Cyclotossers vs the Tree Huggers

Really, the best part of the US #CXNats debacle has been watching the largely liberal cyclocrosser community come to terms with the reality that their national championships were crushed by a left-wing tree hugger co-op (http://www.austinheritagetreefoundation.com), in an officially recognized #keepitweird town (http://www.keepaustinweird.com), and that Fox News is probably the biggest and most unlikely media ally that CX will ever have: http://www.myfoxaustin.com/story/27823266/cyclo-cross-nationals-postponed-to-protect-zilker-trees

The less-best part has been watching the effectiveness of off-topic fact-free argument in derailing all open national championship races except for the 1X1 class, which cannot be derailed, of course.

The way it works is pretty simple: the Heritage Tree Foundation people only want the park to be used in ways that align with Tree Foundation sensibilities. So while cyclocrossers and hipsters may want to have a race there, Tree Foundation people would prefer that they didn’t. And torn-up grass was probably all the visual call to action needed to get the Tree Foundation all worked up, even though, for the purposes of this article, grass is not trees. (There is, apparently, a grass tree, but it is only in Australia, not TX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthorrhoea)

However, rather than have an open debate about whether or not cycling is a valid use of the park, the Tree Foundation and other faux-environmental groups know that their goals are best achieved through indirect argument. So they make stuff up: “Bikes are going to kill the trees, and no mitigation plan or financing could bring back our trees in less than 200 years.” I think we all know the facts here: bikes won’t kill the trees. Tree root systems are far more robust than that. And there is a mitigation plan to replace/repair the grass, which does grow back nicely. Hell, as we learned earlier, it even grows on trees (Though only in Australia now, perhaps TX could import these trees in a grass-market-demand-spike emergency.)

So now, rather than having an open an honest dialogue about the validity of bikes and their recreational use in the park, and/or the validity of the damage-and-replace/regrow model of turf usage, we end up with an argument about the durability of tree root systems. The Tree Foundation doesn’t even have to win the argument. They just need to generate enough noise and concern for the argument to be seriously considered by blow-with-the-wind politicians/bureaucrats, and for that consideration to last long enough to force a change in the event scheduling. So it’s particularly effective to raise these types of concerns with as much political force as possible within a narrow time window prior to the event. Sound about right?

Yeah, thought so. And it’s basically the same argument model used by Sierra Clubbers and other hiking/equestrian-only organizations against mountain biking. Why have an open debate about the validity of various off-road recreational activities and the access to which they should be entitled, when you can further your personal position by making up some crap about mountain bikes causing more trail damage than hiking or horseback riding, even though it is easy to prove this argument to be factually untrue?

Emotion trumps reason more often than we’d like. All it takes is a quick tour of Chautauqua trails (no bikes) and Heil Valley Ranch (primarily bikes) in Boulder County to see that the no-bike trails are massively more likely to be widened and have alternate/off-trail routes created. Chautauqua is a disaster by all traditionally-defined trail preservation concerns. Heil is damned near pristine by comparison. But no one is yelling about banning hikers from Chautauqua.

But I digress. This isn’t about mountain biking. This is about faux-liberals using faux-environemental concerns to bend the world to their personal needs rather than share otherwise public lands and open spaces with others around them with, perhaps, different needs. It’s an approach that’s all too common in more established (and particularly in more affluent) once-actually-liberal communities. And indirectly, it’s about the damage they do to actual liberal and actual environmental efforts. Bottom line: if groups as ideologically disparate as Fox News and Cyclocrossers can agree that you’re a bunch of tools, then you’re probably a bunch of tools. However, you won this round, so congratulations. Well played.

And, even after everything, until the cyclocross, mountain bike and other similar communities devise better means of combatting the faux-environmental political approach to the access fight, we can expect organizations like the Tree Foundation to notch more wins while we wait for them to age out of relevance/existence.

Related: Whether you see the Tree Foundation as heroes or idiots or both, the race never should’ve been run in Zilker park. The promoters and USAC and Austin Parks should have had a better discussion and understanding of what would happen if it rained (even though we all expected a grass crit), and committed to going forward, within the USAC race and safety guidelines, no matter what; absent that level of consensus, the national championships should’ve been held elsewhere.