TY - JOUR
AU - JOHNSON, TAYLOR N.
AB - This article engages in debates about the potential for aesthetics to be a positive, ethical, and moral frame for relating to the environment. Human‐environment relations are increasingly tied up with aesthetics. We problematize this trend by contending that aesthetics is an insufficient paradigm to motivate and shape environmentalism because it exceptionalizes some landscapes while devaluing others. This article uses four illustrative case studies to complicate aesthetic environmentalist frames. These case studies indicate that even when positive aesthetic qualities are deployed in environmentalist advocacy, their usefulness is mitigated by a range of factors including: sensationalization, obfuscation, and further degradation. I. INTRODUCTION There is a long‐established connection between aesthetics and the environment. Landscape painting and photography have become a primary means of communicating nature to audiences with limited access to the wonders of the natural world. Artists like Ansel Adams, John Constable, and Charles‐François Daubigny have made landscape synonymous to painting, mural, and scene (Adams and Baker ; Lambert ; ten‐Doesschate Chu and Dixon ). Photographers like Sebastio Salgado have worked to capture the “pristine” beauty of the natural world before it is destroyed by human activity (Rudel , 432). These artists have ensured that aesthetics and environmental thought are inextricably linked in many people's minds. They have attempted to utilize art as an advocacy tool to persuade audiences of the importance of taking environmental action in order to prevent the destruction of beautiful landscapes. Environmental aesthetics has become a core component of environmentalist movements’ activism, as those who hope to save the earth from catastrophe work to convince others that making immense changes to the largely comfortable and convenient way of life that dominates modern Western society is necessary and worthwhile. Unfortunately, these efforts have been so far unsuccessful. Waste production, greenhouse gas emissions, and aggressive industrial resource extraction have only accelerated, ushering in an era of unprecedented environmental destruction. This article suggests that the aesthetic reasoning woven throughout environmentalist advocacy is insufficient to overcome the massive environmental crisis facing us today. We argue that aesthetic reasons for environmentalism fail to address the consumptive practices and cultural detachment from nature fueling this environmental crisis, and that alternative frames that ascribe intrinsic value to ecology beyond its aesthetic qualities are necessary to motivate pro‐environmental behaviors and policies. In making this argument, we develop our article in three parts. First, we discuss ongoing debates about aesthetics and the environment. We identify key points of contention between those who argue in favor of and against aesthetics. We also discuss our alignment with those who point out flaws in aesthetic frames for environmentalism. Second, we outline four case studies that illustrate deficiencies in aesthetic environmentalism. Finally, we conclude our article with a reflection on available environmental frames and suggest that valuing nature for its intrinsic qualities, rather than through aesthetic frames, is a necessary corrective to the problems facing environmentalism today. II. EXTANT DEBATES ABOUT AESTHETIC ENVIRONMENTALISM There has been much discussion within the subfield of environmental aesthetics about the value of aesthetic frames as motivation for preservationist action.1 While there seems to be agreement among most scholars that aesthetics can function to motivate environmentalist thought, we complicate this consensus by arguing that aesthetic motivations are insufficient to generate broad environmentalist change. Our argument here is not that pro‐environmental behaviors are never motivated by aesthetic concerns, but rather that a sole or primary reliance on aesthetic frames for environmentalism often obfuscates the systemic nature of environmental degradation and fails to provide actors with the tools necessary to create meaningful change. Throughout this section, then, we highlight extant challenges to aesthetic environmentalism and work to develop a framework for our later analyses. A number of scholars have suggested that aesthetics represent an important environmentalist frame because they overcome the instrumentalism that often values some landscapes at the expense of others (Hargrove ; Godlovitch ; Sober ). This article, however, contends that aesthetic frames are unable to overcome the subjective hierarchal valuation of landscapes. We argue that focusing on aesthetic reasons for environmental action centers on only those landscapes that are perceived as having positive aesthetic qualities. This, in turn, shifts environmental degradation to landscapes that are aesthetically de‐valued, allowing harmful consumptive practices to continue unquestioned. While some scholars do critique aesthetics as a frame for motivating environmental action, our article suggests that there are flaws in aesthetic environmentalism that this literature has yet to identify. In this section, then, we outline the primary points of contention between skeptics and supporters of environmental aesthetics. We begin by highlighting extant critiques of aesthetics as a motivator for environmental action. One challenge to