To this day, a war rages on between environmentalists and those who seek to profit from developing on areas of wilderness. One notorious battle in that war was the case of Sierra Club v. Morton. In that court case, the Walt Disney Company sought to build a ski resort on a glacial valley in California known as Mineral King Valley. Sierra argued that the result of the development proposal would be “irreparable harm to the public interest”. As the plaintiffs did not establish how human beings would be harmed by Disney’s proposed development, economically or otherwise, they lost the case. Nevertheless, Justice Douglas put forward a famous dissent which argues that trees should be extended standing to sue in court. I believe that inanimate objects …show more content…
Morton). Therefore, humans would act as the spokesmen of nature. Instead of solely arguing the impact of development on humans in court, the impact on the landscape could be argued as well. In fact, Douglas argues that the case should be renamed to Mineral King v. Morton, granting nature a say. Douglas furthermore notes that inanimate objects other than wilderness already have standing, arguing that it is not unusual for non-human entities such as ships or a corporation sole to be parties in …show more content…
One pertinent example of this is through the action of activist Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a tree for just over two years to prevent a logging company from cutting it down. Known as Luna, the tree remains standing to this day thanks to Hill’s activism. There is no doubt that the tree would have been torn down without a human being willing to step up. If Luna were to be granted legal standing, activists like Julia Hill would not be required to engage in the civil disobedience of sitting in a tree for two years in order to prevent its destruction. Rather, she would only need to argue for its preservation in court as a human representative of the tree. The Deep Green Resistance concurs with Douglas that inanimate objects should have legal rights. In a lawsuit of their own, the organization seeks legal recognition for the Colorado River in order to let said river sue for its protection. As written in the New York Times, “If a corporation has rights, the authors argue, so, too, should an ancient waterway that has sustained human life for as long as it has existed in the Western United States. The lawsuit claims the state violated the river’s right to flourish by polluting and draining it and threatening endangered species.”
The Grassy Narrows people have a long, deeply rooted history in the environmental justices movement. Rodgers (2009) points to a number of environmental justice struggles such as the fight against the harmful effects of mercury poisoning and the Minamata disease associated with it (para. 1-3), the Ontario Hydro dams that destroyed part of the wild rice harvest and degraded the habitat of fish and fur animals, as well as the displacement of the community (due to relocation into prefabricated houses where electricity and running water were promised) and the culture shock it created (para. 4). He also discusses the successful blockade in 2002, which is the longest-lasting blockade in Canadian history (para. 28)—an example that shows how employing legal methods were critical in the struggle against environmental injustices for this community. There are a number of other issues that will be discussed in the following paragraphs; the above are just a few of the injustices the Grassy Narrows community face.
The positive aspects of ‘Lake’ Powell are few yet noteworthy. Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric power-plant generates one thousand three hundred mega watts of electricity at full operation. That is enough power to supply three hundred fifty thousand homes. Glen Canyon Dam holds twenty seven million acre feet of water, which is equivalent to twice the Colorado River’s annual flow (Living Rivers: What about the hydroelectric loss?). One of the most valuable reasons for the dam to remain active is that “Lake Powell generates four hundred fifty five million dollars per year in tourist revenue, without this cash inflow, gas-and-motel towns . . . would undoubtedly wilt, and surrounding counties and states would lose a substantial tax base” (Farmer 185). These positive aspects are of no surprise considering they are the reason dams are built in the first place.
John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and Aldo Leopold all have moderately different views and ideas about the environment in terms of its worth, purpose, use and protection. At one extensively non-anthropocentric extreme, Muir’s views and ideas placed emphasis on protecting environmental areas as a moral obligation. That is to say, Muir believed that wilderness environments should be used for divine transcendence, spiritual contemplation, as a place for repenting sins and obtaining devotional healing, rather than being used for exploitative materialistic greed and destructive consumption, such as industrialism, mining, and lumbering. At the other extreme, anthropocentric, Pinchot views nature simply as natural resources. In other words, nature is explicitly
John Muir and Edward Abbey are both in agreement when it comes to the tampering of national parks; they both had a disdain for commercialization or industrialization of the natural landscape of them. Muir was a preservationist who believed the natural landscape, especially significant areas of beauty like Hetch Hetchy Valley which was ultimately dammed, should be left alone. He felt places like Hetch Hetchy were resources for “uplifting joy and peace and health of the people (370).” Meaning their value to humans was much greater if left uncommercialized and unpolluted. Muir also believed people overstepped their bounds when they drastically altered the environment for their own self-interest;
What does a man do when the canyon that he so dearly loves is transformed into an unrecognizable monstrosity at the hands of others that have no affinity to the area they have destroyed? Some may bemoan the destruction, yet lament that what’s done is done and move on. Others may voice their concerns with the unsightliness they see. However, rarely does one voice their views in such a poignant and direct way as to grab the attention of the reader and powerfully force the writer’s views into the mind of the reader. The essay “The Damnation of a Canyon” by Edward Abbey is a revealing look into the mind of an environmental activist and his dissatisfaction with man’s detrimental impacts on the environment and the natural world. Edward Abbey is acclaimed
Justice is often misconceived as injustice, and thus some essential matters that require more legal attentions than the others are neglected; ergo, some individuals aim to change that. The principles of civil disobedience, which are advocated in both “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. to the society, is present up to this time in the U.S. for that purpose.
