Member of the Board, Institute For the Environment and Natural Resources

I’m delighted to be here. I’ve been a fan of Wyoming and more important its people ever since Church & Dwight started thinking about coming to Green River in the 1960’s. Our only significant plant was in Syracuse, New York and our offices in New York City. The Empire State attitude towards our business was not friendly. The state, county, local government, and public utility assumption seemed to be that what ever it was we were doing or wanted to do was undesirable. They ignored us when they could and used rules and regulations to make life difficult if we became insistent. Wyoming was a treat, people were friendly, they worked hard, and the government at all levels was helpful. You can not believe the difference.

I’ll be talking about Facts, Fables, and our Environment. In the process we’ll cover some of my background so you will understand where I am coming from. Not much factual material will be presented, but the importance of knowing and finding out what the facts are will be stressed. Webster’s defines a fable as a fictitious narrative or statement. Often it suggests a narration intended to enforce a useful truth; unfortunately it can also be a falsehood or lie. The latter creates problems.

The quality of our environment is of concern to all of us. There are problems facing those engaged with environmental issues flowing out of some of the facts we are dealing with and recent history. With a focus on research and educating people to understand it the academic community has a key role in our environmental future.

My thoughts about the environment have grown out of my experience base. In particular, life long involvement with Church & Dwight Co., Inc., the Arm & Hammer Baking Soda people, and ten years of association with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. I don't know how to present my thoughts without telling you more than you may care to know about the Arm & Hammer people and GYC. Please bear with me.

Approaching my task for today, I was tempted to describe the careful planning, skillful execution, and environmental consciousness which took Church & Dwight from less than fifteen million dollars in sales for 1967 to well over half a billion today. This would have been neat, impressive, and far from the truth. Like most natural evolution, there has been some chaos and disorder in our progress.

It’s been my good fortune to have been associated all my life with this piece of "Americana," Arm & Hammer baking soda. I did it the old, old fashioned way, I was born into it. My mother, still going strong at 98, is a fourth generation Church. When I appeared my father had the foresight so suggest that I be named Dwight Church Minton. It did not hurt my career a bit. Neither did his succeeding my Grandfather as Chief Executive.

Technological foresight -- and perhaps some good luck -- led my great great grandfather, Doctor Austin Church, and his brother-in-law, Mr. John Dwight, to choose baking soda as a business. One hundred fifty two years later we are still in the same business and one third owned by the better part of a thousand members of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh generations of the founding families. The Arm & Hammer brand and sodium bicarbonate have helped support the families and provided a solid platform for the growth that has blessed the company over the past thirty years.

Long before environmentalism crept into the language in the early ‘20s, we moved into areas which have since created an environmental heritage. I like to think that some of the family values led to this remarkable degree of foresight. There is a history of serious interest in art, literature, fishing, hunting, and the great outdoors.

We started publishing bird cards more than a century ago. These carried the message: "For the good of all, do not destroy the birds." Millions of trading cards, much like baseball cards, were distributed in Arm & Hammer Baking Soda boxes and offered as premiums or teaching aids. "Bird" cards may well have been selected because baseball players had not yet become prominent. At the turn of the century we initiated the use of recycled paperboard for our packaging. I suspect this was a cost-driven decision. Nevertheless, it also worked to conserve trees.

The "greening" of modern day Church & Dwight took firm structure in 1970. Operating earnings in the late sixties came from baking soda and an old-fashioned product called washing soda. In its heyday, washing soda had been a normal companion to laundry soap. This was the way washing was done before phosphate-built synthetic detergents were developed following World War Two. Much to our surprise, washing soda sales reversed a long decline and started to grow rapidly. We hadn't a clue as to why, but were smart enough to go ask our customers. Concern that excessive phosphate was causing eutrophication of our lakes and streams had started a movement back to traditional soap and soda. At the rate Arm & Hammer® Washing Soda was growing, we could project that it would soon overtake Arm & Hammer Baking Soda! We enjoyed the current earnings effect, but quickly concluded that consumers would not long tolerate the inferior washing results provided by soap and soda. Our next thought was opportunistic. Let's make a non-phosphate detergent to meet this demand.

In parallel with detergent product development, we undertook a reality check, surveying the available science. A visit to Dr. Arthur Hassler, Professor of Limnology at the University of Wisconsin, and some of his colleagues led us to the conclusion that the phosphate issue was real and would persist. Simple observation of the conduct of the major players in the detergent business convinced us that they would deny reality for as long as they possibly could. They would be slaves to the status quo. They had huge investments in capital and systems devoted to phosphate-based technology while we had none. They saw a problem; we saw an opportunity. We confirmed our decision to come out with a non-phosphate laundry detergent.

