Environmental History in "The Trouble Term Paper

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Instead of valuing some parts of nature over others, we should cultivate a universal regard for all parts of nature, down to the lowliest tree in our back yard. Aldo Leopold would agree. His "land ethic" calls for a new philosophy that includes a moral respect for the land. Like Cronon, Leopold advocates an "ecological conscience," that includes a "conviction of individual responsibility," (435). Cronon realizes that humility and respect as well as "critical self-consciousness" should be the guiding forces of the environmentalist movement (p. 387).

However, Leopold too upholds a dualistic worldview that appears to be ingrained in American cultural consciousness. For Leopold, there are two different groups of people pulling in opposite directions: those who view land as soil and therefore commodity production, and those that view land as biota. Leopold makes a snickering comment about organic farming as well: "the discontent that labels itself 'organic farming' while bearing some of the earmarks of a cult, is nevertheless biotic in its direction," (p. 435). Cronon would note that the criticism of organic farming is itself a product of the insipid and ironic dualism that pervades the environmentalist movement. There is no reason why all farming cannot be organic in a true "ecological ethic."

Wilderness is a product of shifting social, economic, political, and cultural realities in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, according to Cronon. The social and economic revolutions taking place were in no small part due to industrialism. Were it not for the industrial development and urbanization, the current concept of wilderness as safe haven would probably have never been born. Wilderness was created out of nostalgia for an "older, simpler, truer world," (p. 384). People who lived in cities needed to create their opposite as an alternative for the harsh conditions of city life, including pollution. Alice Hamilton worked with immigrant victims of harsh factory working conditions and observed the effects of industrialism on human life in particular.

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Calling the labor practices a form of exploitation, Hamilton's commentary shows how strong and how necessary the impetus for wilderness creation was. Teddy Roosevelt's conviction that wilderness must be saved was ultimately a positive force in American history. After all, as Cronon points out, wilderness has the potential to remind people what to appreciate in our own back yards. The problem is that few people do take the time to appreciate the frog in their back yard because somehow it seems more mundane and trivial than the bald eagle on the top of the mountain.

Cronon's main motive in writing "The Trouble with Wilderness" is not to criticize the environmental or conservation movements but to "abandon the dualism that sees the tree in the garden as artificial," (387). All nature is sacred and sublime, including the grasses on the prairies and the marshlands in Florida. Labeling some parts of the natural world as "wilderness" makes those parts valuable in the public consciousness and consequentially, the public may ignore the beauty outside their bedroom window. The trees in Central Park are as valuable as the trees in Yosemite; labeling only creates artificial segregation. Ironically, the "wilderness" areas are now places of booming tourism and are hardly untouched by human hands.

Cronon also shows that Hetch Hetchy was one Eden among many in the world. The upside of the "wilderness" movement is that it did cause a widespread revival in respect for the land, which has spawned a cultural revolution in ethical thought such as Leopold describes. However, referring to some parts of the world as "wilderness" and others as simply "a park" is a problematic perspective borne of cultural biases. Wilderness was in fact created by forcibly removing Indians and thus, wilderness implies "the reassure of the history from which it sprang," (p.….....

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