is not an organisation but a front for the National Center for Public Policy Research.
• "'Undue Influence' Author to Address GasMart 2004 audience - hosted by Natural Gas Intelligence", Media Release, Businesswire, March 23, 2004.
• John A. Sullivan, "Strong Message Needed to Fight Greens' Anti-Industry Agenda", Natural Gas Week, May 21, 2004.
• Nissa Darbonne, "Oil industry launching anti-development counter-campaign", Oil & Gas Investor, Volume 23, No. 12; December, 2003, page 9. ISSN: 07445881

• Environmental skepticism
• Houstonians
• American businesspeople