Support the Environment…

Dear Editor,

I indubitably support public lands. I indubitably support wilderness. I indubitably support Greenprint. I indubitably support the Scotchman Peaks Wilderness.

I grew up in Texas where there is no public land to speak of and developers have cart blanche to make a piecemeal out of the environment, and I tell you with all my heart it sucks! It’s savage. It’s immoral. It’s rape. It’s unhealthy. It’s culturally barbarian and it needs to be illegal. The ultra-right-wing lawmakers in Idaho over the past 25 years want to do the same here. They want to turn our precious public lands over to the state which is cryptic for privatization and development. Imagine the absolute best part of this state (it’s public lands and wilderness) looking like the Houston suburbs in 50 years. Far, far we have come. No one seems to remember as recently as the 1970s. Do you have any idea what they used to call this state on Capitol Hill in the 1970s? “Liberal Idaho,” I swear it! Frank Church, Cecil Andros: people who actually cared about other people instead of this thickheaded lone cowboy “goberment ain’t going to tell me what to do” white privilege culture we see today. “We all know how liberal Idaho is going to vote” was the the lighthearted joke on Capitol Hill. That all changed when George H.W. Bush the hero of the Reagan revolution rightfully lost to Bill Clinton in 1992, and America experienced the biggest right-wing reaction fallout in human history. Here we are today paying the unimaginable consequences.

I moved to the Northwestern United States 14 years ago for the public land. I am an avid hiker, backpacker, mountaineer, kyaker, snowshoer, skiier and nature enthusiast. Public land to me is a godsend and wilderness is my Valhalla. I am beyond appalled and disheartened by the increasingly popular hostility towards public land and the bigoted, insidious hatred towards Mother Earth. There is absolutely no cons or negative repercussions of wilderness, and I’m sick of hearing that there are! It’s all pride, misinformation, ignorance and bravado. As for these conspiracy theorists, they’re just infinitely absurd! How could anybody even think of listening to them! I personally believe that public lands and wilderness should be a right not a privilege. I believe that the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution should read: “All people and living beings shall enjoy the right to a clean, healthy, beautiful, spacious, intact environment.”

Jack Green
Sandpoint