Summary: This "Devil's Dictionary" for grassroots environmentalists contains some uncommon definitions for common words and phrases; and also some laws, constants and rules-of-thumb discovered over the years. It is divided into sections by topic.

• PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• WATERSHED COUNCILS AND PARTNERSHIPS
• ECONOMICS JOBS TAXES
• SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

1st. Law of Property:

Land, once stolen fair and square, cannot be stolen back.

1st. Law of Public Land:

The tough guys always get the ground.

Acceptance & Acceptability:

When people say that local people will not support what they do not understand, what they mean is that people will not accept what they do understand if accepting it costs them money or proves their whole life has been a tragic mistake. (see Willful Ignorance)

Accountability:

Generally advocated after it is too late to actually achieve it.

Balance:

The process of making tradeoffs between tepidly enforcing environmental laws and ignoring them altogether. When the Grand Canyon Dam was proposed, every elected and civic official within 100 miles of the proposed dam agreed the "balanced approach" was to build it. Derived not from the Latin "bilanz" - to weigh, but rather from the Greek "balanoc" - to insert a suppository in the rectum to ease irritation, as in, "Please bend over so the doctor can insert a "balanoc" into your equation."

County:

American political designation originally developed along with the township and range system to facilitate real estate speculation.

Environmental Enforcement - Basic Rule of:

From St. Augustine, "Give me chastity and continency - but not yet!"

Environmental Enforcement - Circular Argument of:

1. Environmental laws are essential to sustain the web of life upon which we all depend. 2. Alas, if we ever seriously tried to enforce these laws, the subsequent public outcry would cause their repeal. 3. Therefore, we must never seriously enforce them. 4. Nevertheless, go back to #1.)

Equation:

"We must put people back into the equation!" Mythical mathematical concept generally used to advocate injecting local job impacts into Endangered Species listings for the same reason the law's framers specifically excluded them in the first place. To whit, if we had to consider whether it was worth eliminating a man's job to protect some poor creature, nothing non-human could ever be protected from anything, anytime, anywhere.

Gridlock:

Originally referred to third-world traffic congestion created by pervasive non-enforcement of traffic laws. Today sometimes used to refer to a legal impasse which prevents clearcutting in many forests. Gridlock is usually unmistakable evidence that activists have been successful in thwarting the devious plans of large corporations. So Gridlock is a badge of honor and a measure of effectiveness.

MacCollism:

A type of soothing, pre-authorized speech. At the Clinton Forest Summit, the distinguished historian Kimbark MacColl was asked to review the history of the timber industry in the West. Just before he spoke, MacColl was ordered to delete from his speech, key phrases like, "Timber cutters came to despoil ...", "...absentee timber owners simply treated the region as a colony to be exploited." This allowed President Clinton to speak immediately after MacColl and say of the timber industry, "I've been impressed with their love of the land."

Property Rights - Basic rule of:

If a property owner ever had the right to urinate on a piece of property, he has a perpetual right to site a toxic outfall on that same property. Asserting rights over one's private property is All-American: asserting public interest over public property is un-American.

Reaching Out:

Oft asserted bromide that enlightened public policy requires we accommodate those adversely impacted by environmental laws - to the point of selective non-enforcement of those laws. Had President Eisenhower "reached out" to the citizens of Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1950's, he might have dispatched community facilitators instead of armed troops, and probably the schools in the South would still be segregated. (see Partnering and Win-Win)

Observer:

According to conservatives, the only proper relationship of a citizen to local extractive industry is as an observer.

Scoping:

The process by which land management agencies solicit public input on their proposed plans. In practice, Scoping is often scheduled too early to be seriously considered or too late to make any meaningful difference.

Willful Ignorance:

A reflexive and instinctive reaction by "higher monitoring authorities" to scientific data that proves their past practices created environmental problems. Succinctly captured by Horace who said, "To all that which thou provest me thus, I refuse to give credence, and hate."

Win-Win (From the old English word "winnan" - to fight):

A negotiating strategy urged upon environmentalists by their opponents, who seldom practice it themselves, to ensure activists "lose-lose" and are grateful for it.

Utopian Localism:

A pervasive myth that rural officials know best about what "really works" on the local level. Realistically, if we ever ceased Federal enforcement of environmental laws, our public resources would be extracted or privatized in short order with local officials as cheerleaders because the environmental values of most local officials run a continuum from indifference to outright hostility.

WATERSHED COUNCILS AND PARTNERSHIPS

1st. Law of Economic Development:

Rural economic development always involves extending free water and sewer lines to a partners' previously undevelopable land. (see Utopian Plumbing "Pipes for Partners" )

1st. Law of Local Knowledge:

"Locals know best" because by living close to environmental problems they obtain the unique insight that the local area's clean water, shrimp, old growth trees, turtles, elephants or whatever is without limit and therefore really can never be used up.