While in the process buying whatever is necessary to the produce. The companies will “monopoly’s the shore” (32). Taking away the beauty of nature to do whatever suits their pocket books. When companies find a piece of nature that makes them money, they buy the land and strip that of its beauty and turn it into private property. Taking a once open and free part of nature away from the people who used to inhabit the area. In Thoreau’s words “Most men, it appears to me, do not care for Nature, and would sell their shares in all her beauty, for a long they may live, for a stated and not very large sum”(32). He knew in his time that the average person doesn’t care about the beauty of nature. That if they could sell nature for a quick dollar, most would do it. This is in line with his thoughts on private ownership of nature. Nature will be devoured for its recourses for Americans to make money. He wants nature to public for all people, so that one person or origination can’t keep it to themselves and what they wish with it ruining it beauty. This is the same thought behind the creation of public parks whether they’re national, state or
This Paper will describe and analyze three articles pertaining to the ongoing debate for and against Glen Canyon Dam. Two of these articles were found in the 1999 edition of A Sense of Place, and the third was downloaded off a site on the Internet (http://www.glencanyon.net/club.htm). These articles wi...
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
Not many people know of the used-to-be 150-mile excursion that the Glen Canyon had to offer. Not many people know how to sail a raft down a river for a week. Not many people know how to interact with nature and the animals that come with it. We seem to come from a world that is dependent on time and consumed in money. Edward Abbey is what you would call an extreme environmentalist. He talks about how it was an environmental disaster to place a dam in which to create Lake Powell, a reservoir formed on the border of Utah and Arizona. He is one of the few that have actually seen the way Glen Canyon was before they changed it into a reservoir. Today, that lake is used by over a million people, and is one of the biggest recreation hot spots in the western United States.
Despite protecting millions of acres of wilderness, this act provided for the numerous groups of people affected by the establishment of this law. Stipulations regarding the use of protected lands by private landowners were made. People living inside the park lands were guaranteed the right to subsistence hunting and fishing, as well as the guaranteed access to their lands. This right of access is the main concern for this argument, as it is a major management issue for park officials and land owners alike.
Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
Mr. Middleton, a journalist, compiled an article describing, in his opinion, the flaws of the Endangered Species Act. He then attempts to back his opinion with studied analyses, researched facts, and testimonies. To summarize Middleton’s (2011) perspective, “Rather than provide incentives for conservation and environmental stewardship, the Endangered Species Act punishes those whose property contains land that might be used as habitat by endangered and threatened species” (p. 79). This quote is broad and generalized yet draws in readers and forces Middleton to spend the rest of the article backing this statement with more logic based facts.
In the case study, CEO Eisner have idea of American history theme park within area of battlefield in Prince William County, Virginia. Eisner’s idea of building historical theme over property that already made its mark within American would be redundant. Disney’s conceptual plan was to use 650 million and authorized $130 million in local roads to serve it (Argenti, 2013, p.234). The first vulnerable would be the public opinion for and against the proposal land usage. When news first come out of a theme park being place near DC there was fifty anti-Disney rallied in protest while several hundred children was dressed to simulate as 101 Dalmatians in ...
All throughout the great state of Oregon, people are blessed with natural beauties as far as the eye can see. From the Oregon Coast, to the Willamette Valley, and the mountains of the Casadas, these are just a few of many beautiful places throughout the state many call home. Oregon already has four national monuments in the state, but the possibility of a fifth has caused a controversy almost as large as the area itself. Many environmental groups have been pushing for the Owyhee Canyonlands to become a national monument, but without thinking of the consequences on agriculture and the communities around the proposed area could be disastrous. The Owyhee Canyonlands should not become a national monument because of the negative impact it will have on the agriculture industry and the community in southeast Oregon.