Enemies of Nature--and Photography?

I admit to a fascination with photographs about the marks humans make on our landscape. Fine-art photographers in particular have taken up this study, with the likes of Emmet Gowin and David Maisel creating aerial images that read like abstract painting and drawing. Some of these are so beautiful, in fact, that they really cease to be an indictment of our stewardship of the earth. Their creators would disagree, I know. But I know that I’ve looked at such pictures, so handsomely made, and pretty much forgotten that their lines, tone, and color are often the product of human disrespect. (Below, Emmet Gowin’s view of off-road vehicle tracks along Utah’s Great Salt Lake; David Maisel’s image of strip mining in Arizona.)

There’s no ambiguity, however, to the photographs in Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation (Foundation for Deep Ecology/Chelsea Green, $60). The book’s illustrations are not particularly artful, and this is just as well, because it doesn’t distract from their content: the damage done by so-called off-road and all-terrain vehicles, from dirt bikes to dune buggies to snowmobiles, and of its perpetrators at play. If America is finally “getting” green, these motorists haven’t noticed. Some appear to think it’s their God-given right to gouge paths through pristine public lands, and to crush the diminishing habitat on which our remaining wildlife depends. And to deny more respectful users the magnificent silence of wilderness. And to stink up the place.

In the process they are also ruining the visual beauty and biological variety on which traditional nature photography depends. They are not just despoilers of the natural world (there are plenty of others, I know), but also enemies of photography.

In his foreword to the book, Foundation for Deep Ecology president Douglas Tompkins describes such behavior as unpatriotic. I can only imagine the response to that accusation of some off-roaders, for whom the freedom to go anywhere by internal combustion is part and parcel of our nation’s individualist culture. But doesn’t being a good American in 2008 require personal sacrifice and self-restraint for the common good? Doesn’t it require changes in behavior?

That said, Thrillcraft is sometimes overblown in its rhetoric and smug in its cleverness, unnecessary given the documentary totality of its pictures and text. The title of Tompkins’s foreword is “Thrillcraft, Slob Recreation, and Eco-Terrorism,” and one series of spreads pairs photographs of good and bad behavior—respectful use and abuse—trumpeting the difference with huge opposing adjectives such as “Reflective/Thoughtless” (an image of hikers taking in the view opposite a speeding ATV), “Cooperative/Self-Centered” (a team of canoeists vs. a jet skier) and “Careful/Careless” (cross-country skiers walking uphill vs. a snowmobiler shooting down a slope). This sort of grade-school lesson, right though it may be, doesn’t encourage dialogue about the issue, and is likely to disengage the very people who need to pay attention.

More effective, though, is the book’s reproduction of a series of print ads for various off-road vehicles. These make clear that thrillcraft are the agents of a knowing invasion of nature. “Eliminate all boundaries,” says one ATV ad. “Brute. As in beats up stuff,” reads another. “Dominate Everything,” says a third. America needs boundaries, not brutes. And the world is reeling from the effects of human beings trying to “dominate everything.”

The book’s two dozen essays, by a variety of scientists, policy experts, and activists, look at the off-road phenomenon from cultural, environmental, legal, historical, and economic perspectives. One essay addresses the charge of elitism often thrown back at conservationists. “Motorized recreationists often characterize quiet use advocates as elitists who want to lock up the land,” writes Tom Butler. “The moniker ‘elitist,’ however, may apply more accurately to thrillcraft manufacturers and marketers, and to thrillcraft users who elevate their own recreational pleasures above that of all other users of public land, the needs of wildlife, and the land community’s ecological health.”

Nothing could be more elitist than the bumper sticker on one ridiculously big-wheeled truck shown sloshing its way through wetlands: It reads “Sierra Club, Go Hike to Hell.” The driver needs a history lesson, since without the Sierra Club he might not have such places for his playpen. Such disproportionate contempt, let alone his monstrous truck, makes me wonder if the guy is angry about the size of his parts. (Below, from the book: swamp buggies in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve; dirtbiker outside Las Vegas, both by George Wuerthner.)

One of the book’s last pictures is of the inscription on the back of a motorcyclist’s T-shirt. Assuming they’re kept on a proper road, motorcycles can be environmentally friendly, using less gas and producing less pollution than cars if properly maintained. But the T-shirt’s message is typical of the all-terrain world’s f***-you attitude. It says “If you can read this, the bitch fell off.”

--Marvin Good

Comments

[William]

I want to see a book about the environmental consequences of people having food and a place to live. "Civilization," the new guilt trip.

[Marvin Good]

Hi William--I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm guessing it's that "environmentalism" gives humans a hard time about the things they need to do to survive. It's certainly true that people less fortunate than Americans often have no choice but to damage their environment in getting the continuing resources they require just to live. (Wealthier nations should be doing more to help them figure out safer, more reliable ways of using those resources.) But if you're suggesting that denying Americans the freedom to trash sensitive ecosystems just for internal-combustion recreation is somehow interfering with their right to "food and a place to live," I don't get your point. Can you clarify? And shouldn't people who mess up our shared environment feel guilty about it? Besides, how many nature and landscape photographers really want ATV tracks in their pictures?
--Marvin Good