Red (White) or Blue, Green Reigns Supreme in 2024 Election

COMMENTARY

Amid the bitterly divided electorate this political season, there were signs that Americans can come together on at least one issue: access to the outdoors and nature.

Protecting — or conserving — land and water cuts across party lines and unites communities and people regardless of income, race or geography.

On Election Day, we witnessed overwhelming support for ballot question after ballot question in red counties, purple and blue, with measures approved by voters to fund new parks, transform schoolyards, and protect forests and wetlands.

The initiatives will also help communities be more resilient in the face of increasingly extreme weather events and buttress areas prone to wildfire, flooding and drought.

Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit focused on connecting everyone to the outdoors, advised and supported 23 ballot measures from Georgia to California. All but one passed decisively.

The remaining measure — in McHenry County, Illinois — inched to victory two weeks after the election, once all mail-in ballots were counted. Together, the mix of conservation measures will generate some $16 billion — through a combination of taxes, fees and bonds — to ensure rural towns, suburbs and urban cities healthier futures.

Funding for conservation reflects deeply held values across the political spectrum — a shared love of our natural heritage, a belief in protecting what we care about and a commitment to passing on thriving forests, rivers and natural places to our children and grandchildren.

Perhaps nowhere was broad-based support for conservation more evident than in Florida, where voters passed conservation measures in four different counties.

In Clay County, Florida, for instance, where former President-elect Donald Trump won with 69% of the vote, 73% of voters passed a referendum that will authorize $45 million to protect water quality, strengthen wildlife habit, conserve farmland and reduce flooding. In Lake County, voters strongly leaned Republican in the presidential race and approved a $50 million bond to finance open space, parks and trails, and clean drinking water sources.

And in reliably red Jasper County, South Carolina, where Trump won by 9 points, voters supported a special sales and use tax that will generate $94 million to fund land conservation and protect scenic corridors and other natural resources.

Meanwhile, the natural environment scored big in California, with passage of a whopping $10 billion climate measure, known as Proposition 4. While the state leaned heavily for Vice President Harris, the measure’s scope and scale, which will finance myriad climate mitigation and adaptation programs, was incredibly striking. The measure will help absorb greenhouse gases responsible for climate change through land protection and guard communities from future weather disasters.

California voters also embraced Proposition 2, authorizing $10 billion in bonds for school improvements, including the renovation of schoolyards. Transforming asphalt schoolyards into green oases — with outdoor classrooms, trees and gardens available to the public after school and on weekends — this is a demonstrated strategy to improve education, public health and the environment in local communities.

Yet we cannot ignore the reality that parks and green spaces remain underfunded. Because financing for parks lags far behind other infrastructure priorities, 100 million Americans — including 28 million children — still lack access to a high-quality, close-to-home outdoor space.

State and local spending on roads alone surpasses in a single year investments in parks over the past three decades. 

Meanwhile, local parks across the U.S. pack a serious economic punch, generating more than $150 billion in economic activity annually and supporting over 1.1 million jobs. For every $1 million spent on a park in this country, between 16 and 23 jobs are created on average — on par with job creation rates from new highways.

This year’s bipartisan conservation wins add to decades of successes.

Over the past 26 years, local communities and states have worked with Trust for Public Land to run 680 ballot initiatives, empowering voters to prioritize healthy landscapes and access to the outdoors. The most recent victories tipped total public funding for parks, open spaces, land conservation, clean water and wildfire mitigation to a new record — $110 billion.

In partnership with local, state and other nonprofit partners, we will continue to advocate for meaningful, lasting solutions to protect our lands and waters, expand outdoor access and strengthen our economy. 

One such solution is the bipartisan Outdoors for All Act, which would codify and improve the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership, a nationally competitive federal grant program that provides funding for green spaces in economically disadvantaged communities — both rural and urban — with few or no quality outdoor areas.

The bipartisan support for conservation on Election Day sends a clear signal to Congress to pass this vital legislation now.

Over and over, we’re told that Americans are impossibly divided. Yet, the story is different when it comes to investing in the outdoors. We all agree that clean water, wildlife habitat and outdoor access are neither red issues nor blue. They are green. When we get outside, our differences get smaller, our moods get brighter and our shared bonds grow. We have seen that the outdoors remains a place where we can bridge differences.

Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser is the president and CEO of Trust for Public Land, where she drives the organization’s mission to ensure everyone has access to the benefits and joys of the outdoors. She can be reached on LinkedIn.