1st. Law of Not Ramming Things Down People's Throats:

Distant, imperial bureaucracies should respect the customs and culture of rural folks. Basically this is a creative reworking of John Calhoun's (c. 1850 - South Carolina) Theory of Nullification which directly led to the Civil War. If communities engage in practices destructive to the local environment long enough they become "grand fathered in" to do so into perpetuity.

Activism - Gresham's Law of:

Gresham observed that when you introduce debased coins they always drive out good coinage. For activists, his law predicts that if you introduce "consensus based" environmental activism into a community, it will always drive out the existing "advocacy based" environmental activism. As the former becomes established, the latter is extinguished.

Advocacy - Rule of:

Self-imposed problem apparently unique to the science of Biology, which discourages as unethical the advocacy of any research that suggests people might alter their behavior to help other species survive. If medicine adopted the Rule of Advocacy, physicians at accidents might be constrained to counting dead people.

Appropriate Agenda Items:

"Non-controversial" issues acceptable for a Watershed Council's consideration, i.e. "To coordinate Federal and State funded resources to lobby Federal scientists and agencies not to list species on the verge of extinction where the law and science clearly compels it." Conversely, for a Watershed Council to discuss the possibility of asking a timber company to defer clear cutting a sheer slope in a critical fish bearing watershed would probably be considered highly inappropriate. (see Blocking)

Blocking:

The basic right of any member of a consensus-based Watershed Council to forbid placing on the agenda any of the matters which led to the creation of the Council in the first place. Ordinarily invoked for controversial or divisive issues which might establish that some council member, relative or boss ought to be indicted as an ecological war criminal.

Consensus Decision Making:

Generally promoted by the strong and verbally skillful to create an appearance of democratic process while oppressing the weak. [Note: generally OK for families, tribes or religious orders with endless time and shared values.]

Consensus Decision Making - History of, England:

Since the first meetings of the English Shires "under the spreading oaks" in 500 A.D. said by all parliamentarians to be the poorest deliberative procedure because 1. Intimidation is inevitable. 2. Leaders can easily suppress the views of minorities. 3. Conflicts of interest cannot be challenged and thus will be concealed. 4. Invariably motions are passed which conflict with higher authority.

Consensus Decision Making - History of, Greece:

Decision-making procedure in use prior to 136-109 B.C. Abandoned due to widespread intimidation and coercion. Replaced by principles of voting, ballots, representation and parliamentary procedure.

Cross Purposes:

As in "State and Federal agencies too often work at cross purposes." This comment usually indicates there is some poor fool over at Fish and Wildlife who won't fudge the data and ignore violations and so is considered "working at cross purposes" with the other agencies that do so.

Local Involvement:

A call for people to be "creatively empowered" to more fully participate in matters that directly affect them, especially those concerning the use of public property. Taken to its logical conclusion, communities adjacent to the Statue of Liberty could decide to melt it down to create good paying jobs for local scrap metal yards.

Neo-liberalism:

The six key premises of modern public decision-making. 1. All problems can be negotiated by people of good will. 2. Social conflicts are imaginary constructs. 3. Examining systemic malfeasance is unprofitable and inordinately time-consuming because no problem's root source is ever corruption. 4. Those with the most financial conflict with any issue should be deeply involved with the administration of any law regarding it. 5. Problems always arise from "mistakes." 6. "Bad actors" never have names or faces because guilt is everywhere and nowhere.

Nudnik (Nudzh, Nudge):

A Yiddish word meaning one who continually pesters and annoys others. When effective environmental activists begin to actively participate in "roundtables", partnerships, local economic development schemes and other "win-win" processes, over time they are gradually and inevitably reduced to Nudniks.

Oregon Plan:

Creative "partnering" between State and Federal agencies and local landowners to create a complex fig-leaf to cover the fact that the State lacks the will to enforce the Endangered Species Laws. If one wishes to establish nationwide restoration schemes based on the principle that "Crooks Know Best", it is extremely helpful to get a liberal Western Democratic Governor to pilot one for you.

Partnering:

Innovative method used to establish compromising and conflict-of-interest-prone relationships between law enforcers and violators. A creative public policy tool generally used to slip serious environmental enforcement ahead in time hopefully into the indefinite future.

Reconciliation - Saul Alinsky's Opinion of:

"Reconciliation means just one thing: when one side gets power, the other side gets reconciled to it."

Roundtable:

Unique administrative forums whose purpose is to convince local activists they have a de facto authority to give away public assets or suspend environmental laws. If policemen were "roundtabled", they might be persuaded that since they routinely issue tickets for speeding violations, they also have the power to exempt some of their neighbors from motor vehicle laws.

