Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks

Page 385.  The general point made by Edward Abbey in his work Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks is that we need to take better care of the national parks to preserve their beauty.  More specifically, Abbey argues that the tourists that visit the parks need to be more aware of how they are affecting the park depending on what they are doing or how they are camping.  He writes, “campgrounds where I used to putter around reading three-day-old newspapers full of lies and watermelon seeds have now been consolidated into one master campground that looks, during the busy season, like a suburban village” (p. 387).  In this passage, Abbey is suggesting that most of the modern-day tourists are ruining the national parks with all their motor vehicles and their way of camping when they come to visit the national parks.  In conclusions, it is Abbey’s belief that if we don’t ban motor vehicles and paved roads from national parks, they will be destroyed and future generations will not be able to enjoy them.

            In my view, Abbey is right because many of the modern-day tourists only do things in ways in which they are comfortable.  For example, I have been camping many times in my life, but only once have I ever camped in a tent, without flushable toilets and no electricity whatsoever.  People only do what they feel comfortable with.  Although Abbey might object that his idea might drive some people away from camping, I maintain that it would, but only the people that were really against going without all of their high-tech gadgets.  Therefore, I conclude that we do need to take better care of our national parks in whatever way possible so that our posterity will be able to enjoy them.