Every
summer the manufacturers and retailers of outdoor equipment converge on Salt Lake City for the
Outdoor Retailer Summer Market – an event that this year drew an estimated 20,000
people. SUWA partnered with the Conservation Alliance to participate in
the Keep It Wild day which paired environmental groups with outdoor gear
manufacturers to take action to protect our natural resources. SUWA was
generously hosted by Osprey Packs, and in their booth at the show we collected over
300 postcards written by folks who were asking the Obama administration protect wild Utah.
Participants also posed for photos with “Flat Ken,” a likeness of Interior
Department Secretary Salazar who has the power to protect over 6 million acres
of redrock land now vulnerable to oil and gas drilling and off-road vehicle
abuse. The day was topped off with a party hosted By KEEN Footwear,
celebrating a day of conservation advocacy at the show.
“SUWA was generously hosted by Osprey Packs” at the Outdoor Retailers Show. In a nutshell, this describes SUWA’s most vital constituency. I’m a Utah backpacker myself and you could say I live for backpacking in southern Utah, though I only get there a few times a year now. But here’s the key: I don’t pretend I’m saving the planet by doing it. In fact, I know I’m destroying the planet by being a part of this evil civilization. Study climate science. It’s over folks, and our highest moral duty is to try and get our heads around what, at minimum, is a mind-boggling and utterly irrevocable ecological disaster that we’ve committed this precious blue Earth to suffer, and then what we feel are the implications for each of us.
Our denial of all this is right there in the message sold by all the outdoor gear marketing etc., exalting backpackers and our so-called green ethics inferred from nothing more than our recreational choices. SUWA uses these so-called “environmental values” to infuse its supporters with holier than thou zeal. (And outdoor gear company execs actually believe they’re helping their customers buy their way to redemption.)
Unwrap yourself from the cloak of environmentalism SUWA and just admit it: you’re nothing more than a “national backpackers association” engaged in a meaningless fight with other clueless, privileged Americans simply over incompatible recreational values, ultimately pitting one outdoor industry vs. another. I’ll certainly be glad when this nation’s economy collapses and the day comes when we have more important things to talk about.
Posted by: Doug Meyer | 08/15/2010 at 05:19 PM