I was disheartened by our Department of Interior’s recent change of policy in assessing the value of our natural lands. It no longer assigns a value to the recreational experiences there. Instead, it only focuses on the extractive value, derived from harvesting timber, minerals, fossil fuels, etc. You know – the resources that support our materialistic society. This process of extraction inevitably diminishes what I would call the immersive value – our ability to commune with nature. What the bureaucrats cannot fathom is the human paradox regarding nature: we both are a part of nature and stand apart from nature. These modern-day Philistines always assess value from a detached point-of-view.

What Price Nature?

I do appreciate part of their dilemma: how do you quantify the value of communing with nature? For example, what price tag would I slap on my encounter with a wolverine while solo backpacking in the Colorado wilderness? Or on my seeing a bald eagle swooping across the marsh grass from my back door? Or on a mink and I briefly freezing in our tracks, six feet apart in my front yard? (Fortunately for me, neither of these intangibles has shown up on my real estate assessment.) Or on various other experiences in nature, more mundane, but nonetheless special? I would give the same economic assessment to all these examples. And it’s the same answer as the punchline from the MasterCard™ credit card commercials a few years back: PRICELESS.

I have little sympathy for the bureaucrats regarding another aspect of their policy decision. In their capitulation to Trump’s materialistic bias, loyalty wins out over integrity yet again. We must do a better job of balancing our relating to nature with our using nature. Similarly, we need to improve our relating to one another, rather than just making deals. Trump’s transactional approach has thrown all that out of balance.