environmental aesthetics is the claim that nature is not the only—or even, arguably, the best—source of positive aesthetic qualities. J. Robert Loftis (), for example, argues that development can also be beautiful, perhaps even more so than natural environments. Similarly, Mark Sagoff () suggests that natural beauty could be artificially reproduced through technology, negating the need for preservation of actual nature. Sagoff's suggestion may be even more true today, given improvements in artistic and digital renderings and the rise of virtual reality technology. With these possibilities in mind, a danger arises that a focus on aesthetic reasons for action may prompt the destruction of nature to make way for more aesthetically pleasing human developments. Thus, Loftis () and Sagoff () warn against an environmentalism motivated primarily by aesthetic concerns. A second barrier to effective deployment of aesthetics as a frame for preservationism is that beauty is often insufficient to overcome more utilitarian concerns. These scholars argue that decision‐making processes often prioritize utilitarian considerations, acting on aesthetic values only when utilitarian factors have been addressed or ruled out. For example, the short‐term utilitarian benefits of resource extraction served as a counterweight to aesthetic justification for the establishment of a 1.9‐million‐acre national monument at Bears Ears in San Juan County, Utah. While aesthetic value was sufficient to preserve a subset of the proposed area, other beautiful portions of the landscape were valued more for their economic benefit and therefore were not protected (Maffly ). Loftis () contends that aesthetics is, at best, able to motivate superficial environmentalism, but is unable to motivate the kind of deep ecological thought necessary for true preservationism. A number of scholars have worked to counteract this claim, arguing that aesthetics is a key frame for motivating environmental action. Arnold Berleant's () seminal work is in opposition to Loftis's () ideas, positing that aesthetics is a key component of people's orientation toward the environment and therefore a necessary driver of environmentalism. Similarly, Katherine W. Robinson and Kevin C. Elliott () suggest that people can be moved toward preservationism by an impetus to maintain natural aesthetic integrity. Holmes Rolston III () maintains that visceral experiences of natural beauty can motivate an intense desire to save landscapes. Likewise, Emily Brady () argues that integrated aesthetics that incorporate other ethical frames can deepen the relationship between humans and the environment, thus motivating preservationism. Brady's argument, however, demonstrates the key flaw in this frame: aesthetic concerns alone are insufficient to motivate broad preservationism. At best, aesthetics can motivate the preservation of beautiful landscapes, but without other ethical considerations, aesthetic criteria are insufficient to motivate the protection of those landscapes that offer no apparent positive aesthetic qualities. The preceding scholars have pointed out crucial flaws in aesthetic motivations for environmental action. However, we contend that the literature has yet to exhaustively outline the flaws in aesthetically based environmentalism. Throughout this article, then, we seek to build on this scholarship by highlighting a number of additional problems with environmental advocacy that relies primarily on aesthetic reasons for action. In addition to proposing some problems that have not yet been studied, we build on a rich body of scholarship that argues aesthetics can motivate preservation of only a limited range of habitats. Loftis () claims, as we have suggested throughout this literature review, that aesthetics motivates individuals to care only about those landscapes perceived as offering positive aesthetic qualities. Timothy Morton () explains that this frame is insufficient, and suggests that we must learn to love the repulsive, disgusting, and strange if we are to overcome the ecological crisis facing us in the modern world. Those who argue for the importance of aesthetics for preservationism work to theorize a new aesthetic frame that overcomes these issues. A number of scholars dispute the claims made by Loftis () and Morton (). Eugene C. Hargrove (), for example, suggests that nature is the source of true aesthetic value and that aesthetic motivations are therefore inherently pro‐environmental. However, Hargrove's arguments, like those of many aesthetic environmentalists, serve only to promote the protection of those landscapes whose beauty is widely agreed upon. For landscapes that appear to have no positive aesthetic value, however, this frame offers little in the way of motivation for preservation. Indeed, for landscapes that do not possess these valued aesthetic properties, Hargrove's perspective may actually naturalize their destruction. Similarly, Stan Godlovitch () and Allen Carlson () argue for acentric aesthetics—a frame that “lacks and hence remains indifferent to any special focus, any moral dualism” (Godlovitch , 17). Rolston ( and ) offers a similar frame in the form of positive aesthetics, a frame that views all elements of nature as having only positive aesthetic qualities. From this perspective, there are no ugly natural elements, and therefore all nature is worth preserving because of its aesthetic value. We argue that these frames are overly optimistic. While those