Entering as competitive an arena as there is in the consumer marketplace was certainly more risky than we recognized at the time. We had seen the potential for cannibalizing our Washing Soda. Competitive products were anticipated. But we had not foreseen the vehemence with which the main players would react to the threat of change. I got a bolt from the blue when I turned on my TV to see the Surgeon General of the United States holding forth on the dangers of non-phosphate laundry detergents. Prominent right behind the Surgeon General was the Washington representative of a leading traditional detergent company. His employer was and is a moral, law abiding company. However, people trained to use substantial assets and systems dedicated to doing something in a particular way will not readily accept the need to change. This applies to everything from large institutions to your next door neighbor. Never underestimate the reactive power of entrenched interests.

We and several score other companies had the same idea. Despite trials and tribulations, we are the survivor. After some time, in the face of state laws banning the use of phosphates in detergents, the major producers of laundry detergent finally saw the light and gave up on phosphate. Virtue sometimes gets rewarded. laundry detergent is Church & Dwight’s largest product line at about 200 million dollars per year, ten times the size of the whole company at the time we entered the business in the fall of 1970. Serendipity has a lot going for it. Hard work, reasonable intelligence, and good luck is a winner. Never underestimate the importance of good luck. A bit of state boosterism -- Most Arm & Hammer Powder Laundry Detergent is made right here in Wyoming. The largest single ingredient is Wyoming Soda Ash from Green River.

You can take away a couple of learning experiences with relevance to environmental issues from the history of Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent. The first is that people are reluctant to accept change. They become downright hostile when their assets, livelihood, and/or lifestyle is thought to be negatively affected. In this respect humans are extremely conservative. Motivation, facts (including peer reviewed academic research), costs of alternatives, functionality of alternatives, and anything else, even the personal lives of the proponents can and will be attacked. This doesn’t mean people are bad. However, instinctive, defensive reactions are likely to be rough. As solutions to environmental problems impact more and more people this requires attention. Bringing people along with the solution may require more creativity and effort than was required to identify and solve the original problem. Answers that cannot be implemented may make their proponents feel good, but they do not improve the human condition.

The second learning experience to take away is the importance of good facts. Given the energy required to implement solutions it is folly to do things which are either wrong or not needed. There are lots of problems, lets be ready to move on to a real one which warrants the effort. In addition to wasting energy it makes the next issue much harder to work with. The academic community becomes very important for its skills at developing facts. Tough minded peer review science has a lot going for it.

In 1972 our then most important product, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, received a major boost. A young and inexperienced management team thought our existing business to be at the end of its life cycle. Innovative new products and acquisitions were the way to go. Fortunately, a disciplined look at the numbers forced us to realize that we were unlikely to make it if the base business didn't prosper enough to support the new ventures. This lead to a search for new baking soda uses. The concept of absorbing refrigerator odors turned up and was confirmed by a very surprised Research & Development staff. The popular belief is that grandma taught us a long existing use. However, the truth is a TV commercial did it in 1972. In a matter of months Arm & Hammer Baking Soda found its way into a majority of American refrigerators. This environmentally benign product is manufactured and packaged here in Wyoming and in Ohio. All of it is made from Wyoming Soda Ash, produced in southwest Wyoming.

My involvement and Church & Dwight’s involvement with environmental issues dates back to the first Earth Day in 1970. I’m proud to say that we provided financial support to what was then a very unfashionable event for corporate America. The background with Church & Dwight is non standard. We suffered the same frustrations faced by other companies as environmental regulations proliferated. Regulation is not a free good. Where needed it is still a nuisance and puts a certain amount of sand in the wheels of progress. On the other hand non-polluting laundry detergent was a huge opportunity and baking soda has many "green" applications. Unlike most corporate situations environmentalism was most important for its profit potential for our company rather than its cost potential.

Now let’s move to my other environmental connection, The Greater Yellowstone Coalition. My first exposure to Greater Yellowstone came from a family gathering at the Elkhorn Ranch on the Gallatin river, just outside the North West corner of Yellowstone Park. My parents, wife, children, three sisters, their husbands, and children got together for a week in early September, 1964. I was less than enthusiastic about riding horses so I borrowed my Dad’s fishing gear and headed for the river as an alternative. The trout were very cooperative. I was hooked, just as the balance of my immediate family were with riding. My wife and I have returned every year since. The whole clan still gathers every five years. There were 56 of us last June.

