Please don’t label me as one of “our more
conservative readers,” but I agree that the paper seems to be
exhibiting more of that old-fashioned enviro bias and heading in a
more polarizing direction than the HCN of old. By “polarizing” I
mean spinning stories in terms of those archaic categories of
conservative vs. liberal, environmentalist vs. rancher or logger
(or all those other dastardly users of the land), owls vs. jobs,
fish vs. farmers, etc. Those labels are quickly becoming
meaningless and the lines between are blurring. As they should.
I am a dedicated environmentalist. I love wild places and
spend lots of time in the backcountry, backpack and mountaineer and
ski and all that stuff; I recycle, reuse and reduce, buy local and
organic, grow my own, drive fuel-efficient cars and ride my bike,
live in a solar-heated house, support rewilding and habitat
protection, want to leave behind a healthy and safe world for my
children; I even do conservation work for a living. But I also
support sustainable local ranching and forestry, local water use
for organic agriculture as a “highest and best use.” I’d be
happy to give up a rafting trip for a local farm to produce more
healthy food, or a ski trip to allow more irrigation water into the
centuries-old acequias in my valley, or even a
piece of our national forest to make right historic land grant
injustices. And I believe social and economic equity are essential
for a sustainable world. So what category is that?
There
are enough other strident rags out there to fan the flames. HCN
ought to stick to that solid ground it has established over the
years, and continue to be a credible, reasoned, unbiased voice for
the West — including all the people who live in it. That
doesn’t mean you lose your passion or tiptoe around the
controversial issues, but you’ve got to stop spinning
everything with environmentalist editorializing. Just write the
real story, and it speaks for itself.
The us-vs.-them
approach just doesn’t work anymore. That’s not a way to
create a broad-based populist social movement, which is what
environmentalism needs to be if we want it to succeed.
Ernie Atencio
Taos, New Mexico
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dump the meaningless labels.
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