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TODAY Thursday 17 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Thursday 17 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Our White Guy Problem
Yesterday I learned that distant cousin Ted Nugent had just testified before the House Sub-Committee on Resources (previously the House Sub-Committee on Natural Resources). He called for opening the national parks to hunting and for allowing easier access -- which is to say, vehicular access -- to public wilderness areas. He urged "all who give a damn" to "tear down the walls to wilderness in North America."
At another hearing of the same sub-committee, NASCAR driver Bobby Unser hotly criticized the US Forest Service -- "worse than the KGB in Russia" -- for arresting him and allegedly mistreating him after a near-fatal snowmobile accident in the San Juan Wilderness of southern Colorado. Unser faces trial for using the snowmobile in a prohibited area.
Enviros have a hard time with these guys. God in heaven, we say to each other, can't these bozos go anywhere or do anything without their noisy damn machines? Can't we have a few places in this country where we don't have to put up with their constant bleeping racket? Et cetera, et cetera, often descending into references to weight problems.
There are some tough, obvious, and explicit issues here about proper uses of public land, and depending on who's in power, the fractions of federal land available to the internal combustion engine will shift some. The western Republicans who called the hearings want a big shift, of course, but it's not clear that they're going to get their way. In the end, there will be -- there has to be -- an accommodation. We enviros will go back to pressing for more wilderness, strictly defined, and the other guys will try to open up the Grand Canyon to Apache helicopter rides.
I'm particularly interested, however, in the class element of all this. Whether we're dues-paying members of a national organization or people in a focus group who raise their hand when the emcee asks "Who here is an environmentalist?," we enviros have, on the average, a lot more money and education than people who watch the Firecracker 500 or who listen to anything by Ted Nugent since "Cat Scratch Fever." Pollsters and marketing specialists have no trouble coming up with a long list of demographic, economic and attitudinal characteristics that separate statistically typical enviros from typical working-class and lower-middle-class white men. This is a class thing with a capital C.
More's the pity, because there's a core of shared interest here. And that shared interest is the preservation of natural habitat. A biodiversity hand-wringer and a deer hunter in search of a stag both want to keep the forest. It's just hard for them to talk with each other, not least because of this nagging problem of the proper limits of no-vehicle zones.
Many enviros see this shared interest, of course, and have done a lot in recent years to strike up conversations with recreationists. The easiest and most solid alliance is with anglers (Trout Unlimited and the Isaac Walton League are formidable fighters for wild places). Duck hunters come next easiest; they're a crucial constituency for wetlands preservation and the protection of migratory flight paths. But those two groups are, after all, closer to environmentalists in their class composition than deer hunters or snowmobilers.
It's going to take patience, respect, hard work and who knows what else to form a working relationship between enviros and clock-punching white guys who like to go into the woods and kill animals, not to mention a deeply unrhythmic guitar player whose motto is "Whack 'em and stack 'em." But the common interest is there, barely glimpsed, and the political imperative is strong and durable.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Since this is only the second day of this site's existence, it might be useful to set out our schedule for changing its contents.
Each weekday this column will change and we'll correct or update links that misfire. Like USA Today, the edition that comes out on Friday will be labelled Fri-Sat-Sun. Nothing will happen on the weekend.
Each Monday, starting 28 April, we'll run a new edition of the Capitol Hill Spy and a new Op-Ed. (On that day you'll find, respectively, Hibernicus on Al Gore and Terry Tempest Williams on current fights about wilderness.) And each week the Media Watch will be updated.
Each month the four features of In The Trenches will be revised, Fred Hapgood will expand his Earth Mirror, and High Fives authors will test the reliability of their recommended URLs. New High Fives will be rolled in ad-hoc.
That's it. Please tell us how we're doing and how we can do it better.
-- New York, 17 April 97, 09:20.
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway