Andrew Burwell and family
Growing up in the rural Midwest, in the small farm town of Ottawa, Ohio, I inherited conservative values from everyone around me: parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and even teachers. I was taught that the political left wasn’t thinking about the working-class family and that the Democratic Party didn’t have an iota of honesty in their message to the American people.
This is the story of how I did a 180 on the political spectrum and found my calling in protecting the environment.
It began with my enlistment into the United States Marine Corps at seventeen with my parent’s permission and signature. Throughout my nearly eight-year career I traveled the world, doing a combat deployment in Afghanistan, and year-long embassy security tours in Istanbul, Turkey, and Rome, Italy. In addition, I traveled to Egypt, Belgium, and China as part of security details for President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Kerry. As I traveled around the world, meeting new people and immersing myself in different cultures, I began to change. It seemed that once I left my hometown, I could not help but become invested in the lives of the people and places that I came in contact with throughout my travels. I soon found myself torn between the way my family had raised me to think and my new beliefs.
After transitioning out of the Marine Corps, and beginning college at the George Washington University, I was still unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was that I wanted to help make the world a better place somehow. That changed when I took a course my freshman year called “The Sustainable City.” It taught me about environmental injustice and how cities are suffering as a result of decades of harmful practices. I soon found myself reading everything I could about climate change, the revitalization of cities, and the transition from coal and oil to clean energy. I started my literary binge with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and haven’t looked back since.
My family members (aside from my older sister Anna) are part of the Trump base that will never waiver in support of their President, despite the weekly scandals and failures of this administration. But I’ve found a way to start a discussion with them about climate change and environmental justice: by getting them out into the great outdoors.
When I was a kid, my family and I went on annual camping trips. We hiked, fished, and always left the land the way we found it -- and sometimes better. When I was struggling the most with the values disconnect between me and my family, I remembered back to those trips and thought: Surely they must have some desire to protect America’s green spaces? When my folks came to visit me in D.C. in the summer of 2017, I made it a priority to take them to Great Falls National Park in Virginia. They loved the amazing views of the waterfalls and the remains of the old canal that cuts through the park. It’s a beautiful place.
My family and I still disagree about Donald Trump and everything he stands for. But by immersing my family in the lands the Sierra Club fights every day to protect, I began to build a connection that can lead to understanding across the political divide. This is all we need to do. Immerse anyone and everyone in the nature. We can preach all day and night about the importance of protecting our environment, but it’s hard for people to relate to unless you have had firsthand experience with the great outdoors. Seeing for themselves what is at stake in the battle to protect our climate and wild lands from extractive fossil fuel companies will make it harder for my family to look the other way when Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke declares that he works for the oil and gas industry, not the American people. It will make it harder to ignore the destructive policies of this administration.
If logic and reason could reach people about climate change and environmental protection, we would have already won. Instead of arguing and pushing my beliefs on my family, I merely brought them to the place I want to protect, and let the great outdoors do the rest.