Vice President Joe Biden talks about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and its impact on ... [+]
After an agonizingly slow election week, Biden supporters can finally breathe. Clean air at last, now that our next president may address the climate crisis, the epidemic of industrial polluters and the damage President Trump caused to our nation’s environmental policies. With a shift in executive powers nearing, we will soon see big changes that could have great effects on the environment, the outdoors and the recreation economy.
Needless to say, Trump wasn’t a champion for the outdoors. He pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The EPA, which faced drastic cuts under Trump, loosened restrictions on air pollution. Trump removed climate change from the list of national security threats, resulting in less Department of Defense research funding. Trump has been a proponent of the oil and gas industry. He relaxed protections on threatened species, including the sage grouse, to benefit mining and drilling. He downsized protected public lands—including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, opening them up to drilling. And he stripped protections from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest—one of the world’s largest temperate rainforests—opening vast areas of pristine wilderness to logging. In total, the Trump administration successfully reversed over 70 environmental rules. The list could go on and on.
“Kamala Harris called Joe Biden on an outdoor run,” says Mike Rogge, editor of the Mountain Gazette, referring to a video Harris Tweeted yesterday morning showing the Vice President-elect pausing mid-workout to make a congratulatory phone call to President-elect Biden. “I don’t believe anyone in the Trump org has outdoor recreated in four years,” Rogge says. He is hopeful the Biden administration will care about the places where Americans recreate. “They won’t try to sell public land off to the highest bidder.”
Environmental regulations and protections for public lands have largely been a battle of the pen between presidents in recent years. Many of the EPA regulations and national monuments established during Obama’s presidency were enacted by executive order, which allows the president to issue directives to federal agencies (without changing any laws). Just as easily, Trump was able to undo Obama’s executive orders with new executive orders of his own. With Biden in office, we can expect upcoming orders redoing or revamping many of the federal policies Trump undid.
Biden’s environmental policies are relatively aggressive compared to other establishment Democrats. While some progressives remain irked by his reluctance to ban fracking and endorse the Green New Deal, there’s still hope that Biden’s $2 trillion climate proposal will take on the climate crises with the urgency that will be required to resist what many see as an inevitable threat to humanity.
Strong climate policy and public land protections will be pivotal in shaping the future of the outdoor economy by creating clean and accessible spaces for people to recreate. And the impact of a healthy outdoor industry is significant to the entirety of the American economy. The outdoor industry accounts for approximately $887 billion in consumer spending, over $65 billion in federal tax revenue annually and 7.6 million jobs in the United States.
“Outdoor recreation can be the roadmap to economic and job recovery,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, in a virtual discussion with the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) in early October. Heinrich said the next administration will need an outdoor recreation plan that prioritizes land management and climate change in a way that boosts the outdoor industry.
The outdoors have been growing in popularity during the pandemic. In a time when nothing seems normal anymore, people have been able to find some semblance of normalcy, relaxation and opportunities for exercise through outdoor recreation. “New Americans are discovering the outdoors for the first time,” says OIA policy director Rich Harper, who previously worked as a legislative assistant for Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California.
Early this summer, bike shops were selling out faster than they could get new bikes in. Hiking trails in national parks filled with crowds, even with some capacity restrictions in place. But at the same time, the travel and hospitality aspects of the outdoor industry have faced major challenges in recovering their businesses while COVID-19 continues to spread.
Heinrich is optimistic though. “We can make the outdoor industry a key part of our overall national recovery,” he said. “We can and should be investing in these places that we love.”
There are many ways to put millions of Americans to work in creating opportunities for people to get outside. In August, Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law that will be a major step in the right direction. The Great American Outdoors Act will provide $1.9 billion per year for five years for facilities and infrastructure maintenance on public lands. Harper calls it a huge victory for the outdoors. The next step, according to Harper, is ensuring the GAOA is implemented. But, according to Outside, the Trump administration may be attempting to undermine the act by failing to meet last Tuesday’s deadline to submit a list of projects to be funded.
“This demonstrates that the Trump administration was only ever interested in using the Great American Outdoors Act to influence the election, and isn’t actually interested in effective governance,” Heinrich told Outside.
The new administration will need to carry out the goals of the GAOA, and Harper thinks Biden will be able to deliver. “We certainly have a partner,” he says.
It’s still unclear how a liberal administration will affect business with new fiscal and trade policies that will likely diverge from Trump’s. Conservative talking points suggest that more regulation, higher taxes and a generally liberal approach to globalization will hurt innovation. But Harper suggests the opposite. He says members of the OIA are hopeful for more certainty with a Biden administration. Trump’s volatile trade policies, his trade war with China, his taxing of steel and aluminum from US allies and threats to upend over $1 trillion in annual trade with Mexico resulted in a hectic four years for outdoor equipment manufacturers. Harper says outdoor companies are all about innovation, and uncertainty on trade hurts a company’s ability to innovate. The OIA is looking for more stable and predictable trade policies from the Biden administration.
More than anything, the focus for the outdoor industry will have to be environmental. “For our businesses to succeed, the outdoors has to succeed,” says Harper.
Biden will have a lot of work to do in rebuilding the environmental policy framework needed to propel the outdoor industry forward. If he stays true to his plans—recommitting the US to the Paris Agreement on climate change, investing in climate-conscious infrastructure, pushing the US to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, taking strong stances against the fossil fuel industry and other polluters and protecting at-risk recreation areas—then we can expect a promising future for the outdoor industry and a greater influence by outdoor recreation on the US economy.
