People from around the world visit America’s national parks for a multitude of reasons. The parks offer unparalleled natural beauty, outstanding recreational activities, important historical preservation and education, and both mental and physical health improvement opportunities. Appropriating adequate funding to the national parks is essential to continue offering this to all Americans.I was happy to see something like this in the school paper but I was soon to be disappointed. The following day, Wednesday March 30th, I picked up the school paper again and when I got to the opinion page saw this letter to the editor. I was seriously disappointed by what the author had to say because he seemed to be drastically misinformed. So I am going to try to destruct a lot of his argument, let me make sure to preface this by saying my economic background is lacking and there will be a lot of statements from personal experience that may not apply to everyone but I feel that these will work best for the arguments that he makes. So lets get started shall we.
While the author looks at the benefits of national parks, he fails to realize what the costs are. The budget for national parks is close to $3 billion. However, if you look at the budget for the department that oversees national parks (Department of Interior), its budget authority for 2011 is $18 billion.$3 billion may sound like a lot of money but even when you compare it to the whole $18 billion for the Department of the Interior (DOI) that is really a small percentage. But let's expand this out, according to the New York Times, click the link for a really cool way to see where your money goes, the Federal Budget for 2010 was $3.60 trillion and President Obama's plan for 2011 is $3.69 trillion. So what does this mean? It means that if we cut all funding to the NPS you wouldn't see a change in either of those numbers. So how much percentage wise are we talking about, less than 1% of the federal budget for 2010 and in fact is less that 0.1% of the total budget. So we really won't save that much money if we cut the NPS out entirely.
Instead of spending money trying to conserve land and national resources, I would feel better auctioning off government-owned land, national parks and other resources. The federal government owns nearly 30 percent, or 650 million acres, of the United States.I included these two paragraphs together because lets face it they are arguing for the same thing. So his problem isn't with the NPS it is with the DOI, whose total operating budget is still less than 1% of the entire US Budget. These federal owned land which he feels should be sold include the National Parks but a far larger percentage of them belong to National Forests and National Grasslands, with some other land uses being by the BLM and Indian Reservations among others. National Forests and Grasslands are far from being just protected land they are land that the government allows for private use of. They do this by allowing logging and cattle grazing in these lands. Wait what? Yes that is right these lands can be used by private companies/individuals for logging and grazing but the government asks for a fee and that the land isn't overgrazed or clear cut. In order words they prevent private companies from destroying these resources for future use, so American will continue to have natural resources so we can continue to be a great country into the future, oh yeah and so we can continue to have clean drinking water.
Another solution proposed by Dr. Walter E. Williams of George Mason University is allowing people to exchange future Social Security benefits for government-owned land.
The author also mentions how national parks can promote exercise and education. Nature is not the only place to get physical exercise. Doing an intense cardiovascular workout would burn more calories than hours at a national park.Getting a 30 min "intense cardiovascular workout" may burn more calories in the short term, not that I am sure about this fact, but long hikes can build up endurance which means that you will have a better metabolism and be able to burn more calories sitting watching TV at the end of the day than if you just went to the gym. Also I feel the author has never hiked up a trail that included 2,000+ feet of elevation change over ~4 miles starting at ~1 mile above sea level, I loved the Guads, because trust me you are burning a ton of calories no matter who you are.
Now this next statement really got to me:
As for education, if people really wanted to get an understanding of history, they could spend an afternoon at the library or do online research.I can read about Gettysburg all I want, I can hear that the Confederates had to cross a mile of open field, uphill, till the cows come home, but until you are standing at the Confederate position in Gettysburg and you see how impossible it really was. You can "learn" history from books but you don't really know history till you can experience it yourself, see it for yourself. This also neglects the fact that many of these historical locations saw the deaths of thousands of American soldiers many of them were never identified and were buried in mass graves which are often lost to history. The only thing we know about these graves is that they were on the battlefields, these battlefields serve as reminders as well as graveyards. The Civil War battlefields of the east especially those around Washington D.C. have already been built up around and we have lost portions of history forever and we need it to stop.
I am not going to address his last two paragraphs as they are purely political and I don't want to get into these statements here. Some other arguments have thankfully been put forth in a letter to the editor of the DT today, Friday April 1st, so go read those as well. Also I want to admit that there are reasons that you could justify cutting some money from the NPS and DOI but none of the above are them. Let me end with words that should probably be familiar to all, well at least those from the U.S., explain the need to protect a lot of these lands from President Abraham Lincoln.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment