I wonder, after 500 years, after 1000 years of industrialization, what will be left of Earth?
Just saw an trailer for an unreleased game: rollercoaster tycoon, but for parking lots.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3031880/Car_Park_Capital/
In the last 150 years we went from almost zero protected areas to 26 million sq km of nature preserve, or a fifth of the Earth’s total landmass (excluding Antarctica, which is also protected). Out of the ~106 million sq km of habitable land, half of it is unprotected forest (37%) and shrubland. Only about a third of that forest is used for lumber so there’s room to protect about thrice as much as is already protected.
We have to remain vigilant but the global zeitgeist is very much on the side of preserving more nature rather than less. There will be more hickups but I wouldn’t be surprised if we double the amount of protected land in the next 100 years.
We do NOT live in those times, and the edifices propped up and successful in Europe and America, well and truly wish to undermine those protections.
It takes resources and it takes a middle class / working class for the collective will to matter. When those groups are under resourced, then it’s a question on whether nature appeals to some coterie of elites.
It creates a narrative of momentum, which is necessary to not be overwhelmed by the situations we face, but it’s no longer viable to ignore it.
As just one sign - Academics in environmental science and conversation have PTSD, because of how hopeless things are.
In that same 150 year period, more species have been wiped out by man than in history.
As a species we are a force of nature.
I can find common ground that some of us are changing and that efforts are being made.
I disagree that it is inevitable- it’s hard won and must continue to be fight for
hate to break it to you but over the span of history, elites have been way better at natural preservation than the middle and working classes.
Correlation here is not causation. By that same criteria, elites have been responsible for the grandest acts of destruction and waste as well.
But I suppose someone may want to leave preservation efforts up to random chance and inheritance. Subjective preferences can’t be debated after all.
Individual wealth does not cause environmental damage, it mass wealth that does.
The global zeitgeist is very much not on the side of preservation, seeing how much irreversible damage has already been done, and how nothing is tried to prevent more from being done.
Let's not even talk of global warming, ocean acidification, ecosystem collapse...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
500 years sounds optimistic. Are we ignoring climate change here?
We lost the majority of the old, large trees, but the forests came back.
> The world that is being created by the accumulation of technical means is an artificial world and hence radically different from the natural world.
> It destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world, and does not allow this world to restore itself or even to enter into a symbiotic relation with it. The two worlds obey different imperatives, different directives, and different laws which have nothing in common.
> Just as hydroelectric installations take waterfalls and lead them into conduits, so the technical milieu absorbs the natural. We are rapidly approaching the time when there will be no longer any natural environment at all. When we succeed in producing artificial aurorae boreales, night will disappear and perpetual day will reign over the planet.
There is no justification for Sole Source Contract here. There are many companies that can run hotels, concession stands, and such.
Full and open competition.
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/18/crater-lake-hospitali...
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/23/national-parks-servic...
They got terminated due to numerous fuel leaks, consistent food safety issues and a significant number of visitor complaints. Employee living conditions were described as filthy and disgusting. And they manage a bunch of parks, including Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Olympic NP's.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/06/25/yosemi...
You have lots of great parks with forests and actual wildlife
I hope you don't repeat our mistake.
Why not just take the areas inside national parks that are currently commercially developed, remove them from the park, and sell them off to private owners. Now there can just be a law that you can't build a damn thing on national park land, and then private companies can run commercial services on non-park land and there won't be this conflict of interest.
If you're advocating even all of that should be removed as well, then we're really talking about converting national parks to wilderness areas.
While the point I am addressing here is only about the issue of commercial development I wouldn't have any problem converting them to pure wilderness areas. The entire concept of having a national park be a wilderness area that has little islands of crowded commercial areas with heavy traffic in the middle just seems strange to me and defeats the purpose.
I don’t think having some amenities is a bad thing. Honestly the biggest problem is not their presence in places like Yellowstone or Grand Teton or Olympic or Mount Rainier it’s how poorly some of them are maintained and the sheer quantity of tourists especially in places like Yellowstone which is a UN World Heritage site. At almost every lodge I’ve stayed in in those parks they’ve been dirty and very expensive.
In US the best exemplification of the attitude is when in WA rangers chopped rappel anchors in the middle of nowhere so someone could die on a sketchy natural descent because hey it is totally possible without bolts. Keep wild wild or whatever. I personally think the only reason not to put a Starbucks on top of Rainier is that the water boils too slowly up there.
primitivesuave•6mo ago
However, until people would rather camp than stay at the $600/night hotel, and cook over a campfire rather than eat overpriced food, there will always be a lucrative opportunity in Yosemite Valley that is only available to the most politically-connected companies.
