After two weeks of history we will turn to a bit of literature--or at least some literary non-fiction. I hope you have fun with John McPhee's breezy portrait of the the fellow leading the charge here. I'll let you read without too much set-up, but I do want to say that if Robert Wernick's arguments in "Let's Spoil the Wilderness" weren't persuasive for you, I suspect a few of the interlocutors McPhee finds for David Brower will develop some rebuttals to the wilderness idea you might find compelling.
You are welcome to read the entire book, but we will focus on sections 1 and 3. As per the usual routine, post your questions and meditations in the comments here--and don't hesitate to e-mail with any questions, comments or concerns.
Until Wednesday,
Kevin
On page 241, during one of Brower and Dominy's exchanges, Brower says, "Objectivity is the greatest threat to the United states today." What do you think he means by this?
ReplyDeleteThis statement caught me, even if it's a little over the top, and made me think. I admire Brower's romanticist love of beauty and his loyalty to the intrinsic value of nature but I find myself falling more along the lines of Park and Dominy. I think that’s what Brower is saying, there’s an attraction to the logic of utilitarian land use rather than the complexity of preservation. While there might be ideals about how the environment should be managed (or not) most people don’t want to think too hard about where the things come from that they rely on daily. This is an easy way of justifying our land use, being ‘reasonable’ about what things can and cannot be kept the same to support our population. Brower wants things to be a little messy and emotional because it keeps people engaged with the natural world. When we lose that we become complacent and accept a dichotomy that maybe isn’t true.
How much is “wilderness” worth? Who are we to decide its worth? Do we need to decide in order to ‘save’ it?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the way this book decided to tell the story of a wilderness debate. I was surprised with myself how much I related to both sides of the story. They both made very persuasive points. I think this is what made the story so interesting and so complicated; the issue certainly is not black and white, so how do we decide where to go from here?
One of the great things about so-called wilderness is that it is not quantifiable, but if we want to preserve or conserve it, we have to make some choices here. First off, who would be benefiting from the wilderness? The men in the first section touch on this. If we are talking about humans, we benefit from enjoying our current lifestyles. Other living beings, however, don’t benefit from this. Who are we to say that our lifestyles are more important to preserve than theirs? What we are doing is deciding who is important and who isn’t, and although this isn’t a fair way to do it, there aren’t very many options. This really is a sticky issue. I’m realizing more and more how subjective wilderness is. It is an issue even fellow ‘pro-wilderness’ folks can’t seem to decide on. There is a quote in the first section where a passerby says something like, ‘you wilderness people are all the same’. Among many reasons why they are different, they can’t even decide on the worth of wilderness amongst the two of them. I wouldn’t like to force some kind of contrived consensus on how much wilderness is worth (which I think is what the wilderness act tried to do), but I also don’t think that the future will take care of itself, as was suggested. If these were questions with real answers then perhaps we would be in a different place. Is leaving the wilderness alone the most environmentally friendly way to do things because we aren’t asserting our decisions onto it? Or is placing compromised upon rules on it the right way to go, because we have to fight back against those depleting the wilderness? Instead of any answers, I have just come up with more questions.
-Leah
What is Brower’s Wilderness?
ReplyDeleteThroughout Mcphee’s Encounters with the Archdruid, David Brower, the Archdruid, makes it very clear that any progress of man’s accord is bad progress. He is adamant about preserving any wilderness. Brower states, “I’m trying to do anything I can to get man back into balance with the environment (16).” Brower is an experienced outdoorsman with several first ascents in (Yosemite or Sierra?). He had been places that no other man had potentially every set foot. I had an assumption that Brower would have a slightly elevated concept of wilderness due to the locations he has been fortunate to see.
What interests me is the division in Park’s vision of wilderness to that of David Brower’s. Charles Park is the mineral man who saw places value according to their potential of precious metals. When asked if he thought Glacier Peak Wilderness was indeed wilderness, and he responded “No,...Not with this trail in it (17).” He then goes on to argue about the minimal effect a mine would have on the region. When Brower was asked the same question within the wilderness area he felt is was wilderness.
