You Too Might be a Terrorist!

If you've ever given money to an environmental organization, if you support the movement's agenda, then you're probably part of a grand conspiracy that's degrading life in America. Worse yet, you might even be a terrorist, or at least an accomplice. At least that's what Nick Nichols seems to think.

Nichols' views wouldn't matter if he were just another backwoods loser. On the contrary, environmental watchdogs fear he's at the vanguard of efforts to exploit the nation's post-September 11th mood by tarring the entire green movement as extremists. Nichols acts under the pretext that, "If environmental groups cost business money, then they're eco-terrorists," says Dan Barry, of the Clearinghouse for Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR), which tracks anti-environmental groups.

Nichols is the CEO of "crisis communication" firm Nichols Dezenhall. The firm doesn't reveal its clients, but they have reportedly included business pillars such as Audi, Arco and the Society of the Plastics Industry. He's also popular on the nation's lecture circuit.

At a March 7, 2002 conference on "Eco Extremism" co-sponsored by Nichols Dezenhall and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a "free market" think tank) Nichols delivered a thinly-veiled marketing pitch for his firm, in an assembly room overlooking the U.S. Capitol grounds. Among the well-heeled, attentive audience members were journalists, think tankers and executives from the paper, forestry and plastics industries.

Incidentally, while the conference was open to the public, Barry and other environmentalists were refused admission.

Nonetheless, adding gravitas to the event was Representative Scott McInnis, R-Colo., who discussed his legitimate crusade, as chairman of the House Resources Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, against actual eco-terrorists, from groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. But McInnis was careful to delineate between extremists who break the law and legitimate environmentalists, who represent "sometimes very sound messages."

"At least three-fourths of the environmental groups in the U.S. hold these [extremists] in distain," said McInnis, who compared the extremists to abortion clinic bombers.

Like any politician, McInnis hurried off after speaking. That left Nichols free to blur the distinction between legitimate greens and those who use violence, a blurring that he achieved with considerable deft.

A self-proclaimed corporate warrior, a rottweiler who advocates combat over appeasement, the silver haired 54-year-old delivered an entertaining, 50-minute, fire-and-brimstone pep talk. He compared himself to Winston Churchill. He called his competition in the public relations industry "capitulation counselors" who "teach corporations how to roll over." Projecting a photo of Adolf Hitler and Nazi appeaser Neville Chamberlain on the screen, he compared traditional PR firms to Chamberlain.

That, of course, leaves environmentalists to play the part of Hitler. No wonder they weren't invited.

After paying lip service to legitimate green groups, Nichols explained that all those consumer advocates and environmental activists out there supposedly looking out for the public interest are actually members of the "crisis creation industry." The industry, he says (with a straight face, mind you) includes "anarchists, Marxists, Luddites, nannies and the chronically aggrieved. If you watch the evening news you see plenty of nannies" who "think they know what's right for the rest of us." See how easy it is to lump black-clad anarchists with public health professionals?

Nichols painted with the broadest of brushes, deftly segueing among references to September 11th, eco-terrorists and the mainstream environmental movement. One minute, he (rightly) condemns the $43 million-plus in property damage caused by ELF since 1996. Next, he reproaches the green crisis, a powerful "$22 billion per year" global conspiracy. Environmentalists, he says "behave like guerillas: they are predatory, powerful, insatiable, rich and global."