Stakeholder (Steakholder):

This emerging theory of public administration holds that if you lease government land, you obtain proprietary relationships over it. However this is strictly a one-way relationship. A rancher might loudly assert a "Stakeholder" relationship to public land he leases to graze cattle, but if a tenant in a house on the ranchers land claimed the minutest "Stakeholder" relationship to the ranchers rental property, the rancher would probably shoot him.

Talk and Log Group:

Formal ongoing consultative process that meets while some trees are being logged, to assess the best ways to permanently protect them. Generally disbands after the trees become logs.

Timber Dependent Communities:

A local community so complicit with the benefits of logging that reduced logging levels cannot be considered, imagined or discussed.

Utopian Plumbing:

Since the "outputs" of local economic development partnerships are always underground pipes of 6" or larger diameter to service the "partner's" land, they are best viewed as Utopian Plumbing Schemes or "Pipes for Partners." (see 1st. Law of Economic Development)

Watershed Council:

A novel political construct which allows a local community to substitute children's innocuous high school science experiments for the enforcement of Federal Environmental Laws. Sometimes used to expedite placing law enforcement authorities and resources into the hands of environmental criminals. Also used to camouflage public agencies' and officials' lobbying with public funds in contravention of statutes forbidding such practices. (see Oregon Plan)

ECONOMICS JOBS TAXES

1st Law of Timber Taxes:

The total property taxes collected on all private timberland, viewable from the highest point in any incorporated town, will generally be less than the property tax collected on an average home in the same town.

2nd Law of Timber Taxes:

A timber industry powerful enough to wreak physical devastation on a landscape which you can see, will be powerful enough to wreak even worse devastation on state regulations you can't see.

1st Rule of Medieval Societies:

A lord who enjoys the two medieval rights — lords hold all assets and peasants must never encroach on those above them — has three obligations: he must not despoil his peasants; must never work them till they drop; and, of course, must never abandon disabled and aged serfs.

1st Rule of Business Planning:

If you are able to control the assumptions in a business plan, you can prove that people can eat things larger than their heads and that trees can grow up to the sky.

Business Planning Model - Return on Investment (ROI):

A rigorous method of balancing risks and rewards for alternative courses of action. Using such an analysis, one might, for example, determine that cost/benefit-wise, snatching an ice cream cone from a 4-year-old passing on her bike is a sound decision.

Engrossment:

Piling up undue personal wealth. For 800 years, engrossment was a civil crime and punishment for the third offense was "pillory and utter ruin. In medieval times, periodically cured by formal public ceremonies where the church removed ill-gotten gains from engrossers. Engrossers have gradually evolved into the Forbes 400.

Extractive Industry:

Eleemosynary or charitable institution allegedly devoted to the creation of jobs to maintain a sound family structure. (example: mining, logging). Antonym: Environmentalists, allegedly devoted to and motivated by money-grubbing and fund-raising.)

Givings - Political Theory of (obscure):

Those who derive windfall profits from public infrastructure improvements and zoning changes should return a small fraction of those windfalls to the public treasury.

Income Taxes and Balancing the Budget - Secret of:

Income tax, falling as it does on only last year's taxable income (which the very wealthy have little or none) produces only "chump change" - even at confiscatory rates. Thus wimps tax income; real men tax assets.

Jobs: Acronym:

JOBS = Just Old-fashioned Business Subsidies.

Jobs - Instant Creation of Lots of:

Combine the following on any American coast: one oil tanker and one irresponsible ship's captain.

Market-Based Solutions:

1. A process for assigning specific dollar values to that which is incalculable and ineffable. 2. Attractive strategy for laundering corporate money into ostensible environmental organizations. (see Privatizing)

Neoliberal Economics - Implicit Assumptions of:

Everything is for sale. The only real value is current market value. Anything can be commodified, i.e. during the second coming, tasteful logo placements on Marys breasts will probably command $30 million each.

Part-out:

Slang for the dismantling of automobiles for their parts to resell, i.e. water-pump, carburetor, etc. Right-wing strategy to dispose of America's public assets.

Privatizing or Privatization:

Unbundling policy and priority-setting functions of environmental organizations from their operational activities and strategically marketing them to large corporations for specific periods of time. [Note: possibly invented by the Environmental Defense Fund] (see Part-out)

Selling Out: 1st rule:

Make sure you get paid.

Selling Out: 2nd rule:

Never cross the line between shilling and pimping.

