“Will-of-the-Land”: The Political Action of the Wilderness Ecology

Extract

Extreme temperatures, radical weather events, and species’ extinctions have all taken place or been foreshadowed during the Earth’s current ecological crisis. Following these events, climate scientist William Ripple and more than one hundred of his peers penned and signed a “Warning to Humanity” in November of 2017, cautioning humankind to rethink and readdress our relationship to the natural world. Ignoring the concerns expressed in this letter, they warned, would have extreme consequences for humanity. Despite these experts’ urgings, earth-harming behaviors have continued unabated. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation that shrunk Bears Ears National Monument in favor of oil and gas interests in the weeks following the letter's publication, and his administration opened the door to new oil and gas exploration and drilling in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.. Mass deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has continued for more than thirty years. These commodifying, profit-oriented actions have taken advantage of the Earth’s wildlands despite Ripple's and his peers’ urgings that such actions are not in humanity’s best interests.