POLEMIC: INDUSTRIAL TOURISM AND THE NATIONAL PARKS

The general argument made by Edward Abbey in his work Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks is that national parks should be untouched and left as they are. More specifically, Abbey argues that Industrial Tourism is destroying the natural beauty of national parks. And that it is starting a chain reaction of things like people driving cars everyone in national parks. He writes; “Industrial Tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims are motorized tourists…so long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress …which they have hoped to leave behind.”(pg 389) In this passage Abbey is suggesting that some people are relying too much on motor vehicles and he says it ruins our national parks. He argues that they are sacred and we should treat them like a cathedral or and art museum where no cars are allowed inside. In conclusion, it is Abbey’s belief that we should preserve our national parks better by limiting what worldly things we bring with us.

In my view, Abbey is right to some extent because we should salvage our national parks because they show us how beautiful our planet is and they are a great place to get away from the world. On the other hand it is necessary to build roads and have campgrounds to make it more convenient for most people. For example, I absolutely love the outdoors. I love to go hiking because I can leave my phone and just get away from the world, talk with my friends, see wildlife, and to have fun. Yet I hate camping mostly because there is no plumbing! I am a girl and it’s not easy to pee on a tree or in a disgusting outhouse. That is a little too much for me to handle. Although Abbey might say that industrial tourism is ruining wildlife I maintain that it is making it so much more convenient. Therefore, I conclude that national parks are an important part of our planet and we should definitely preserve them, and I don’t think adding new roads and plumbing is ruining the natural beauty of it all.