How Green Became the Color of Money: A Concise History of the Rise and Fall of the Enviro Establishment

From CounterPunch

December 31, 2010

By Jeffrey St. Clair

In the early summer of 1995, Jay Hair quietly resigned as head of the

National Wildlife Federation. This Napoleonic figure had transformed a

once scruffy, apolitical collection of local hunting and gun clubs

into the cautious colossus of the environmental movement with more

than four million members and an annual budget of nearly $100 million.

By the time Hair left, the Federation enjoyed more political clout in

Washington than the rest of the environmental groups combined.

Hair, a former biology professor who also served as a special

assistant to Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus during the Carter

Administration, was the architect of this astounding transformation.

Under the firm hand of Hair’s leadership the Federation’s membership

doubled and it’s budget tripled. His strategy was simple: market the

Wildlife Federation as a non-confrontational corporate-friendly

outfit. Hair created the Corporate Conservation Council and forged

relationships with some of the world’s most toxic corporations: ARCO,

Ciba-Giegy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Exxon, General Electric, General

Motors, IBM, Mobil Oil, Monsanto, Penzoil, USX, Waste Management and

Weyerhaeuser. The corporations received the impriatur of the nation’s

largest environmental group, while the National Wildlife Federation

raked in millions in corporation grants.

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