Industry Gearing Up For Turf War Summit Plots Battle Against Environmentalists

There’s little doubt who “the other side” is at the Western States Coalition Summit.

Amid lectures on why global warming theories are phony and how schools do a lousy job with environmental science, delegates to this two-day gathering are looking for ways to win the debate with “the enemy.”

Environmentalists.

The politicians, timber and mining executives, farmers and ranchers who are delegates grudgingly admit they are losing the public debate over natural resources.

They came to the Spokane summit to find out why, and what to do.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, said she would bring the House Republican leadership - who are mostly from the South and East - to three western states later this year, to teach them about the region’s special problems.

Meanwhile, she urged summit attendees to join her in the fight against federal rules to set up American Heritage Rivers, toughen clean air standards, and the reintroduction of the grizzly bear into Idaho.

The federal government should be sued if anyone is injured or killed by a reintroduced grizzly, Chenoweth said.

In the conference’s opening session, researcher Kathleen deBettencourt said environmentalists have done a better job of getting their views into school textbooks.

The problem is, some texts are inaccurate and do more to teach social activism than science, she said.

“Eight-year-olds should not be asked to become warriors or worriers,” she said.

Some books don’t explain the difference between facts and theory, said deBettencourt, who served on a panel reviewing textbooks. Others end their discussion of scientific issues with instructions to readers to write their congressman.

“Climate change is a complicated issue,” she said. “Yet some books confuse global warming with the greenhouse effect.”

The greenhouse effect is a fact, a natural phenomenon that happens as sunlight comes through the earth’s atmosphere and becomes trapped. Global warming is a theory, disputed among scientists who argue whether the earth is getting hotter as a result of manmade changes to the environment.

Climatologist Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia researcher, said the debate over global warming should be over. The predictions for rising temperatures are way off and the earth is not heating up significantly, he said.

Data from weather stations suggest the earth has warmed a half-degree in the last 100 years - not the 1.8 degrees some scientists predicted, Michaels said. Satellite and weather balloon data from the last 30 years suggest it’s actually cooling slightly.

“Global warming is a rat crawling in a corner,” he said. “Most of the global warming that has been observed has been a natural phenomenon.”

But if environmentalists want to talk about global warming, don’t try to contradict them, Michaels said. “Tell them you don’t care whether it warms up, tell them you care how much it warms up.”

At that level, accepting a half-degree change is no big deal, he said.

Shifting the argument was a recurring theme at the summit, where resource industry executives in suits and wing-tips mixed with ranchers in Western shirts and cowboy boots.

“We’re in a battle, like Bill Clinton said, for the heart and soul of America,” Patrick Batts, a Washington Farm Bureau vice president told participants at a session on activism. “We’re in the same battle.”

Same battle, different side.

Summiteers are clearly opposed to Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and anything connected to the federal government. From the banning of oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to establishment of a 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, they’re against it.

Although Clinton is in power now and environmental groups currently have the upper hand in the public debate, Batts told people at his workshop that’s not all bad.

“We are outside looking in,” he said. “The other side has to defend the government, high taxes and takings.”

Join Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, Batts suggested. That puts you on their mailing lists, and keeps you abreast of what they’re planning.

“The other side publishes their plans on the Internet. I think they think we don’t have computers,” he said.

Study the teachings of Saul Alinsky, a famous activist who wrote “Rules for Radicals,” Batts said. Among the tips: Silence equals assent. Work within the system. Make your opponent react so he will make a mistake. There are no rules.

“The battles we are fighting today are the same as they were fighting” in the American Revolution, he said.

, DataTimes