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AR audience vilifies sustainability-guru Vincent (Winnipeg AR)‏


Winnipeg Animal Rights
Sound Bites Devour the Truth
Submitted by Richard Banks
Thu, 07/29/201
http://winnipeganimals/2010/08/more-on-speaker-whom-university-paid-to.html

More on the speaker whom the University paid to bring in, right before
Environment Week. His words about "animal-rights conflict industries"
fired up the students against those of us who want to see animals get
to move their limbs. One woman came over and tore up a pamphlet before
even reading it. Go to the paragraph in bold text, if you don't want
to read the whole appraisal.

City v. country. Left v. right. Lobbyists v. truth.

Outliving the Stereotype

The speaker, Bruce Vincent, a third-generation logger from Montana
(he’s also a founder and president of the “intelligent-use” group
Communities for a Great Northwest and a partner in a public relations
firm) discussed his shock at how he learned some years ago what the
public thought of those in his profession. “I thought they liked us,”
he said, “because we were doing a better job of managing the forests.”
What he learned was that most Americans thought “we were actually
rapists. We were thought of as timber barons who still clear-cut and
fowled the waters. That was our legacy. It’s a stereotype that we have
to outlive.”

Vincent’s mission in life then became to educate the public on and
fight misinformation about current logging practices, and eventually
farming, ranching, and many other natural resource-based occupations.
Along the way, he even founded, and now directs, an organization
called Provider Pals that fosters exchanges between urban and rural
students.

His efforts do much to bridge the gap between city and country folk.

Most of us Americans — 80 percent of whom live in urban areas and are,
on average, three generations off the farm — should learn more about
the production of the food we eat, wood we use, and other natural
resources we consume.

Many of us, as Vincent contends, have judged producers of these goods
with outdated information. On the flip side, Vincent acknowledges that
many rural residents don’t think much of those from the city, saying,
“We need to stop treating them like enemies when they show up and move
to our communities.”

Two Wrongs = Two Wrongs

In so many ways Vincent paints a fair and honest picture about a need
for understanding…that is, until he colors the other side of the issue
with the same broad brush used to vilify him and his industry.

In the same breath he speaks of the need for a “welcome wagon” in
rural communities to embrace newcomers, Vincent refers to
environmentalists as BMW-driving know-nothings who “can’t even define
sustainability and biodiversity.”

Like so many lobbyists, he engages in dialogue-stunting, hyperbolic
sound bites, referring to the

National Audubon Society and other environmental and animal rights
groups as members of the “conflict industry.” Vincent said, “They’re
pretending to be green long enough to make some money.” He implied
they were, more than not, spreading lies, saying when he and members
of his network visit and speak to groups throughout the country, they
look for “a tree-hugging hippy.”

They are often, he said “the most passionate about environmental
[matters] and when we tell them the truth they’re usually just as
passionate and angry that they’ve been lied to.”

Passionate in his efforts to promote more sustainable logging
practices and other eco-friendly initiatives (he started his
community’s Earth Day celebration), Vincent says he’s been the victim
of spin himself, even outright lies.

I don’t doubt that and I don’t doubt that environmentalists have
propagated some of them. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

One can’t effectively fight fire with a scorched-earth policy of overstatement.


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Mac Leod Motto