Through most of human history, the forest, beaches and rivers – they were the foundation, timeless and essential. They were there. Nothing was more real.
That was before two-thirds of the world’s flowing fresh water had been dammed on its way to the sea.1 That was before beachfront resort development was named an “international megatrend.”2 It was before clear-cut logging razed whole forests to the ground and mountaintop removal mining removed whole mountains. It was before 83 percent of the planet was affected by a “direct human footprint.”3
We live in what many scientists now call the Anthropocene, the Human Age. Past epochs have been marked by ice age glaciers or collisions with wayward meteorites, but the extraordinary geological force of our times is us, that rascally species known as Homo sapiens. We book climate-altering transcontinental flights in the name of ecotourism, dig up whole landscapes for the rare earth elements that run our smart phones, and feed 10 percent of the world’s forage fish catch—anchovies, mackerel, smelt—to our pet cats.4 We are the makers and breakers of the world. That’s just how we roll.
Today, the landscapes where we live out our adventures may be there one day and gone the next. It is up to us, an outcome of human decisions. A mountain is a choice. A river is a choice. You get the picture.
And yet, it has become fashionable to pooh-pooh protest movements. Waving signs and shouting slogans has come to seem somehow obsolete, utterly lacking in the postmodern awareness that our beliefs at any moment are, as the intellectual French economist Thomas Piketty would say, “a social construct in perpetual evolution.” Real, feet-in-the-street engagement seems almost pre-digital in its lack of cool, as though the decision to stake your visible, flesh-and-blood self to a cause is a form of blindness to the virtual networks our minds are now adrift in. With a simple Google search we can always assure ourselves that there is another way—and another, and another—of looking at every issue. “Protest never changes anything.” Or so the story goes.
Let’s take a look, then, at a map. It’s a map of British Columbia, mountains and valleys, the Pacific coast like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle…I can’t do better than to borrow from native-son writer Terry Glavin, who calls it “this ragged place.” B.C. is one of the world’s great adventure playgrounds, attracting explorers and fun hogs and weekend warriors. I live here, too, and this week alone I have plans to mountain bike the legendary North Shore, rock climb the legendary Squamish Chief, and canoe a lake that isn’t legendary, though maybe it should be.
But back to the map. Scattered across its surface we see the green polygons that mark parks and other protected areas. Nearly 16 percent of B.C. is preserved from industrial development, more than any other Canadian province.5 If B.C.’s parks were lumped together in a single mass, they would form an area larger than such entire U.S. states as New York, Iowa, and Georgia.