Parks negation of Glacier Peak being a wilderness area reminds me of the root of the Puritan’s mind state of subduing the land because they had permission to. By directing his focus on a trail when wilderness surrounds it, he is able to depreciate the area and therefore justify the alteration of it through a mine, whereas Brower has a lower standard (for lack of a better term) of wilderness. By not focusing on the presence of a trail or a beer can, Brower is able to fully appreciate wilderness as long is there is not too much left behind or too many users.
Jesse
Is conservation a losing battle?
ReplyDeleteThroughout the two sections of the book the we read Bower is constantly making an argument that we need to preserve wilderness for future generations so that they can enjoy it and have access to it like we do today. In section one he argues with Park that a mine in the Glacier Peak Wilderness would destroy the wilderness and only offer a temporary solution to the lack of copper/ natural resources we have. Later on in section three he talks about how he prevented the construction of a dam that could still end up being built in the future. I had never really thought of conservation as a fight to preserve a decent quality of life for future generations before I read this book. I have always thought that it is important to preserve wilderness areas so that people in the future will still have beautiful places to go visit but on a larger scale it is important to conserve things so that people in the future can have a good quality of life. I think that it's hard for a lot of people to be willing to give up something they want but don't really need to save it for someone in the future that they will never know. Park often states that people in the future will have to "figure something out" for themselves if the people of today burn through all of the natural resources on earth. I wonder if conservation has a fighting chance in our consumer society where everyone wants everything and they want it right now.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the standard of living worth?
To simplify the arguments I saw put forth by the reading I noted David Brower putting a foot down in dismissal of the importance of industrial progress, and his opponents, Charles Park and Floyd Dominy, campaigning for an improved standard of living at the cost of native wilderness. The hardest part for me to digest from the reading was the argument that mining is a temporary solution to a long term problem, ei, not a sustainable act. What's more, I feel that neither Brower nor Park addressed the responsible consumption of said minerals, once they are extracted from the mines. Are we going to evolve our society beyond natural metals, oils and gases once we have used them up, as Park believes? Are we digging our own graves as we mine away America's Wilderness for fleeting comforts?
Would America have to go without much to leave its finest wilderness unspoiled?
ReplyDeleteI think in order to both conserve and preserve what “wilderness” we have left we would need to make some huge changes. This is something that people fear, including myself. I would be lying if I told you I didn’t enjoy having my own vehicle or even having money that doesn’t get holes in it. Brower and Park had this spat about copper versus aluminum coins and the first thing that came to my mind was this idea of “America.” I think as a country, we feel very privileged to have what we want when we want it. Oh, and it also needs to be of the highest quality. We are also drawn to this lifestyle of instant gratification. We are so used to the way our system is set up now with different types of extraction that we don’t give it a second thought. We fuel up at the gas station and continue on with our day.
If America as a country were to deviate from these methods that we’ve had in use for all our lives, people would inevitably have to give up different levels of comfort. I think that’s what it really comes down to. We’re afraid of what we don’t know and change comes with a lot of uncertainties.
Will we ever have wilderness again?
ReplyDeleteI ask this mainly because of the timeline of this story, which obviously is not set in the year 2013. After years of change that has occurred since this time would his opinions become different? And if so what would it take? And on a unrelated note, with the new Island located near Pakistan after the earthquake, how would we classify that island? Should it be protected as a brand new landmass, or should it in reality become settled and eventually used as a small city/town?
Isn’t wilderness and the fight for it a big paradox?
ReplyDeleteCan we "resolve" this paradox somehow?
On page 61, Park and Brower have a discussion, it is about Park’s idea of controlled mining:
B: „Logging follows mining.“
P: „You can control that.“
B: „That’s what I’m hoping.“
Earlier (p. 53), they find a copper stone and McPhee describes it the following:
„... (the stone) was warm and subjective. It affected us all. Human appetites, desires, ambitions, greeds, and profound aesthetic and acquisitional instincts were concentrated between the stones and our eyes.“
I really like those two paragraphes. It seems to me that they reflect our desire for more, our materialism very well.
We want wilderness and we want it untrammeled – but the Yosemite Park (amongst others) attracts thousands of people who can make it a non-wilderness.
We want to go on living in places where you can survive only if there is a dam.
