In 1979, Alfred Runte declared that land in the United States would only be preserved if it were deemed worthless. Runte wasn’t just talking about any land. He was considering the magnificent places that we’ve come to expect in our national parks. “Although Americans as a whole admit to the ‘beauty’ of the national parks,” he wrote, “rarely have perceptions based on emotion overcome the urge to acquire wealth.” The national park system, he concluded, would only survive if places like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone “appear worthless and remain worthless.” Beauty itself could not protect parks from being destroyed.
I first heard about the “worthless land thesis” from Mike Anderson, a historian with the National Park Service. We were standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, holding our hats against a playful wind. A hundred years ago, he explained, an Arizona prospector named Henry Ralph Cameron had pretty well taken over the canyon. His title to the south rim and a major trail was derived from mining claims, which Cameron believed gave him the authority to set up a brisk tourist trade. Cameron charged a toll to approach the canyon, and an exorbitant price for water. He also charged the steady flow of tourists to use the only outhouse in the vicinity. When the Department of the Interior decided to change the canyon’s status from national monument to national park, Mr. Cameron called foul. Eventually, the case went to the Supreme Court where the justices found for the federal government. Without any mineral to be mined, the beauty of the park could be preserved.
While it wasn’t clear from Mike’s presentation whether he himself subscribed to the worthless land thesis, he did suggest that politics made it difficult to preserve land that could be put to use. The Park Service had to show that the land “wasn’t good for agriculture, mining, or cattle.” They didn’t want to be in the business of competing with industrial interests.
I’d like to say that the beauty of the Grand Canyon is recognized enough that no economic interest would do it harm, but Mike told us otherwise. Over the years, the Park Service has fought against dam proposals that would have altered the flow of the Colorado River. With the wind threatening to take our floppy hats for a condor glide, some of us wondered what the park might do should a developer suggest a wind farm. Does beauty and majesty only have a chance when there’s no gold in the butte, no energy in the air currents?
The battle over oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) suggests the answer is yes. In 1960, when the refuge was created, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was one of its strongest proponents. “The beauty,” he explained, “is in part the glory of seeing moose, caribous, and wolves living in a natural state, untouched by civilization.” But since 1980, when Congress ordered a study of the coastal plain and its resources (particularly petroleum), the pressure has been on to add oil wells into the wildlife mix.
But unlike the rascal Cameron, who clearly had only his own interest in mind, this new generation of developers is far more savvy. “America needs jobs and energy,” says the anwr.org website. Too much foreign oil, they explain, is bad for the economy. The website showcases veteran organizations, particularly the American Legion, who promote development of the ANWR coastal plain rather than fight foreign wars. A spokesman for the Inupiat people explains how necessary drilling is for the future of his people. The battle between greed and beauty has been replaced by the battle between justice and beauty. It’s hard to argue for beauty when the opposition looks like indigenous poverty or more of the enlisted coming back in body bags.
Were the coastal plains of this pristine environment deemed worthless, we wouldn’t have to think through these hard, hard decisions. Were there no gas or oil reserves below herds of caribou and caribou hunters, we wouldn’t have to face the sad suspicion that beauty’s splendor is only protected when there is no resource to lure us towards ugliness. Without gas and oil, we tell ourselves, the moose, caribou, and wolves might be preserved in their untouched glory.
One way to look at this conundrum is to accept the fact that, despite the hard work of environmentalists, the beautiful things of this world are going away. Even without oil drilling, the Artic National Wildlife Refuge is disappearing through climate change. The polar bears are in decline and native people are losing sacred land as it melts away. Our many human impulses, not just the impulse to acquire wealth, seem destined to destroy the beautiful things of this planet.
Another way to handle this troubling thesis is to look for the beauty in worthless things. The Canadian Edward Burtynsky creates massive photographs of vast landscapes of manufactured landscapes, revealing a strange beauty in what we have wrought. Wandering through a garbage dump, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek recommends developing an aesthetic of artificiality. In the documentary The Examined Life, Zizek urges us to “recreate, if not beauty, than an aesthetic dimension in things like this, in trash itself, that is the true love of the world.” Beauty, Zizek tells us, is not something we find but something we make through love.
The worthless land thesis suggests that beauty is only secure in places not valued by developers. Those places where cattle cannot graze and wheat cannot grow, where oil does not pool and minerals will not congregate. But even should the worst occur, I don’t see beauty going away. Either we come to find splendor in piles of discarded plastic or we compose exquisite fugues in memory of polar bears. As we use up the precious resources of this planet, more and more land becomes worthless. Perhaps in those discarded spaces, beauty will find a more secure home.
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