Earth First, People When?
Preserving the environment isn't as easy as it sounds.
I'm environmentally challenged. My left brain and right brain seem to constantly be engaged in a tug-of-war over the environment, and my heart wants only to find a pragmatic balance of power. Every time I get involved with environmental issues, it seems to be wrong to some group of people who position themselves to be much smarter about these things than this simple old desert rat will ever be. At this point, I am disillusioned, and want only to be left alone as I leave my indelible mark upon the planet.
Like most idealistic pursuits, my interest in the environment came about naturally enough (if you'll pardon the pun) in my youth. I spent copious amounts of time outdoors growing up, whether hiking, camping, fishing or blowing up crawdads with firecrackers. I developed a love of the outdoors, and the simple pleasures of a Ponderosa pine and a mountain breeze. Years later, while I was attending college, environmental issues became all the rage, and although I was a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the rapacious GOP, I thought some steps to protect the environment were common sense. Like recycling.
So, like a squirrel preparing for winter, I meticulously stacked my daily newspapers and tied them into bundles. I kept my cans separated from bottles in milk crates. Then, every Saturday, I'd faithfully transport the bundles and crates to the city recycling bins and put the materials in the proper, pre-sorted compartments. I would then return home, basking in the glow of self-righteous environmental responsibility, and empty some more beer cans for the following week. Mother Earth smiled upon me.
Then I found out something most disheartening: There being no viable commercial market for many recyclable materials in the early 1990s, the city admitted they were hauling the recycle bins out to the municipal landfill, where they very carefully buried the materials in designated pits for future reclamation, when market conditions made it profitable. This sounded an awful lot like taking trash to the dump to me. Embittered, I started throwing my recyclables away directly, cutting out the middleman.
When my wife and I were expecting our first child, we examined the idea of a laundry service and earth-friendly cloth diapers. After all, we had read that those plastic-wrapped Pampers poop-packages take something like 13 centuries to decompose. But after making a few calls, we found the precise cost of environmental responsibility, and it seems to be on order of hundreds of dollars a month. Plus, any environmental benefits seem to be outweighed by the use of thousands of gallons of water and soap. So our children were swaddled in the loving caress of Huggies.
Then we must consider the environmental impact of the automobile. These
vicious consumers of non-renewable resources (except for ethanol) spew out
vast amounts of pollutants (reduced by as much as 98 percent since the early
1970s) in our already-polluted atmosphere (also much-improved by the original
EPA standards). First we were to consider the electric car, until we found
out that we could drive only a couple of hundred miles a day without air
conditioning, and that they plugged into a wall outlet at the end of the
day, re-energized by vile fossil-fuel power plants. Now we're excited about
the hydrogen car, powered by the most abundant element in the universe (with
the possible exception of crooked politicians), expelling only water from
the tailpipe. Another splendid idea, except that hydrogen has an unwelcome
tendency to bond to any and every other element, and has to be forced apart
through a process involving immense amounts of—gulp!—evil fossil-fuel
electricity! These energy-chain problems could be
ameliorated by more sources of nuclear energy, but we all know how bad that
stuff is for the environment.
So I adopted a more pragmatic stance toward the environment: I would go back to hiking, camping and fishing and leave saving the planet to the smart people.
However, now the smart people have decided that the only way to protect the environment is to remove it from the grubby fingers of the unwashed, uneducated public. Some brands of environmental appreciation are more valuable than others, and unfortunately, my type doesn't make the cut. For example, I immensely enjoy following off-road trails deep into the wilds, and have accessed some spiffy scenery this way: petroglyphs, remote canyons, ghost towns and geologic formations have all been observed courtesy of rugged rocky trails and an adept truck covered in dents and scratches. Unfortunately, this type of use of our precious natural resources doesn't conform well with the Earth-Firsters, who have no problem with people, as long as they stay in the cities.
Case in point: In the deserts around Las Cruces, trails are being closed for many reasons, from BLM closures to the establishment of huge wildlife conservation areas and parks. Proponents of this type of environmentalism argue that they're preserving the desert for "future generations," but if the current generation is any indicator, this won't include hiking and backpacking in the desert, which is the primary access being encouraged. In fact, in over 25 years of being a desert rat, I have only seen one group of hikers and campers in the high desert, and that was when my friends and I were 18. We packed water, ramen noodles and vodka stolen from our parents' cabinets in order to have our own desert vision quest. Since that time, I haven't seen too many pedestrians in the arid spaces who weren't looking for a search-and-rescue helicopter.
The fact of the matter is, people impact the natural balance. We can choose to address the problem, or wait until Al Gore's most dire predictions come to pass and we're all getting suntans in the Yukon. It makes sense to take measures now, and good things are coming about because of the environmental movement. But if protecting the natural environment means taking it away from the very people who use it, the policies need to be closely scrutinized. Do people cause environmental damage? Undoubtedly, and a few hatchet-wielding, spray-can-equipped drunken off-road buffoons can cause irreversible damage in moments. But if one of your party guests gets drunk and obnoxious, do you send everybody home? (Maybe my wife would, but that's not the point.)
Compromises are in order here, not exclusionary policies based on the undefined needs of "future generations." If the common man were excluded from enjoying the environment, then why would they give a rat's anus about protecting it? Environmentalists should be looking for ways to get more people into the great outdoors, not fewer.
Henry Lightcap's Las Cruces neighbors say he despoils the environment
just by living next door.