It’s Time To Pass the EXPLORE Act – CleanTechnica

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Before I got really deep into clean technologies (15 years ago), I had a terrible nightmare. I was hiking to visit a historic cabin a couple miles into Guadalupe Mountains National Park. As a kid, I had visited Pratt Cabin a number of times with my grandparents. While certainly not high in the mountains, it was still a nice escape from the desert floor and a nice escape from civilization.

In my dream, I arrived at the cabin, was super happy to revisit a place from my childhood, and sat on a rock looking at the cabin. Over the hill behind me, I heard some loud noise, and climbed up a few feet to see what all the racket was. To my horror, there was a busy four-lane “stroad,” the Pratt Cabin Shopping Center full of generic shops and restaurants, a Walmart, and basically everything else you’d find back in El Paso. The cities in the region had all grown together, the National Park had been sold off, and they had even bulldozed the Guadalupe Mountains to make more flat land for a suburban hellscape.

I woke up deeply disturbed, but felt better as my brain turned back on and I remembered that the park Pratt Cabin is in is pretty far from anything resembling a city. Also, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone would bulldoze a whole mountain range down. But hey, dreams and nightmares don’t have to make sense.

As outlandish as the dream was, one thing was true: I had to value the place to dream about it and to be disturbed by seeing it overrun with development and sprawl. Would I care about it if I hadn’t been taken there as a kid? Sadly, I have to be honest and say “probably not”. My experience with public lands, nature, and getting away from the areas around El Paso taught me to value those things in a way that no book or storytelling from a family member could have possibly done.

When I started to hear about places that were threatened by development that I hadn’t visited, I didn’t need a personal connection to value them, too. My connection to some other place that needed to be protected for my children and (hopefully) future grandchildren was enough for me to empathize and relate.

I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that one must appreciate nature to want to protect it. After all, who wants to protect something that they don’t care about? But, not everyone is fortunate enough to have parents or grandparents who took them out to enjoy nature as kids. Not everyone has the extra time or money as adults to pursue it on their own. Even for people who did learn to appreciate nature, it’s about impossible to go in person and see every place worthy of protection, which makes it a bit harder to relate to them.

Fortunately, modern technology has enabled a way to see the places we’ve never been to and might not ever actually go to. It might seem silly when you encounter them at rest stops along the highway or at Walmart parking lots, but traveling outdoors influencers, bloggers, YouTubers, and journalists (or some mix of these things) are actually doing a valuable public service. By giving thousands or maybe even millions of people a chance to see those places and learn to appreciate them, they’re helping to build appreciation for not only nature, but the overall environment and the means of protecting it.

In a very real way, we’re seeing not just goofy people with a “follow our journey on YouTube” sticker as much as we’re seeing a new kind of clean technologies sales force.

Sadly, the U.S. federal government is making their job (which often doesn’t pay much if at all) a LOT harder, with threats of fines and possibly even some jail time. Rules usually require any kind of commercial filming on federal lands to obtain an expensive and slow-to-get permit, whether it’s a major Hollywood production or just a YouTuber carrying a GoPro on a stick.

I recently came across a video that shows us one possible workaround and a bill that could solve this problem for small groups of photographers for good.

Because this rule is really overkill for most YouTubers and other kinds of independent content makers and journalists, some have taken the federal government to court. Without some valid reason for the restriction, it’s really a violation of freedom of speech to say that you can’t film without a difficult and sometimes expensive permit. For big film crews that would disturb the environment and park visitors, there’s good reason for a permit process. For a young couple with a selfie stick? Not so much.

One of these lawsuits, brought by the BlueRibbon Coalition, succeeded. After some members on ATVs and dirtbikes were fined for wearing a GoPro on helmets while otherwise legally riding on public lands, the organization took the feds to court and secured an injunction preventing the government from enforcing the permit requirement on the organization’s members when they’re not doing anything that would actually disrupt public lands.

So, if you want to get in on that injunction and be able to do independent no-impact commercial filming on public lands, you can join the Coalition for now, become a member, and get protected. But, what about everyone else?

Congress has a bill that’s half-way through the process that would extend these same protections to everyone, while also funding a lot of important projects on public lands that would expand opportunities for more outdoor recreation. It would even fund bike trails across the United States! But, it only passed the House and not the Senate, where it hasn’t even been put up for a vote.

The Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act, or the EXPLORE Act, still has a good chance of passage, and has both bipartisan and diverse support. Everyone from outdoor equipment manufacturers, motorized explorers, environmental groups, and people who want to protect public lands and wilderness nearly all support it because it’s one of those rare bills that’s a win-win and doesn’t cost taxpayers anything extra.

To help it along, be sure to let your senators and President Biden know that you’d like them to take it up and get it passed! Here’s a web form that makes it easy.

Featured image: Pratt Cabin in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. NPS photo (Public Domain).