We did not reflect on why we so enjoyed riding, fishing and exploring the wonders of Yellowstone National Park. Even today specific whys are hard to identify. The grandeur of Greater Yellowstone’s open space seems to be the key. It uplifts the soul as it provides for wildlife and visual beauty. We accepted our pleasure and kept coming back for more. This happy state continued until we imprudently "bought the ranch" in the Spring of ‘88, just before the Great Fires of Yellowstone started.

Life has not been the same since. More time in the Rockies and less time fishing. As soon as we became landowners my friend Bud Lilly, the famous South West Montana fisherman, called to put the arm on me on behalf of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. His basic message was that now I should become a responsible member of the community and that this was a good way to do it. He was right.

GYC was formed in 1983 by environmentalists and scientists who realized that the health of Yellowstone Park was linked to the environmental health of the surrounding lands, much of which is public. They believed that there was little coordination and few shared conservation goals between public land management agencies. They saw wide-spread habitat fragmentation from resource extraction on public lands and the escalating loss of habitat on private lands caused by development. GYC was created to address these issues and to be an advocate for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, acknowledging that political boundaries have little to do with how natural systems operate.

The eighteen million acres, located in three states, of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem includes two national parks, seven national forests, two Indian Reservations, three national wildlife refuges, three million acres of private land and more than a dozen incorporated communities. More than two hundred thousand people live in or immediately adjacent to Greater Yellowstone. Research has shown that while direct employment in the extractive industries has declined in the region, the unique quality of the life found among the wildlands, rural landscapes and small towns serves as a magnet, attracting and holding businesses and people. The growth rate for Greater Yellowstone’s twenty rural counties exceeds almost every other rural area in the country today.

Using well-tested traditional environmental advocacy tools such as organizing activists, litigation and lobbying, our early members had significant successes. Their efforts built a national constituency for protecting Greater Yellowstone. This work elevated the level of understanding and support for the concept of ecosystem conservation among public agencies and the general public.

GYC now has more than 7,500 individual members, 120 corporate members, and 120 member organizations. Staff includes 20 full time employees operating out of a central office in Bozeman, Montana and field offices in Lander and Dubois, Wyoming and Idaho Falls, Idaho. The annual budget runs about one point three million dollars, making GYC the largest environmental group in the northern Rockies.

GYC has had a continuing series of issues on its plate. Current action includes wolves, bison, protecting roadless areas, the Gallatin II land exchange, and what is hopefully the last chapter of the New World Mining District saga. Our Associate Program Director Dennis Glick has just co-authored an important new report on land development in the ecosystem called Incentives for Conserving Open Lands in Greater Yellowstone.

In my personal view the most timely issue is open space. Many situations can ultimately repair themselves, but once land is broken up by development it is almost impossible to "put the genie back in the bottle." Growth is coming to Greater Yellowstone. The issue is to shape that growth so as to preserve the reasons why so many of us want to live in Greater Yellowstone.

The environmental movement has made significant contributions to our present and future quality of life. Much work remains to be done. Future progress will be at least as difficult as the progress to date. How we got where we are creates some problems for dealing with the future. Along with passion and politics, we need sound research and the education to make it accessible.

Incidentally, while we are on the subject, what is an environmentalist? Depending on who you are talking to the answer covers a huge range. On the far left you can identify anarchists who have wrapped themselves in a "green cloak" as a useful means of preventing the system from working. This was more of a European phenomenon. Then we have Earth First and those who regard man as the problem and not part of the solution. In the other tail of the bell curve are good old Teddy Roosevelt conservationists. The great bulk of environmentalists falls somewhere in the middle. They don’t put spikes in trees, oppose all use of natural resources, and regard humans as expendable. Nor do they necessarily agree on all issues.

Media bashing is often popular, let me take a pass at it. Given a controversial issue journalists are trained to seek out the opposing points of view. Unfortunately this can lead to bracketing the real issue with headline grabbers from the radical tails of the bell curve. Simple, radical, sound bites or headlines build audiences. Given a complex issue this approach does not help illuminate the real debate that is taking place. A complicated matter of grazing practices in a particular watershed can hit the evening news sounding like the issue is either removing all cattle or severe erosion and the removal of all vegetation. Reality might be fencing or not fencing a riparian area.

