These are trying and strange times for people in Colorado and around the world. Public and individual reactions to this crisis will reveal how our local and global societies will rebuild. We the people often use the word “public” repeatedly and in many different contexts: we have public hearings to shape policy about issues like public transportation, public education, public health and safety. But trends of falling voter turnout, waning confidence in our ability to govern, and increasingly polarizing political landscapes should tell us that the realm of public dimension in our lives is losing some vitality, despite the growing need to work together. However, one emerging element remains so strong it shines as a beacon of hope: public lands.
In the blink of an eye, life has transformed. Sweeping, sudden changes necessitated for greater public health have been asked of us all. It’s worth taking a moment to think about what being part of “the public” really means. Public, a Latin word meaning “of the people,” is a deliberate act by separate individuals that constitute themselves together as a common people in a shared space. Colorado, our shared space, means that when we tell someone we’re from Colorado, that identity is proudly tied to the land. We’re attracted to it, we toil across Colorado’s iconic landscapes characterized by soaring peaks covered in bountiful snow that shed water in every direction. Colorado, more precisely the land, is that tangible priceless asset that gathers us all together.
The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted our profound reverence and healing power of the awesome beauty in our state. This crisis has removed any doubt that we need open lands in order to secure our own individual health and everyone else’s around us. No longer can we sacrifice another acre of public land to enrich extractive industries without a long-term commitment to the greater public sphere. Indeed, all Americans and future generations need these lands for refuge and identity, but also for our physical and mental health. As people yearn for some semblance of security from this worldwide pandemic, one of the most effective things we can do is understand and take action in the long-term protection of the public trust
During the COVID crisis the Trump administration has systematically downplayed or ignored science in order to weaken environmental health and protective regulations. Recently, Secretary Bernhardt and William Perry Pendley directed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to expedite royalty relief encouraging oil and gas operators to apply for assistance due to the global pandemic’s depression of oil prices. That could mean a flood of applications for BLM field offices adapting to new work conditions and difficult for staff to give little more than a cursory review in order to avoid oil and gas well abandonment. Bottom line is that under the Trump Administration the culture at the Department of Interior has repeatedly prioritized the public trust for a private sector, and little regard for anything else.
While the public has mostly spent the past two months adjusting to the life-threatening coronavirus, our public lands have been auctioned off to achieve a single purpose: energy dominance. Even as the price of oil plummets well below any threshold of a profit, we continue to sell these public assets without any tangible benefit to the American public. Thousands of acres are up for grabs adjacent to our most prized National Parks, lease sales and comment periods carrying on under the direction of Secretary Bernhardt without pause or regard for public health, despite the blatantly clear over-abundance of oil in the world. The bottom line is: our collective wealth in public lands is being robbed by the corporate takeover of The People.
However, out of tragedy comes rebirth. Colorado is already enthroned with sustainable assets: recreation, wildlife, and bountiful agriculture. We will need to assess the need to fund public lands as part of economic recovery. Ski towns and the outdoor recreation economy will be among the hardest hit. Rural communities in Colorado have the highest rates of unemployment out of any counties in Colorado. It is positive most members of our Congressional delegation called for increased funding for the protection of public lands and parks in the next COVID-19 relief bill. An important piece is providing full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, unfortunately, our district’s Representative Scott Tipton doesn’t seem to agree.
Politics is besieged in partisanship and blame — clambering to keep the people apart so the real threats remain hidden. But to view it more positively, our public life can be reclaimed by a shared understanding and recognition that we all are connected to real identifiable places. We the people of Colorado, who have gathered around these rugged mountains, wandering canyons, open skies and endless mesas have a place we call home. A place to live, a place to marry, a place to raise children, secure in the knowledge that future generations would enjoy the same. We must all work hard and invest in the community and think strategically instead of only in the near term. All of us are in some process of reinventing our practices and understanding of what life looks like now. It’s not easy work stepping into this new world, but you are not alone. We the people, can shape the moral and political ecology of Colorado and beyond, with a new entrepreneurial energy. One that recognizes, as author David Stuart remarks: “greed is not a badge of honor, but the signature of a dying society.”