Stability:

Essential prerequisite to successfully execute certain highly destructive activities. For example, laws governing grazing leases on public land make it nearly impossible for some ranchers to fully exploit their grazing allotments. To provide stability, many elected western representatives seek to give title for millions of acres of public lands to these ranchers to provide more stability.

Sustainability (slang):

The challenge of maintaining high levels of unsustainable activities, like clear-cutting timber on public land, despite laws which flatly forbid them.

Tourism - Ecotourism:

Non-fattening hot fudge sundae approach to economic growth.

Tourists - Ecotourists (ETs):

1. People who refuse to stay home where they belong and insist on going around being a nuisance to others. 2. Easy way to achieve entitlement to everything with responsibility for nothing.

Willer Constant of Forestland Ownership:

At least 75% of the industrial forest land in any forested rural county will be owned by four or fewer out-of-state corporations. (quote: Chuck Willer, Coast Range Association.)

SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

1st Law of Ecological Equilibrium:

The political smarts of the average ecologist and the ecological smarts of the average politician always sum to zero.

Awe and Wonder - Two Ways to Experience:

1. Placing oneself in proximity to things both natural and wild. 2. Placing a powerful gasoline engine in proximity to ones genitals. (see Food Chains and Goofies)

Biologist(s) - Ralph Waldo Emerson's View of:

"... like children...a protected class; ...hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up." (quote: American Scholar 1837)

Biostitute:

A biologist who works for a corporation. One who opens up and converts sacred domains closed to human intervention, into profane ones open to intervention. [Note: The "fact" has yet to be discovered that could persuade a Biostitute that anything a corporations does could be bad.]

Commodifiers, Simplifiers, and Domesticators - what they most fear:

Any awareness in any human that man is merely an animal. (See Tops of Food Chains)

Ecological Putz:

A person who, in a conscious attempt to think globally and act locally, spends a day monitoring the complex ecological functions of his local watershed, while being completely oblivious to a deadline expiring that very day for filing an appeal against a development which will trash the watershed.

Ecologically Significant Areas - Best Way to Prepare to Protect:

Long form: memorize the Latin names of all significant plants and animals living in the area. Short form: memorize the name and phone number of the public official aware of any scheme to develop the area.

Ecologist:

Sub species of biologist with about 5% of their street smarts. (see Ecological Putz)

Ecosystem Management:

A method of creatively enforcing environmental laws so they can be applied uniformly and even-handedly everywhere with little or no inconvenience to anyone.

Evolutionary Education - Paradox of The Niche of:

This niche was formerly completely colonized by teachers of biology, but lately, Creationist Christians have gradually been driving them from it. Apparently biologists are able to teach the concept of niches, but cannot defend theirs.

Evolution - Americas Wacky Notions About:

According to Noam Chomsky: we are a religious fundamentalist society whose views are unique in the industrial world and similar to preindustrial societies. Half of all Americans believe the world was created a few thousand years ago.

Goofies:

Domesticated animals with a trusting manner like cows and sheep. Those who care for them are characterized by predictability, dullness, and a fanatical hatred of predatory wild animals. (concept discovered by P. Shepard)

Habitat Conservation Plans (HCP) - God's Approach to:

Rain leaches nutrients from the soil on a mountain and washes them down to the sea. Salmon runs, bears, eagles and other species put the nutrients back where they came from. Process continues into perpetuity.

Habitat Conservation Plans (HCP) - Developers Approach to:

Scalp and pave 90% of a mountain, extirpate every living thing, and build condos. Set aside the other 10% (undevelopable anyway) as open space. Deed it to the Condo Association into perpetuity.

Mitigation:

Finding and setting aside "equivalent" habitat over here to replace habitat destroyed over there. If English Departments determined equivalence the way Fish and Wildlife Departments do, "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" would be equivalent or better than a Shakespeare Sonnet. [From the Latin "mitigatio" to appease or pacify, a softening or smoothing.]

Monitoring:

The collecting of detailed, scientific, baseline data about an ongoing environmental practice to document future corrective action, so in the future, scientists can prove what is perfectly obvious to anyone currently driving by in their car.

Political Effectiveness - A Rule of Thumb:

One's political effectiveness is generally inversely related to the number of things one can name in Latin. [Note: For potential activists who need some Latin words, here are some: Nonnulli tam intellegentes sunt ut stulti sint ("Some people are so smart, they're stupid.")]

Scientific Proof:

Utterly unachievable and unattainable standard of proof required from anyone who would try to stop any environmentally destructive practice. Seldom required from those who merely wish to start such practices.

Tops of Food Chains, Reason For Human Extirpation of:

When the last wolf, lion, bear, and shark is extirpated, no human will ever again be hunted as prey and man's awareness that he is merely an animal will be extinguished. (See Commodifiers, Goofies)

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