America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing.

They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject.

I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

As an outdoorsman, fisher, and hunter, I view the other party as at war my hobbies.

California banned the diesel engines being used by the fishing boat I went out on. Without 300k to retrofit, the charter went out of business and everyone lost their jobs.

Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in? The “other party” isn’t at war with hunting, they just want a planet that’s livable for future generations.

>Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in?

Of course not. Thats the kind of lack of nuance that I object to.

I support high reward changes that protect or revitalize the environment. Banning several diesel boats instead of phasing them out at the end life/next upgrade isn't going to save the planet. It just makes the outdoors and environment inaccessible.

There are so many thoughtless and net negative policies.

You view them as negative because you're only thinking about how it affects you.

There are clear benefits to banning diesel engines in freshwater. That's why so many places are doing it. Lots of people support these measures because it's a very clear benefit.

If a business can't afford to operate without being subsidized by the environment, they shouldn't be allowed to operate. When you use those diesel engines, you're taking out a loan using the environment. That loan needs to be repaid, and it gets repaid in the from of destruction rebuild costs. So when you complain about how "it would cost blah blah to do this safely", what you're really saying is "I want to destroy the environment for some cheap fun" which is deeply, deeply selfish. When you hear the total cost of disasters, think about it in the form of debt being repaid. That $1 billion because of so and so fire, that's the environment coming to collect the debt we racked up because we wanted cheap stuff and recreation.

Remember, your freedom ends where mine begins.