Tell Your Senators to Protect Our National Parks From Global Warming

I still remember my first visit to a national park. I was nine years old, and my family traveled to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. For a child from Northern New Jersey, it was a revelation. I was stunned by the scale of everything: the open sky, the unending pine forests, and the peaks that towered over Jackson Lake. I spent most of my time in the saddle -- like many young girls, I was horse crazy back then -- and fell thoroughly in love with the wild western landscape.

I recently shared those memories with Channel 13, New York's local PBS station, for a video accompanying Ken Burns' fantastic documentary series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

I am sure many of you can recall your first visit to a national park, or perhaps a beloved hike, climb, or sunset viewpoint. Burns' documentary does a great job of illustrating how deeply the park system has become embedded in our personal, familial, and national traditions.

But despite our country's valiant efforts to protect these iconic lands, the parks are now facing the most powerful threat in their history -- more potent even than industrial development, states-rights advocates, or Teddy Roosevelt's original opponents.

That force is global warming. And unlike mining, drilling, or grazing, it does not observe National Park Service boundaries. It undermines every landscape in its path.

A new report released by NRDC and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization called Parks in Peril details the ways climate change is altering the seasons, wildlife habitat, and flower-filled meadows we thought were preserved forever. It identifies the 25 most imperiled parks, and says that Glacier National Park could lose all its glaciers, Joshua Tree National Park all its Joshua trees, and Saguaro National Park all is saguaros.

The report also describes how my beloved Grand Tetons is threatened. Already, as a result of warming, its glaciers are melting, its snowpack is diminishing, and its breathtaking stands of aspen trees are dying off in something called "sudden aspen decline."

We don't have to let these treasures go. If we take steps now to curb our global warming pollution, we can preserve the values and natural resources that make our parks unique.

Back in 1916, Congress passed the National Park Service Organic Act to create the agency charged with protecting the parks.

Now it is time for Congress to pass a clean energy and climate law in order to safeguard our parks -- and all our lands -- from global warming. The House passed just such a law in June, and now the Senate is debating its version.

This Senate bill has many foes in the oil and gas industry, and passing it will require Americans to speak up in the name of our natural heritage.

Ken Burns' documentary reveals that we have an admirable history of doing just that. The series celebrates not just the beauty of the parks, but also the spirit which inspired their creation: the distinctly American idea that these places should be preserved, not for the elite or for private industry, but for everyone.

Generations of dedicated Americans fought to carve these parks into being. Yes, the effort started with the likes of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt (see my recent post about his new biography), but it also included ordinary citizens who did the hard work of surveying, writing letters, and calling on their lawmakers to protect precious wildlands.

We need to show the same vision for preserving great landscapes. We need to be fired up by the same passion for wilderness and natural beauty. And we need to feel the same impatience to get the job done.

We need to tell our senators to pass a climate bill now, so we can preserve our national parks for generations to come.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.

 

 

Comments

[SewaneeLeftist]

I'd be delighted to try to push my senators on this issue, especially to overcome the antiscience or hypocritical science manipulators who deny what most scientists consider a truism and not very debatable.

Unfortunately, my senators are Corker and Alexander from TN, who either deny the science or are so in thrall to the naysaying, nullification, and obstructionism of the Rushpublicans that they would never acknowledge that this was a problem, even though it (along with pollution) is a huge problem in the Great Smoky Mountain national park, one of the most visited national parks in the country.

Rightwing strong arm tactics and the interests of coal and other lobbies trump their desire to represent their constituents in a way that serve TN best, as well as the country.

[Richard2]

Frances, reputable data from earth satellites has confirmed that the earth's global temperature did not warm over the first decade of the 21st Century. This fact was noted recently by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, who is not a "denier."

If the earth's temperature was essentially stable for the past ten years, then it is difficult to see how the national parks were harmed by a stable climate environment. Also, if the earth's temperature continues to be essentially stable over the second decade of the 21st Century, then it again would be difficult to see how the parks would be harmed by this stable environment.

[sheila]

Killing all the wilderness outside of the parks with Big Wind, Big Solar and Big Transmission is not really the solution we need, though.

Since it's been proven to be cheaper, faster, and easier (not to mention democratic), why not build out 100% of our clean energy solutions entirely WITHIN THE EXISTING BUILT ENVIRONMENT and leave our ecosystems, whether formally designated as "national parks" or not, to perform their essential functions?

Sorry, you can't destroy the planet and call it "saving the planet." Sure, we know that "all energy production has some impact," but local, point of use solutions have NEGLIGIBLE impacts and Big Energy "solutions" are permanent, widespread ecosystem slaughter. We have a choice.