The National Parks and Climate Change

...and yet another book I'm working on

In just over a week, I will be camping in Yosemite National Park. I will be with my sweet, curious eight-year-old son and my fantastic, fun 36 year-old sister. This will be the inaugural trip for a book that has been cooking up in my brain for a couple years. It’s not a book that is, as yet, sold. Nor is it a book where the proposal is finished. But it is a book nonetheless and it’s all right <taps head> up here.

It’s a book about investigating and navigating climate change through the national parks.

Part of the reason I’m writing this post about the project now—because despite having had this idea and having written quite a bit about it in draft form—is that it took me until the week before last to have a one-liner about what the book is about. The very one liner above. Which now feels silly in retrospect because it seems so straightforward. (If you’ve been following and reading this newsletter for awhile and wondering what happened to the original book that this Substack is all about, it’s not gone, just paused. If you want more detail, I’ll include a little postscript).

The story of the National Parks System is not as straightforward as the seemingly simple thesis of the book, though. Nor is the current situation which I won’t go into a great deal here, but read on for details on how to advocate for them. The book will be about climate change but it’s also about colonialism, capitalism, Indigenous justice, and an investigation of the definition of the term “wilderness.”

Why the national parks? I mean, I can look out my back door and see the effects of climate change. Just a few days ago on our way to Spokane for my Dad’s 80th birthday, we passed by the still smoldering remnants of a wildfire that lit up int he Columbia River Gorge. The freeway had only opened the day we left for our trip and we were treated to a still-smoking hillside, the remnants of some houses, and a downed tree just off the freeway that still had a whirling tornado of a fire in its hollows. Plus we had a short heatwave last week that closed schools for half-a-day on the last week of school because most in Portland aren’t equipped with air conditioning. So, I get it, evidence of climate change is everywhere.

But there’s something about the parks that create a sense of awe, wonder, and even a little patriotism. And they’re incredibly popular amongst Americans with a +69 net favorable rating (as of a 2022 survey). And every year, more and more people are visiting the parks with a record breaking year in 2024 at 331 million visitors.

Also the national parks are recognizable places. Certainly there are a number of parks and units of the National Park System (NPS) that fly under the radar, but we all know of Yosemite and Yellowstone and the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park and, of course, we can’t forget the Grand Canyon. With that recognizability, the parks serve as ambassadors to Americans for public lands writ large. Public lands that are currently at the most risk they’ve ever been .

All of this makes the national parks a perfect setting to investigate all of the sordid history of colonialism (i.e. the parks exist because of genocide of Indigenous peoples), the frontlines of the environmental protection and preservation, the inequity in access to the outdoors, the challenge of overtourism in protected spaces, and the current fight for public lands.

I’ll keep my specific travel plans a secret at the moment because there’s so much that could change, but what you do know is that I’ll be in Yosemite next week (woot woot). I’m excited to be sharing my reflections with you along the way. This Substack will always be rooted in the “Cramming for the Apocalypse” approach, which is to say navigating my climate grief through disaster preparedness, and there will be some dashes of national park reflections. And I’m excited to jump in with you all along with me.

And, of course, let me know your favorite parks in the comments! What about them do you love?

Now, for the promised resources and information.

What to Do About Threats to Public Land

After the House spending bill got rid of the sell-off of public lands (thanks to public pressure!), it it back in the Senate’s version of the bill. The goal is to sell off around 2.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and 3.3 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land to build housing in the West. Even a number of Republicans from the 11 Western states where the land don’t support the bill.

Nonetheless, it’s there and we need to continue to fight back. We thought we won the first time around, but goes to show you that the fight is never over!

Here are some things you can do:

• Get in touch with your Congresspeople to urge them to advocate to remove this from the bill. This is especially important for those of you who live in districts where Republicans are vulnerable to a Democratic challenger.

• Become acquainted with other threats to public lands. It’s not just Congressional greed that is threatening public lands, and it’s also not a new issue because the fossil fuel industry has long been doing its best to get their hands on public lands.

  More Than Just Parks
  has an incredible Public Lands Threat Tracker where you can see what is threatening the lands near you and how you can get involved in advocating for their protection.

• Visit and take care of the public lands and national parks. You can and should still visit your public lands, especially national parks. But because the administration is cutting funds and firing NPS staff, that means many of the parks are going to be understaffed and under-resourced through this busy summer season. While you should do this every time you visit a park, it’s especially important now to be mindful of your waste and your footprint and to be patient. The lines into the parks are going to be long, be kind and patient with the rangers and other staff you encounter.

With that, keep up the fight y’all! We’re in this for the long haul!

Postscript: update on Cramming for the Apocalypse book

If you’re curious about what’s happening with the book this Substack was named for. here’s your promised postscript.

The book was out on submission for some months and, according to my fabulous agent, Amanda, received some really great feedback. The main issue at hand was that it was “too depressing.”

Both Amanda and I were a bit confounded by this because, to us, it was actually quite a hopeful book. But, the title does have “apocalypse” in it and it is about climate change which, to many, is very depressing. I mean, that’s exactly what the book is about—trying to push past that feeling to take action.

Nonetheless, they consistently said that what is selling is escapism. I mean, I get it. Escapism is 75% of what I’ve been reading this last year where we seemingly fell into a deeper dive into authoritarianism and the climate crises seemed to happen weekly. BUT, that doesn’t mean I complete avoided the real world by way of books. And I would argue there are a lot of people out there who are the same as me.

Alas, it’s all about business. These people want sell books and they have to think people are going to buy my book.

As such, Amanda and I have switched gears. I had already been noodling the national parks book and in all honesty, I was getting a little overwhelmed by the idea of writing Cramming. In the way I structured it in my proposal, it’s a lot. And maybe I need to figure out another way to approach the topic that feels less daunting. So some space is probably needed. My point is that I’m not sad about it. The publishing industry is a long game and there are plenty of folks who have published their first books later in life (I say this as I near what one would call the “mid-40s”). At this pace I’ll be in my late-40s by the time anything comes to pass (definitely if/when my book gets published), so I’m trying not to overthink it.

So, that’s where we are now. Of course, tariffs and an authoritarian President are complicating matters and the publishing market, so we’re waiting for when Amanda has a better sense of the palatability of a book critical of America, the President, and other such things before we start putting it out there. That is the update in a nutshell.

Thanks for being along this rollercoaster with me!