The Great Outdoors: Where Left Meets Right
The way forward on climate may be both sides coming together around outdoor recreation.
“My happiest moments in life - and I think most people’s happiest moments in life - had something to do with spending time outdoors.”
This is Benji Backer, a young conservative and the CEO of a new nonprofit that launched last week, Nature is Nonpartisan. He’s built a team of both liberals and conservatives that is “revitalizing America’s nonpartisan environmental legacy” and doing so through toolkits for advocacy, amplifying the voices of outdoor recreators to elected officials and seeking common ground amongst folks that enjoy being outside.
Source: Nature is Nonpartisan’s website
This approach is smart, and becoming more widespread, especially in our current times. Last year, Protect Our Winters (WTCTA is a part of their Creative Alliance) released a film called Purple Mountains which documents conversations across political ideologies throughout the “Outdoor State” (the wide-ranging group of people that recreate outdoors in the US and come from a variety of leanings in regards to politics). POW has also tailored their messaging over the years to remove words like “climate,” instead focusing on supporting clean air, clean water and a healthy planet. Pretty hard to argue with those ideals.
At our Climate Strides NYC event, we heard from Adam Met of Planet Reimagined (and, casually, AJR) about a bipartisan bill - which Planet Reimagined led on from the co-location planning side - that was just introduced by Senator Hickenlooper (CO) and Senator Curtis (UT) “to streamline permitting for wind and solar projects by allowing them to be co-located on federal land with existing energy leases” (from a press release on Hickenlooper’s site). Met hopes this is only the beginning, and that this bill sets an example for Republicans and Democrats working together on bipartisan climate action.
As a Mainer, this kind of reach-across-the-aisle conversation centered on the outdoors makes perfect sense to me. I am a liberal millennial and also an avid fly fisherwoman, thanks to my dad who raised his three kids to play pond hockey and fish, with the hope that at least one would stick to either sport (I’m happy to report I stuck to both). But it meant that I’ve had some uncomfortable conversations out there on the river or lake, between trout strikes or puck passes … conversations I bristle at to this day. But a recent realization is the commonality these pastimes provide - a way to relate to someone that otherwise, we might feel we don’t have anything in common with.
Photo credit:
When I spoke to Erin Sprague, CEO of POW, at the outset of launching WTCTA, she said that one of the things we needed more than anything right now was bipartisan climate communications (aka, again, maybe don’t use the word climate). While I went full send with a pretty liberal take on this topic (climate is in fact central to the name of this media series), I also think there is so much here to explore.
I’ll be cheering on Nature is Nonpartisan as they launch - excited to see what’s next!
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Ok since you read this far here’s another one for you …
We’re a catch and release family, don’t worry. Photo cred: Nat Thompson.