SoftTalker•6mo ago
jonah•6mo ago
I have family who worked for them at Yellowstone, Crater Lake, and Glacier NP. (They also have the concession at the Grand Canyon and Death Valley among others.)
Seemed like a fairly good company from what little I gathered.
stenius•6mo ago
intended•6mo ago
Without referees, competition can simply be on lowering costs and providing cheaper service.
If demand is in-elastic (there’s only one Yosemite) then simply invoking competition isn’t going to be a solution.
Without referees with teeth, the market can easily optimize for profit without giving a damn about anything else.
thrance•6mo ago
Blaming "people" accomplishes nothing.
ghaff•6mo ago
harmmonica•6mo ago
That's obviously conspiracy-level thinking and totally untrue, but given the attempt to sell public lands in the BBB, and the material staffing cuts at the park service (and more broadly), it's really easy to believe that these types of efforts will lead to cordoning off these spaces for private profit ("Yosemite's hundreds of thousands of acres, we're only taking away 20 for the hotel, no biggie!"). Gotta remain vigilant or I think that's where all of this ends up.
Note that the prices for the lodge at the north rim were pretty expensive already so not saying that hasn't already somewhat been the case, but it's not (or was not) physically off limits to the public or only reserved for the richest of the rich and that's where I fear this is headed.
whyenot•6mo ago
I think this borders on "gatekeeping." There are other lodging options in Yosemite Valley which are much less expensive than the Ahwahnee. Yosemite belongs to the American people, and everyone should have a chance to enjoy it, not only those who want to sleep in a tent and cook on a fire. There has been paid lodging in the valley since before Yosemite was a park.
Food and lodging in the valley are expensive. The shuttle bus system is currently a joke. Aramark, Delaware North, and YP&CC (especially in the malaise years 1970-1993) have not always been good stewards, but in spite of that, the park is a national treasure that all should have a chance to enjoy, not just those in the "rock climbing scene" who want to stay at Camp 4 and rough it.
Aramark's contract should be cancelled. It happened at Crater Lake, and the NPS would have justification to do it in Yosemite, but the last two transitions between concessioners was pretty bad; there is good reason for the NPS to be cautious. If there was the capacity for better NPS oversight, the best move would probably be to break up the contract into smaller pieces and have more than one main concessioner. The Ansel Adams Gallery and Yosemite Mountaineering School are already under different contracts and there is precedent from other national parks (for example Glacier).
stickfigure•6mo ago
I've given up on Yosemite. There are lots of other places to go in California (and beyond). Although they are starting to get crowded too...
whyenot•6mo ago
pfannkuchen•6mo ago
bix6•6mo ago
spauldo•6mo ago
Sure, I see a lot of foreign visitors, but I see a lot more domestic ones. I figure their money's just as good as mine, and it'd hardly be fair to complain about them after I've done the tourist thing in Japan, Spain, and Gibraltar.
terminalshort•6mo ago
Why? It's a wilderness park. The other 99.99% of America is always available to people who only want to stay in hotels and eat at restaurants.
spauldo•6mo ago
I can sleep in a tent any time of year (although I'll pass if it's over 90° at night), but my girlfriend needs a CPAP and has back problems that prevent her from sleeping on the ground. We both love nature and have visited dozens of parks, but for health reasons we can't really hike more than a couple miles a day. We still enjoy the parts we can see near the roads and visitor centers.
Every time we visit a new part of the country, parks are the first thing I look for. Both of us spent our childhoods camping, but in her case her parents were too poor to take her anywhere too far from Oklahoma, and my family mostly just visited the southwest. Neither of us have seen Yellowstone or California's coastal redwoods or Yosemite or Crater Lake or Glacier National Park, and those are all on our bucket list.
ryandrake•6mo ago
socalgal2•6mo ago
primitivesuave•6mo ago
The campsites are affordable and several have nice bathrooms/showers, but they get snatched up en masse at the beginning of the season by tour operators, so your only hope of getting one is by monitoring campflare.com.
We all collectively support an enormous commercial venture in and around Yosemite Valley, so we all collectively contribute toward increasing the price of entry and thus making the valley less accessible for everyone else.
mycall•6mo ago
apparent•6mo ago
kolchinski•6mo ago
I and many of my friends regularly wake up to do the 7am clickthrough on recreation.gov and often (though not always) are successful for the dates we're trying to get.
harimau777•6mo ago