THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR

As long as I can remember, while growing up in a small town ranch, I would always see vast open pastures of seemingly endless acres. It was beautiful; as a small child, it could have easily been compared to how John Muir felt when he arrived at the Sierra Nevada and said “No description of Heaven that I have ever heard or read of seems half so fine. “As I got older and began doing chores around the ranch, I started learning more about what is happening on our land. To me it had always been about riding four wheelers at top speed with friends, camping under a big tree on the highest hill in the middle of one of our pastures, or swimming in a cat fish pond(yes, we swam in ponds) . No longer, however, was it about this. Nature in itself was no longer a place for my recreation. When I would come home or walk outside, I was no longer looking at my playground, but instead I was looking at where I worked.

The exploitation of nature for fiscal value has always been around. Just like my grandparents raising cattle, only to sell them at the local auction for a particular value, major companies are making profit by destroying an irreplaceable part of our earth. Oil companies drill, Lumber yards cut, Miners dig, and the list goes on.

Valmik Thapar, sums this up in his blog about the exploitation of nature’s treasury by saying “The only way to understand wealth is to illustrate how much of this wealth we exploit.” Simply put, the subliminal wealth that nature provides can be measured by how much money can be made from it.

CLICK HERE FOR VALMIK'S FULL BLOG

Going back to the cattle we raised as a kid, the value of each head was not measured intrinsically, but according to my grandfather, instrumentally.



CLICK HERE FOR MEDIA SOURCE
According to the above link, “Commercial Uses of Natural Resources”, the damage just from the forestry alone include: soil erosion, blocking of natural flow of water, the degradation of landscapes, and displacement of wildlife. On this link, there is a table under a category called “forestry”. In the landscaping section of this table, the article states “the forest is not renewable resources”, meaning that once it is gone, it does not come back ABRACADABRA! Now you see it, now you don’t. John Muir (1865-1946), founder of the Sierra Club, was an advocate to eliminate this very idea of treating nature as an indispensable resource. William Cronon refers to this when he talks about the preservation of the frontier in “The Trouble with Wilderness”. Once people started to realize things were not coming back, they opted to preserve what they had left.
When lumber companies see a meadow of lush pine, they do not see this as the beauty of nature, they see dollar signs. Everyone has surely heard of Enron, and recently BP, and the corresponding oil spills. I wonder how much the CFO’s of each company felt remorse for their damage towards nature as opposed to the damage to their wallet.
There is a paradox to nature, though, some parts of nature are held on a higher ground than others. You can see this in Cronon’s reading.



FIRST, THINK ABOUT A REDWOOD TREE



NOW, THINK ABOUT A PINE TREE

Why is it okay to destroy pine and preserve redwood? If it’s for lumber, it seems to make more sense to chop down the bigger tree right? Bigger tree makes more wood right? WRONG! The redwood is "awe inspiring" and brings forth that sense of sublime that Cronon and Muir speak of. If humans lived this way I would be screwed. Would I suffer for being shorter than other people?

Don’t chop the head off the short people!

By: Justin W. Drummond