Deja Vu

Reading Schneider’s chapter titled “Forever Wild”, and hearing about the park got me thinking about the parallels I see in our world today. Why is it important to understand, and study the circumstances under which the trees in the Adirondacks received so much protection? A decision to cut down trees in the Adirondacks has to be approved by “two consecutive sessions of the legislature and then voted on by the general public” (Schneider, 227). No other park in the US that I am aware of has that incredible amount of protection. The reason why it is important for us to understand the circumstances under which this protection was created is because it is a microcosm of the global climate issues we face today. Maybe if we can synthesize the environment in which article 7 section 7 was passed, maybe we can begin to have pass much more important laws protecting us globally. 

George Perkins Marsh wrote a book Man and Nature in 1864 that was essentially a warning to that if we were to continue the rate of logging in the Adirondacks, they could eventually become as desolate as the face of the moon (Schneider, 220). While we now know that there is no way that the Adirondacks could come to resemble the face of the moon through logging, his words incite some déja vu for me. Marsh’s book sounds a little bit like Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth published in 2006. Although I never read the book, my parents talked about it an awful lot at home, in both joking and serious tones. Marsh published his book 30 years before the legislation fully protecting the Adirondacks was passed, and at this point, it doesn’t seem ridiculous to imagine that it will take another 20 years (30 after the publication of An Inconvenient Truth) to pass equally groundbreaking laws concerning climate change. 

We have had an undeniable increase in natural disasters in recent years, and maybe even some that can rival the record lows in water levels and the record highs in forest fires in the Adirondacks in 1893 (Than). But what is going to actually spur us into action is a really dreadful natural disaster, directly linked to our carbon emissions. A storm of sufficient magnitude would quell the tide of oil men and lobbyists, formerly timber men of the Adirondacks, and would scare law makers just as the erratic climate of the 1890’s scared those law makers into unanimously passing article 7, section 7. Is it possible that by studying the decision in 1994 we can more easily and efficiently make environmental decisions today?

sources:

Schneider, Paul. The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness. New York: H. Holt, 1998. Print.

Than, By Ker. "Scientists: Natural Disasters Becoming More Common." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 17 Oct. 2005. Web. 06 Apr. 2015.