The road to preservation has always been a difficult one. With a rapidly changing world the environmentalists have to present their way of thinking in a manner that is appealing to the modern age. Edward Abbey and David Brower faced this challenge in their field as they worked to persuade others that the development of nature is not always the best option. Edward Abbey’s area of focus was national parks, monuments and forests, and how industrial tourism is hurting their pureness. He explains the problems with industrial tourism and how it can be stopped in the way of removing cars, stopping road building and encouraging more active park rangers in National Parks. David Brower takes a different approach by combating acts of developments as they occur. He manages to go head to head with Charles Park, Charles Fraser, and Floyd Dominy, three men with goals of development in various parts of nature with their own beliefs on development and how it should be handled. As Brower and Abbeys life are analyzed their similarities and differences become more apparent and it becomes obvious that they had very similar mind sets.
Drafted to the military and then going to the University of Mexico Edward Abbey was a man of various backgrounds. After getting his master’s degree he started working for the National Park Service at the Arches National Monument where he gained his interests in nature and natural preservation. He took notes and sketches of his findings and used them for his book, Desert Solitaire
In his book Desert Solitaire, Edwards Abbey talks about the development verses preservation. Initially his tone seems appreciative and happy as he describes his job and where he lives. He talks of the time that he was a park ranger and paints th...
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...t preservation. They all believe that nature and its resources are to be used for the benefit of man even if it disrupts nature at the same time. These anthropocentric beliefs are strictly against the views of Abbey and Brower they ensure that that message is received by the people.
In the books Desert Solitaire and Encounters of the Archdruid the views of two Edward Abbey and David Brower are challenged by an ever so changing world. Whether is the industrial tourism taking place in the national parks or the damming of the Glen Canyon River, these men were part of an ever so changing world that needed a reassessment of the importance of natural preservation. While not always successful they managed to get their messages across, that nature is a vital part of our world and its preservation is essential to the quality of life human beings.
Although Leopold’s love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.
Cronon, William “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90
This anthropocentric theme continues throughout his narrative but is personified on a societal level. This matter is first introduced in the chapter “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and The National Parks.” In this chapter Abbey notes the expansionist nature of the industrial economy and how it is affecting the national parks. Abbey critiques arguments for uni...
In my generation, I am able to catch what is relatively the tail end of this slow extinction. And to be quite honest, I had not devoted a moment of thought to this phenomenon until I read Leopold’s passages. In fact, I am always the first one to compliment a new highway project that saves me five minutes of driving or even a tidy farmstead as I pass. Now, more than ever, my thoughts are in limbo. It was just last week when my dad pointed out an area off the highway that displayed miles of slowly rolling cornfields. His reaction was to the beauty of the countryside. Mine was to question his. I found myself thinking about all of the hard work that created that beauty, and then how much more beautiful it was fifty, a hundred, or even two centuries ago. Only the mind’s eye can create this beauty now, and that is exactly why Leopold’s concerns are validated.
“It is a vision, a dream, if you prefer, like Martin Luther King’s, and it means clustering on a planetary scale.” (Nash) In Historian Roderick Nash’s essay entitled “Island Civilization: A vision for Human Occupancy of Earth in the Fourth Millennium,” Nash not only proposes the ideology of Island Civilization but also challenges readers to be informed of the rights of nature. Gaining insight on the options of preservation and nature from masterminds like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Wallace Stegner. Nash devises a plan of action for Earth during the fourth millennium. Realizing the illustrate of our worlds “wilderness” Nash educates on the ways in which the natural world will evolve one thousand years from now.
In his journal, Thoreau muses upon twenty years of changes in New England’s land and beasts. He lists the differences in plants and animals, comparing them to past accounts and descriptions. He questions if the growing human presence has resulted in “a maimed and imperfect nature.” Cronon believes that this is an important question to consider. He points out that although changes do happen in nature, it is not so easy to determine how they changed. He is also not sure if Thoreau’s description of “a maimed and imperfect nature” is the correct way to refer to ecology, since it is by its essence, a fluid system of changes and reactions. Cronon does not deny the impact of
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 388-390. Print.
Environmentalist and desert-lover, Edward Abbey in his essay “The Great American Desert” warns readers about the perilous dangers of the American deserts while simultaneously stirring curiosity about these fascinating ecosystems. He both invites and dissuades his readers from visiting the deserts of North America through the use of humor and sarcasm. In this essay, he is rhetorically successful in arguing that the open spaces of the undeveloped deserts are sacred places in need of respect and protection through his clever use of pathos and logos.
He is unable to understand why they can’t leave nature alone. His frustration stems from the fact that so much valuable land is being destroyed, to accommodate the ways of the lazy. It seems as though he believes that people who are unwilling to enjoy nature as is don’t deserve to experience it at all. He’s indirectly conveying the idea that humans who destroy nature are destroying themselves, as nature is only a mechanism that aids the society. In Desert Solitaire Abbey reminds the audience, of any age and year of the significance of the wild, enlightening and cautioning the human population into consciousness and liability through the use of isolation as material to ponder upon and presenting judgments to aid sheltering of the nature he
In Emerson’s “Nature” nature is referred to as “plantations of god” meaning that nature is sacred. Also mentioned, is that “In the woods is perpetual youth”(#) conveying that nature keeps people young. Therefore, these excerpts show that nature is greatly valued by these transcendentalists. Transcendentalists would likely care significantly about the environment. In contrast, nowadays nature is often and afterthought. Natures’ resources are being depleted for human use, and the beauty of nature is also not as appreciated by modern people as it was by transcendentalists. The threat to nature in modern times contrasts to the great appreciation of nature held by authors like Emerson and
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
First of all, Edward Abbey admits to being a certain bias and that he is a, “butterfly chaser, googley eyed bleeding heart and wild conservative.” So, in other words he is intending this article to be read by environmental activist who will support his opinion and the action that he is trying to take. Edward Abbey worked as a seasonal park ranger for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area back in 1967, so of course he would be against any environmental action taken to change the canyon. He stated that before the damnation of the canyon that there were streams, waterfalls, plunge pools, and plenty of wildlife. Now you can only find that on a small scale and that these thing...
Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century Muir is often seen as one of the most pro-preservation
Leopold defends his position the advent of a new ethical development, one that deals with humans’ relations to the land and its necessity. This relationship is defined as the land ethic, this concept holds to a central component referred to as the ecological consciousness. The ecological consciousness is not a vague ideal, but one that is not recognized in modern society. It reflects a certainty of individual responsibility for the health and preservation of the land upon which we live, and all of its components. If the health of the land is upheld, its capacity of self-renewal and regeneration is maintained as well. To date, conservation has been our sole effort to understand and preserve this capacity. Leopold holds that if the mainstream embraces his ideals of a land ethic and an ecological consciousness, the beauty, stability and integrity of our world will be preserved.
Tourism is a typical activity of fashion that the public participate widely and it has grown in importance over recorded human history. Innumerable articles refer tourism as “the world’s largest industry”; policy-makers, analysts, and scholars often speak of the size of the tourism compared to that of other industries (Smith 2004: 26). These series of misleading statement, together with the mass media’s reports (out of context), make the idea that tourism is a single large industry branded into many people’s minds. However, in this essay I will demonstrate that it is a simplistic and misleading idea, which should be replaced by the plural term, “tourism industries”. Moreover, tourism is not the world’s largest industry, but largest service sector.