Unless you’ve recently crawled out from under your very well-isolated rock or wisely taken a hiatus from the news for the past year, you’re painfully aware that we’re hip deep in a very acrimonious political season.
Just sitting down to think and write about it makes me tired all over; it’s only mid-July with almost another four months of escalating rhetoric left to endure.
Yep, we all understand the economy as a whole continues to struggle (at best), housing keeps oozing downward, Uncle Sam is teetering under a mountain of spiraling debt and that Washington appears unable to problem solve itself out of wet paper bag right now.
More than an insignificant number of good folks are under- or unemployed right now; there are a lot of literal and figurative belts being worn a bit tighter these days.
New threats to our public lands and waters seem to evolve almost every day. Between Front Range water woes, fracking and access battles popping up all over the country fly fishers have been assaulted with sobering news all year.
My gut reaction is to hit the high country, keep fishing and forget about it.
Such rampant escapism is well-nigh impossible for most of us. As a small business owner involved in ventures intimately associated with the economy, like many of you I’m forced to follow news every day. Ouch.
And like many of you, deep in my gut I have this nagging concern that the pinheads in Washington are so far out of touch with everyday Americans and the lives every Americans lead they haven’t a clue about what’s genuinely important or how to fix many of the challenges our nation faces.
In particular Washington seems to have forgotten (presuming they ever understood) common sense principles when it comes to being thoughtful, careful stewards of our natural environment and resources.
Thankfully there are some very hard-working folks reminding both the power brokers in Washington and we members of the 99% that outdoor enthusiasts have something to say this election year.
We outdoor enthusiasts (should probably) understand three things:
Wanna talk jobs? The Outdoor Recreation Economy employs a veritable army when taken as a whole. More than the oil and gas industry, more than the mighty (cough) education system, construction industries and even the hallowed finance and insurance industry. The Outdoor Industry Association’s recent report will astound you with the facts.
Sure the Outdoor Recreation Economy encompasses a wide spectrum of interests, though we’re united by a common love and deep respect for our nation’s natural resources.
We understand that Habitat = Opportunity = Economic Activity (Tom Sadler).
Tom said it very well in a recent post on his blog...
“Preserving access to outdoor recreation opportunities protects the economy, the businesses, the communities and the people who depend on the ability to play outside.” — OIA’s Outdoor Recreation Economy Report, June 2012.
What underpins this economic activity is the network local, state and federal public lands and waters. A network as important to the economic viability of this country as the other public works infrastructure such as the schools, water treatment, roads and airports we depend on.
When the policy makers and politicians demean our public lands they show either their ignorance (to be charitable) or there political bigotry (more likely). While politicians can be expected to say what they think will get them elected, ignorance has no place in policy making. This report is a powerful, factual tool that should be part of every debate on the value of our public lands and the importance of conservation of those resources.
We understand that the The Red Shirt / Blue Shirt Paradigm is a tool to divide, distract and conquer. Despite projections and promises to the contrary, our country is more politically polarized than it’s been in decades. While some of our citizenry fans the flames of partisanship like drunks at the riverside bonfire, the people and organizations getting things done realize that uniting diverse groups around worthy common objectives wins the day.
Both major parties have blood on their hands when it comes to the environment (and a host of other issues). There’s far, far too much at stake to blindly follow an aging ass or elephant and attempt to vilify the other for sins real or imagined.
(We’re not proposing that folks be ‘single issue voters’ by the way; that’s likely contributed to a fair portion of the mess we’re facing….)
It’s time to round your outdoor loving comrades, roll up your sleeves and dig into the issues. There’s far, far too much of our great outdoors and outdoor heritage hanging in the balance this year.
