This is Not Business as Usual: The Outdoor State Must Rise

Photo by Creative Alliance member Chris Shane

At POW, we’re not interested in the political rancor that continues to divide Americans. We’re here to protect people and place from a warming planet, to follow the science and find solutions. For 18 years, we’ve led a movement that unites outdoor enthusiasts across the political spectrum to push for real climate action. We’ve worked with policymakers on both sides of the aisle, driven by a simple truth: protecting our mountains, trails, rivers, oceans and public lands shouldn’t be a partisan issue — it’s a shared and sacred responsibility. Fiercely cross-partisan since day one, POW has always said that if elected officials stand for science and practical climate solutions, we will stand with them – regardless of party.

But cross-partisanship is not a blank check to tolerate extremism or rejection of science; it is a covenant to seek solutions in good faith. When elected officials or leaders of any kind abandon that good faith, the responsibility to object does not undermine the commitment to bipartisanship; it upholds it. We are in unprecedented times, and unprecedented times require absolute candor about what’s happening and an honest assessment of our collective approach to meaningful climate action.

Throughout American history, progressives and conservatives have worked together to advance important improvements to our society – food and drug safety, veterans care, pension protection, and banking regulation, to name just a few. Environmental protection and conservation have been chief among these bipartisan accomplishments, featuring Republican champions such as Teddy Roosevelt and even Richard Nixon. Our Constitution and historical precedent have installed a framework for legislation, as well as executive and judicial powers, nicely dividing power, albeit as imperfectly as humanity itself. Within that framework, bipartisan politics has succeeded in reaching workable consensus time and again, even on some of the thorniest of issues. This, unfortunately, is not the world we are living in right now.

Make no mistake about it, the progress we’ve made on climate is under siege and we must not unilaterally capitulate. The climate crisis is accelerating. We are living through record heat, deadly wildfires, catastrophic flooding, shrinking snowpacks — with all the resulting harm to livelihoods and landscapes. We all see it happening with our own eyes. Scientists are screaming it from the rooftops, and families, businesses and communities are suffering. 

In the first two months of this new Administration, we’ve seen the Interior Department start to establish the framework to privatize, lease, and drill on land that should remain wild – land belonging to all of us. We’re seeing a dismantling of the very agencies designed to safeguard America’s natural splendor — gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, weakening the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and turning institutions meant to protect our land, air, water – and our fellow citizens – into shells of their former selves.

On March 12, EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, in the most consequential proposed environmental rollback in U.S. history, unveiled 31 deregulatory actions that target critical safeguards that have protected our air, water, and climate for decades. These actions include reconsidering emission standards for power plants, weakening regulations on the oil and gas industry, and challenging the critically important 2009 “Endangerment Finding,” which classifies greenhouse gases as harmful to human health. Administrator Zeldin justifies these measures as a way to “unleash American energy” and cut costs, but the reality is that they will gut critical safeguards, accelerating the very real climate crisis in the name of an “energy crisis” that does not exist.

These actions are not just a bureaucratic shake-up; they are a calculated unwinding of the very institutions that undergird sound policy and protect our climate and communities. By hollowing out the EPA, silencing climate science across agencies, and stripping funding from regulatory watchdogs, we are witnessing a systematic removal of the critical tools and policies that protect our air and water and enable continued progress on emissions reductions.  

It’s time we come together with one unified voice and say, this has gone too far. We  – the Outdoor State — are 175 million strong, spanning every political perspective, every walk of life, every region of this beautiful country, united by our love of wild places. We ski, we climb, we hunt, we ride, we fish, we run rivers, and we cherish the freedom that comes with open landscapes and clean air. We want our children and grandchildren to experience that same freedom. We are the single largest voting bloc in America and we know what’s at stake in this unprecedented moment. 

So to everyone in the Outdoor State, regardless of your political affiliation, we ask you to join us. Join us as we build community and organize in states and towns to make progress at these levels of government. Join us as we share our fierce opposition to the Administration’s proposed regulatory rollbacks. Join us as we harness our collective power to encourage our Members of Congress to reclaim their constitutional authority and oppose the many harmful executive actions. Join us as we gear up for the mission-critical midterm elections and elect leaders who are actually committed to the future of the planet. This is a moment of historic urgency, and we in the Outdoor State must respond accordingly. Let’s get to work.

In Solidarity,

Ben Gubits, POW VP of Advocacy and Campaigns and Vermont Community Member
Jamey Delaplane, POW Action Fund Board Chair and Colorado Community Member