Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, pp. 141-199.
"To sin by their silence makes cowards of men."
Abraham Lincoln.
Who was John Muir and what were
his arguments for the values he felt were inherent in wild areas?
The "Grand Canyon" of the Yellowstone River, Wyoming.
Terms to know:
He fought to protect the Sierra Nevada Mountain Canyon called "Hetch Hetchy Valley" a deeply carved glacial scar whose water was coveted by the City of San Francisco, recovering from the devastating earthquake of 1905.
Yellowstone, Grand Canyon of (1872)
Yosemite Valley (1864)
Hetch Hetchy Valley
The number of sides to the argument over Hetch Hetchy Valley:
1. private power, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E)
2. public power, City of San Francisco , municipal water & power
3. scenic preservation, Sierra Club
A clash of Values that continues to this very day:
Water supply and Flood control
Split in federal agencies
Great Central Valley, California Aqueduct, 2004.
Department of Interior, 1849 (USDI)
Bureau of Reclamation in the USDI (1902)
National Forests and the USDA (Agriculture, 1864)
National Parks in the USDI (1916)
Urbanization vs. agrarian values
Joe Knowles
Progressives versus traditionalists
Aldo Leopold
Dates to know: what happened?
1876
1891
June 4, 1892
1901
April 18, 1906
What does he mean?1910
1913
“…Americans of the late nineteenth century realized that many of the forces which shaped their national character were disappearing.”
p. 145.
“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relation with gadgets and middlemen, that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”
p. 199.
“All history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable set of values….raw wilderness.”
Ibid.
The art of consumer waste:
"The collective is made up of just lots and lots of individual consumers."
