Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Turning national parks into corporate profit centers

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Turning national parks into corporate profit centers

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Dolack provides disturbing evidence that this process is already underway. Under corporation control the public parks will be relaxing restrictions on mining, drilling, timber harvesting, and cattle grazing. As government, which is essentially owned and controlled by the capitalist class, imposes more austerity cuts on park services, this trend is likely to accelerate.

Given the corporatization of ever more commons, we may yet be visiting Golden Arches National Park or Disneyland Dinosaur National Monument. Even if the most extreme right-wing plans to auction off public lands don’t ever come to fruition, ongoing neglect can only promise creeping corporate colonization of the United States National Park system.

Commercialization is still relatively minimal in national parks, but worrying signs are there.

Added to this corporate threat, global warming is also damaging public parks.