H. D. Thoreau would be 200 July 12th. There has been much finger pointing over recent changes in national policy regarding conservation. Let's assume that there is reasonable evidence that the earth is getting warmer, overall. Also assume that human activity makes some contribution to this warming, though the percentage is unknown. And for that matter, if the entire world population became totally involved in radically reducing greenhouse gases and other conservation measures, no one knows how much that would slow global warming if any, and how long it would take to have an impact. So climate change deniers and conservationists have in common the inability to translate observable data on global warming into the "correction of" global warming at a defined rate of improvement. Thoreau was a surveyor and scientific observer of Nature, and he would have been concerned about this lack of information.
The verbal battle between the "deniers" and the "conservationists" is intense and both sides call on scientific studies, some of which are useful but limited, and others are of dubious validity. This does not mean that there is no way to decide the issue. There is ample data to show that carbon emissions pollute the environment and cause public health problems. There is ample data to show that the exponentially increasing human population is making the earth less habitable. And there is ample data to show that the accumulation of human waste and discarded materials (trash!) are impacting people's lives. Why then did Al Gore choose to focus on climate change as his "Inconvenient Truth" rather than pollution? Why do environmentalists so often focus on "extinction of species"("extinction is forever") as the crucial issue, rather than quality of life of human habitability? The answer is political, not scientific. Climate change and extinction are dramatic extreme situations which are presumed to be irreversible. They are presented as relatively all or none: either we prevent the earth from "warming up" or the seas rise, cities are flooded, and crops dry out = major human crisis. This would have appealed to Thoreau. Living for two years in a cabin by a lake, and withdrawing into the simplest lifestyle was his way of saying "all or none": either you give up all the useless trappings of modern (19th century) life or you don't. Most people didn't and still don't and this stance is more symbolic and media driven than practical and life focused.
If we want to be "measured" conservationists we might start with a few simple assumptions:
1) set aside some land for wilderness and natural beauty and do not develop it, and utilize other lands effectively for economic purposes
2) regulate the discharge of toxic materials into the environment so that each person has a safe and practically healthy surrounding space
3) consume materials in such a manner that the earth and people in it are self sustaining and do not degrade its habitability.
Each of these proposals seems reasonable enough until one begins to ask "how much" and "which places" and "who must stop consuming what". For both individuals and countries these complex issues became controversial debates with frustrating outcomes.
The Grand Canyon is relatively preserved though parts are flooded by the Hoover dam which provides significant hydroelectric power for Nevada and California. But Glen Canyon was flooded and destroyed by the Glen Canyon dam in the 1960s despite a major political battle by the Sierra Club. This is considered a great natural loss of a beautiful environment. But without it, the silt debris in Lake Mead would likely have choked off the Hoover Dam by now and created new problems. Changing environmental patterns always have consequences not always foreseen.
New England was beset by acid rain in the 1950s, (and London terrible smog storms), and power plant emissions were presumed to be significant factors. After major political battles, emissions were reduced and coal firing greatly reduced, and now the coal industry is fighting back to try and regain jobs it will probably never use. Changes in regulation of the environment have human consequences which must be factored in.
The oceans are currently filled with unthinkable amounts of pollution, especially along coastlines, because it is easy to dump trash into them, and the assumption is made that they are so vast that the trash would somehow "disappear". It hasn't and it now forms island like accumulations in regions of current intersection. Do we really not care enough about the preservation of ocean space to find other ways (more expensive) to eliminate trash, or not create it in the first place? None of these are big headline issues for the nightly news. They are the basis for fund raising drives by organizations that advocate for conservation and the environment. Why do we need such organizations instead of a general societal goal for preserving the earth as habitable?
Thoreau's message was that it was each individual's task to balance his or her life to the needs of the natural world. But what if the person is too greedy? or doesnt have any knowledge of the natural world because he grew up in Queens(you know who you are)? or works for a company that saves money for profits by not attending to environmental issues?
Is it possible to create a sustained environmental focus based on individual initiative? The Sierra Club arranges outdoor activities and trips for its members, and the general public, including trips to National Parks and scenic areas. If everyone in the country visited natural regions every year would that help? Or would it just crowd the natural areas and make them "theme parks" with horrible traffic? Should everyone bear the additional costs of recycling trash and waste, or should the poor be required to pay less and the wealthy more? What is fair? For centuries rivers around great population centers have been polluted by waste human and industrial. The Ganges is a dramatic example, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire because of pollution, Love Canal in New York is credited with multiple cancer deaths as a result of pollution. Who should bear the cost of protecting the rivers and how to offset the disposal of chemicals and other materials if they cannot just be dumped? Environmentalists see this as clearly all-or-none: stop polluting, stop developing and honor the land. Commercial interests all agree except for the particular interest of theirs: stop polluting, but what I am doing doesn't have evidence that it is toxic "enough" to humans. (Why is it ok to dump any manufactured chemicals into rivers?) Political solutions are most effective when they balance the needs of both parties in the situation. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to find this balance, and no small part of this is the rhetoric of the conservation movement and its assurance that in a certain number of years the world will be irreversibly The current administration has withdrawn the US from the Paris Accords (has it really?). This backlash is the result of targeting key corporate "bogeymen" and they in turn fund political opponents. Companies do some bad things. And so do people. And getting people and companies to change is a political process best accomplished by real negotiation and not by the polarization of the current debate on both sides. And by the way, does anyone really think that the country will return to using coal as a major fuel source? How can the people impacted by this declining industry be realistically empowered to economic recovery?
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