Who We Are

Monkey-Wrenching America was created by Americans for Prosperity-Colorado, working in partnership with AFP state chapters and allied organizations across the land, to document the danger professional green extremists pose to America’s economy, limited government ideals and freedom-oriented way of life. The economic, fiscal, judicial and human costs of their monkey-wrenching of America aren’t as well-documented as they should be, because the green-leaning establishment media suspends all skepticism and becomes an unabashed cheerleader where the environmental movement is concerned. This website, and the stories and reports it hosts, will help spotlight these excesses and bring some balance and reason to the public debate about environmental issues.

MWA will serve as a resource, forum and support network for those who reject endlessly-escalating conflict as the only means of resolving environmental debates — for those who want to restore reason, common sense, sound science, respect for property rights and a spirit of cooperation and compromise to environmental policymaking. By opening the public’s eyes to the increasingly radical, inflexible, autocratic turn the modern environmental movement has taken we hope to marginalize the most toxic and counterproductive elements of this once well-meaning movement.

Americans who are only vaguely familiar with the term “monkey-wrenching,” or the 1975 Edward Abbey novel that still inspires eco-Luddites and economic saboteurs, are nonetheless feeling monkey-wrenching’s effects, on their property rights, prosperity, energy costs and personal and consumer freedoms. Professional environmentalists no longer confine themselves to preserving wild places and wildlife, or fighting for cleaner air and water: something most Americans support. Today they aim at nothing less than the total transformation of modern society, and the overthrow of the free-enterprise system, as a way of forcing Americans to live according to their environmentally-correct dictates. They view any means as justified and legitimate in the name of “saving the planet,” no matter the costs or consequences for the rest of us.

Abbey’s monkey-wrenchers used dynamite, gasoline and homemade landmines to strike blows against the hated symbols of modernity, progress and economic development. Today’s institutionalized and corporatized wrenchers, though they share the same goals, have become much more sophisticated in their approach, using lobbying power, saturation litigation, alarmist indoctrination and manipulation of government regulatory mechanisms to achieve these same ends. Environmentalism, Inc. has become an industry as big, powerful, well-funded and manipulative as the private sector “industries” it reflexively vilifies. But as yet no capable watchdog has emerged to monitor and curb its excesses and abuses. We hope this website will help fill that void.

What are our guiding values?

We . . .

. . . .want to move beyond the counterproductive old paradigm whereby every policy dispute becomes an invitation to scorched-Earth, winner-take-all warfare.
. . . .believe environmental disputes are best settled through democratic means, not by activist judges pandering to green litigants.
. . . .unapologetically endorse free enterprise and responsible natural resource development, in recognition that a wealthier America will also be an environmentally-healthier America.
. . . .reject the notion that economic development and environmental protection are mutually exclusive.
. . . .recognize that humankind has a positive, proactive role to play in managing public lands and resources for economic and ecological benefits.
. . . .defend traditional multiple-use management of public lands and decry the exclusionist attitudes that increasingly drive public lands policies.
. . . .believe conservation works best when it is an exercise in cooperation, common sense and creative problem solving, not command-and-control government coercion
. . . .recognize private property rights as the keystone on which all American rights rest.
. . . .seek a true partnership between Western States and Washington on the making of federal land management policies, given the disproportionate impact they have on this region.
. . . insist that regulatory practices be based on sound science and cost-benefit analysis, not sensationalist superstition or the “precautionary principle.”
. . . support the updating and/or repeal of anachronistic “landmark” environmental laws that have become impractical, unmanageable, counterproductive, unaffordable or abusive in implementation.

The issues we cover and care about include:

Environmental and energy policy and regulation
Endangered species
Public lands and private property rights
Sound science
America’s business and economic climate
Gang green’s war on American producers and consumers
Resource industries
Sustainability
Green litigation, indoctrination and agitation
Conflict reduction and resolution
Environmental economics
Biased reporting by the “greenstream media”
Fearmongering by the environmental anxiety industry

Contact us by e-mailing MWA Editor Sean Paige at spaige@afphq.org.
Or write to us at:

Monkey-Wrenching America.com
C/O Americans for Prosperity-Colorado
P.O. Box 88003
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80908
719-494-0797