California's Wilderness: A Necessity

By: Allyson Beach

The state of California is moving away from sustainable living and stable futures and is instead threatening the fundamental nature of our state with increased logging and the destruction of proposed wilderness areas. We are, at upsetting speeds, destroying the natural beauty and rich environment of California. These irresponsible practices, magnified by overpopulation, threaten our watershed, clean air and California landscape daily. We must not turn to more logging to temporarily solve these problems. Instead now is the time to direct job efforts and skills in environmentally sustainable practices. Upton Sinclair once said, "It is difficult getting a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." Throughout the past decades, jobs have been geared around fossil fuel dependent energy and the desecration of environmental resources. With unconventional increases in greenhouse gasses, rising CO2 levels, and high unemployment rates, now is the time to act with the creation of jobs geared towards sustainability.

This is the opportunity to positively shift our state's conservation practices to reflect the environmental need of its people. Now is the time to start over. We need our environment, foothills, and established wilderness areas to keep the balance of our ecological community. We need those areas for the state of California to endure and thrive. If we continue with our current practices, we are essentially destroying a lifeline: a chance to remember the uniqueness of California and a chance to recognize our beginnings and return to the simplistic joy of the wilderness. Man has always tried to conquer his surroundings and exert his dominance over this world. The earth is not meant to be destroyed for the sake of authority. It is not a business we have the right to manipulate. It is the source of our being.

We must realize that we depend on clean water, air and environmental surroundings to survive. We must appreciate our call to stewardship by protecting the California foothills and making the many areas of proposed wilderness an established, designated area protected by congress. These changes need to be made today in order root in modern society to ensure continued growth and enforcement by the leaders of tomorrow. It is up to us to recognize California's need because in the words of Edward Abbey, "Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit".