Thieves of joy
If you follow the news about the economy or federal budget, you are likely aware of the assault on ownership and management of public lands. Since the numbers and procedures are a moving target, I’ll refrain from citing them. Hopefully, your inbox is full of alerts, calls to action and other information. You can search online and get your fill. I’m not writing to litigate whether it’s a good idea to sell off our public lands or not. It’s not.1
In the most recent issue of The Drake, editor Tom Bie wrote a compelling column on why it’s a bad idea. Bie wrote about the current effort to sell off public lands for one specious reason or another. (cough, sovereign wealth fund.) He reminded readers that the U.S. Government is not a public company. Because Bie is a friend, a good guy and a more gifted writer than I am, here’s his rejoinder to the notion that our public lands are assets on a balance sheet.
“But America is not a company. And the asset-math that none of these billionaire brains can seem to comprehend is that, for countless Americans, public land itself is not the asset; the asset is time we get to spend on it. The equity we build on our life’s balance sheet is measured in part by time spent on these lands, and they shouldn’t be sold to finance a speculative slush fund built primarily to benefit a class of people who never use public lands in the first place.”
Bie nails the crux of the issue. The time spent, the joy discovered, the solace derived is truly why these lands mean so much to those who visit them and why we fight so hard to protect them from, as Theodore Roosevelt called them, “shortsighted men” and “unprincipled present-day minority” who would rob us of our joy, discovery and solace. Reducing our time on the land to some unimportant use hampering efforts to monetize the land for whatever reason is a summarily bad idea.
This is nothing new. It’s never been a good idea and it still isn’t. The vandals have tried this before and been beaten back. Given the level of outrage I’m seeing already, I suspect the forces of goodwill prevail once more. But the fight must be fought, so step in when and where you can.
Spot on. Selling public lands is another wealth transfer from the majority of us to a rich few.
Thanks for the alert. Point well taken. The balance sheet should reflect numbers of visitors whose lives have been affected ... not timber resources. When looking at a map of forested lands in 1700 vs the same today, our forested lands have been decimated. Absolutely annihilated. We must protect what is left tenaciously. Years from now, long after we are all gone, I don't want society to look back and say, "Why did they let the last remaining refuges slip through their fingers. What were they thinking?"