Connecting Past and Present
March 21, 2025 By: Jennifer R. Paulsen
The first piece of media is connected to the topic of conservation. The article, published in the New York Times on March 1, 2025, illustrates the political nature of conservation through its coverage of massive protests that were organized in response to US president Donald’s Trumps gutting of the National Parks Service. The political history of conservation discussed by Ted Steinberg in Down to Earth is repeating itself. Just as Theodore Roosevelt weighed economic growth against environmental conservation, Trump is pitting cash against conservation. The notable difference is that Roosevelt had a proverbial devil (Pinchot) and an angel (Muir) on his shoulders while weighing the fate of the conservation (the cornerstone of his administration), while Trump is piggybacking a delusional billionaire hellbent on reducing federal spending at any cost (Steinberg, 2019, p.122).
The second article, also published in the New York Times, follows up on the devastating earthquakes in Turkey in 2009 and relates to urbanization. Discussions of urbanization tend to centre around the impact of urban expansion on natural habitats. This article, conversely, looks at the social impacts of urbanization and in particular the responsibility of urban planners to maintain the viability of urban settlements in the face of natural disasters such as earthquakes and the changing climate that makes them increasingly a force to be reckoned with.