We want to build nice houses, we want to use computers and technology – but all that needs materials which may come from a mine in a (formerly) wild place.
We want to drive our cars to get to beautiful places in the mountains – or sometimes we even take a plane to reach a place where the nature is „truly“ – although using gas can ruine a wilderness (ocean?).
I ask myself if we can truly control our desires for a convenient lifestyle. Can we really „control“ mining? Is there any „reasonable“ mining?
As Brower, I hope so, too. But I am really not sure about how to protect the wilderness today.
And, can we really enjoy wilderness (by going into the wilderness) without „ruining“ it? Isn’t it totally a moral conflict? Or – if we where consequent in our thinking – would we have to stop going to the wilderness – to let wilderness be a real wild place?
I think so. But I guess that I am not willing to abstain from wilderness.
Does promising good house keeping change actually make a difference in the long run?
ReplyDeleteJust because I promised my mom that I will clean my room after I am done this next game of NBA 2K13 doesn't actually mean that in the long run my room will be spotless. More than half the time I skip out before she can notice I am gone. Not to mention even the times that I do clean my room like she asked it is never as good of a clean up as she wants done. So if my mom took the place of the people for preservation and I took the place of someone who wanted to mine my room for copper we are still so far apart from common ground it is unreal. Yes after mining they might clean the land but will it ever get the land back to what the land was before... who knows? therefore their is no way for both groups to be satisfied. So who wins the right to be happy? what is more important quality of life or preserving the last few beautiful things in this world? and how do you measure the importance of these things. How long will this stalemate last between conservationists and people who want to reap the natural resources of the land? who knows?
From Brower's perspective, "...a view of Glacier Peak, to mean much of anything, ought properly to be earned, and that the only way to earn it was to get to it on foot.” ‘What about people who can’t walk?’ Park said. ‘They stay home. Ninety-nine point nine per cent can walk-if they want to.’
ReplyDeleteOn that note, how have technological advances changed the way we view wilderness?
Technology has progressed and exploded in the past 15 years since I can remember. There was the gameboy, walkman, mp3 players, the boom in the ipod, apple computers, and there many more to come. For some, technology has taken their lives away literally and have found wilderness to be boring, but I think there are many out there who may not have the same appreciation for wilderness without being exposed to technology. It could be sitting in the computer lab for 3 hours and then wanting to go hike a trail immediately after. It is our want to get away from certain activities or people that make wilderness more well known. This can be discussed and debated for quite some time but I feel the popularity of wilderness is gradually dying out with the rise of technology.
I’m trying to find the right way to frame this question. I think this might work the best: “Is conservation the right answer, or does the whole system need to shift or change?”
ReplyDeleteTaiaiake Alfred is a really well known indigenous scholar, who makes the argument that the idea of ‘sovereignty’ isn’t the right pursuit for natives to take, because it’s based within a western system. Amongst many other arguments, one of his points is that the attempt to pursue indigenous needs within a western system is only successful until the western system needs to change it. If they are the ones defining what can happen, as soon as it goes against their success, it ends. I’m not sure if I’m making that point well enough, but it’s important because it translates into why I am asking this in the first place, and I think the connection will illuminate the point itself.
On page 21, Park states that “if there were a copper deposit in Yellowstone Park, I’d recommend mining it.” This mentality seems fairly consistent with the Wilderness Act itself, which had so many special provisions as to seem to essentially state, “we will protect something as wilderness so long as there isn’t a profitable resource to be extracted.” Conservation in such a light, reminds me of Sisyphus, rolling the rock up the hill only to watch it roll down again.
On page 22, Park continues to argue for resource extraction, tying it to the benefit of humanity, “They’ll have to, if people are going to expect to have telephones, electric lights, airplanes, television sets, radios, central heating, air-conditioning, automobiles. And you know people will want these things. I didn’t invent them. I just know where the copper is… Basically our difference is that I feel we can’t stop all this—we must direct it. You feel we must stop it.”
Towards the end of the book, as Brower is forced to resign, I kept thinking of William Paul and the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Both men were very strong leaders who believed they knew what was best, and perhaps lacked some tact—radicals who didn’t feel content working within the system but felt the whole structure needed changing.