This administration and the congressional
majority are profoundly anthropocentric, following a line of thinking
that nothing is doing any good unless it is producing a commodity for
human beings. Human beings are, according to the fundamentalist
theology of this administration, God’s chosen species. We have have
therefor been authorized to despoil as necessary in order to accumulate
rich trusts, houses on steroids in gated communities, Cadillac SUVs,
and golf memberships on exclusive links. Commodity outdoor recreation
is the closest thing to a commodity that a national park can produce;
it’s quantifiable in user-days and park admission dollars and is
focused on what is fun for the people involved, not what is good for
America’s crown jewels of nature.
That’s Jordan Fisher Smith, author of Nature Noir: A Park Ranger’s Patrol in the Sierra, a memoir of his years as a Ranger on the American River in northern California. He’s being interviewed right now in inkwell.vue, an online interview forum I am involved with.
Smith goes on:
…in this administration, science and resource protection are
subordinated to the will of big business and a kind of posturing toward
freedom–freedom to drive a snowmobile in a national park. Meanwhile
real personal freedoms–freedom from unreasonable search and siezure
under the Fourth Ammendment, for example, are curtailed in the name of
national security. We’ve been seeing multiple cases where
environmental scientists report findings and the president’s people
change those findings before they’re released.
The interview is a good read, and I expect the book is, too.