The perception that our quality of life is better as a result of the environmental movement does not sit well with activists at either end of the spectrum. The radical enviro element is not willing to admit that anything is OK or even better. They do not want to give up crisis as a spur to action. At the other extreme the "wise use" Brown has yet to see his first real environmental problem. There was no bad to get better, the problems are the ridiculous events called for by the Greens, in particular all these crazy regulations.

My perception of reality is very much in-between. As a general case air quality and water quality is measurably better than it was and vastly improved over where it would be if left untended. Naturally there are specific situations that are worse. We also have a more burdensome regulatory situation than is necessary. Progress is being made. What and how to regulate are much better understood. Not surprisingly more work is needed.

Both extremes play to a long established fixation on impending doom to be found throughout western history. It even has both Fascist and leftist roots! "The Idea of Decline in Western History" by Arthur Herman is very illuminating. The frequency with which impending doom has not occurred is impressive. There are many reasons for this. In the environmental area my perception is that technology and behavior both change much faster than the predictors of disaster are willing to consider. We are not yet starving to death in the dark.

My well worn copy of "The Limits to Growth, A Report for The Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind," published in 1972, makes an impressive case that the then existing growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion will take us to the limits to growth. Industrialization and population react to resources, food and pollution. The most probable result foreseen is a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

The concept of crashing can not yet be absolutely disproved, but we’re getting there. Resource and food prices are falling as a result of greater availability. We’re making progress on pollution. In fact costs of land fill and hazardous waste incineration have been declining. Modern processes for many businesses produce less waste, consume less energy and require fewer raw materials. This is a virtuous rather than a vicious cycle. It even works for old products like baking soda. Our most recent plant expansion produces better, purer sodium bicarbonate with less hardware, energy, labor and raw material per unit of output. It was designed as and mostly operates as a zero discharge plant.

Focusing public attention on problems proved to be a very effective way of getting action on a broad number of environmental issues. This is why most problems are being solved. Fables here were in fact narrations which were intended to and did enforce useful truths. At the end of the day they have done a lot of good. Unfortunately green opportunists carried this to unreasonable extremes. Constant claims of crisis, particularly with a high emotional content, loose their effect. More serious some of my fellow greens misused and distorted facts. Even when the motives are good this is not the way to go. The public has a long memory when they have been conned. What’s worse, the motives were not always sound. Some organizations became fundraising machines, more focused on feeding the machine than on the potential benefit to the environment. The overall effect has been very much like that achieved by the boy who cried wolf. Fables can also be a falsehood or lie. Fables misusing emotions and facts have caused a loss of credibility. This is making it much harder to get appropriate attention paid to current environmental issues.

In addition the conservation movement is the victim of its own methodology. Some shortcuts were taken. In particular a bipartisan history was abandoned. The beliefs and practices of the then dominant democratic party were adopted. The easy way to go was detailed legislation and regulation emanating from Washington. Success bred success, leading well past the existing base of public understanding.

Government, specifically the legislative and executive branches, saw little downside risk to supporting conservation issues. As a result there was a remarkable lot of progress made on environmental matters. Working with a one party government was easy and short term very effective -- much simpler than staying in touch with all participants and interacting with the public. Long term we conservationists set in motion a threat to our grassroots support when we lost touch with many participants and reduced our interaction with the public.

The future threat was hard to see as we were being cheered on by a public believing that only "polluters" and other "bad" entities were being affected. Reality set in as legislation and regulation imposed behavioral changes and costs on an unprepared general public.

The result was an image that enviros were aiding and abetting Big Government's inflicting unfeeling and unreasonable regulations upon an innocent public. Environmentalists were pictured as being against private property rights, using emotion rather than science, and supporting unfunded mandates. These are not small matters.

Success by itself is not without problems. The most obvious and easiest to deal with problems have been covered. We have picked the low hanging fruit. What is left is hard to get to. Furthermore the means used have left some scars. Fables misusing emotions and facts have caused a loss of credibility. As we know people are reluctant to change. They become downright hostile when their assets, livelihood, and/or lifestyle is threatened. Enough people have be affected by solutions to environmental issues that most are personally aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

This is a major problem for the conservation movement as it heads into more complex issues with fuzzy benefits and clear costs. There is no more automatic public support for environmental issues. Clean air, clean water and conservation still wins hands down with the public once they have gotten past their learned mistrust. However, proceeding from our history of success together with some of the scars resulting from how that success was achieved will not be easy.

My own belief is that we will be heavily reliant on solid facts and a public sufficiently educated to understand them. That is the job of many of you here in this room. Thank you.

© Copyright 1998, by Dwight C. Minton
All Rights Reserved