who already embody an essentially preservationist outlook may recognize the positive aesthetic qualities of all parts of nature, it is unlikely that others can be persuaded to adopt this outlook. The scholars we have discussed in this section have done important work to complicate a primary reliance on aesthetic motivations for environmentalism. However, we suggest that, in addition to the problems highlighted through their critiques, there are a number of other flaws in aesthetic frames for environmentalism. We work, then, to reinforce the challenges forwarded by Loftis () and Morton (), as well as to highlight a number of concerns that have not yet been explored in the literature. Throughout the remainder of this article, we utilize a series of case studies to argue that society at large deploys aesthetic value in ways that fail to motivate broad preservationist action. III. AESTHETICS AS PRESERVATION AND WASTE As the previous section discussed, many have argued for aesthetics as an effective frame for motivating preservationist action. On the whole, however, these arguments fail to address a number of problems with aesthetic reasons for environmentalism. While aesthetics may sometimes function to motivate increased care for the environment or preservationist outlooks, these effects are limited at best. Landscapes perceived as possessing only negative aesthetic qualities become sacrificial lambs, forgotten or degraded in service of grander environments. Even when positive aesthetic qualities are deployed in environmentalist advocacy, their usefulness is mitigated by a range of factors. Throughout this section, we explore four case studies to demonstrate the problems with aesthetics as an environmental frame. Each of these case studies illustrates a deficiency in aesthetic frames for environmentalism. First, we explore the impetus toward spectacle and “disaster porn” present in environmental cinema. Second, we suggest that the environmental improvements motivated by aesthetic appeals may be localized, merely relocating environmental degradation rather than reducing it. Third, we argue that aesthetics can be used to obfuscate environmental degradation in the public memory. Finally, we expand on Loftis's () suggestion that aesthetics benefit a limited range of habitats by detailing the degradation of perceived nonspaces and wastelands. III.A. Chasing Ice: Glacial Aesthetics and Disaster Porn Our first case study is an instantiation of environmental aesthetic appeals in cinema. Indeed the screen can function as a site of sense making and memory that can influence our orientation toward particular events: historic, present, and predicted (Erenhaus ; DeLuca and Peeples ). The creators of the 2012 film Chasing Ice attempt to take advantage of the meaning‐creating potential of cinema with the intent of persuading viewers to take some form of corrective environmental action by chronicling the day to day ice melt of the planet's glaciers. In what founder and photographer James Balog termed the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a team of camera experts and filmmakers embark on a quest to track glacial ice melt by collecting several years of image‐based data. Jeff Orlowski directed the production of endless hours of time‐lapse photography into a documentary depicting the longest and largest iceberg break‐ups ever recorded. The film's website declares the project was for the purpose of collecting “undeniable evidence of our changing planet” (Chasing Inc. , About Film: Synopsis). Within the film, the images of glacial chasms and thundering cascades sway multiple skeptics of planetary heating, including Balog himself, to be convinced of the immediate and long‐term effects of increasing quantities of greenhouse gases floating throughout our fragile home. Chasing Ice relies on aesthetic appeals to persuade the audience of the presence of an already‐present and oncoming environmental catastrophe. Balog justifies the choice to observe glaciers by remarking that the landscape of ice is “ridiculously beautiful,” and that he wanted to show the relationship between “humans and nature” in a “seductive fashion” (Orlowski ). Undeniably, the fields of ice stretching across the vastness of the ocean might hold the viewer in a particular thrall. The glistening chunks of awesomely twisted ice towers and rivers at once induce a feeling of alienation and a sense of wonder toward their staggering beauty. Balog continues to comment on the allure of the glacier in transition from life to death. “It's like doing a portrait of people … [artists] spent their entire career doing portraits of faces essentially and found endless variation and endless magic and endless beauty. And for me it's the same thing” (Orlowski ). For Balog, and perhaps for the viewer, there is an expansive charm in the time lapse portraits of a vanishing world. Due to the shifting and crumbling of the ice, impressive canyons, waterways, and tunnels are formed, creating nuances in the ice‐world. Much like a painter may notice a wrinkle next to an eye, subtly marking the process of aging and decay, the viewer witnesses the formation of a small glacial waterway, a new yet noticeable concave, and finally the death of an iceberg breaking off the glacier, swept away and ultimately sinking into the darkness of the frigid waters. Ironically, it is the melancholic process of losing the ice that produces the affective force, and for Balog, the film depicts beauty. He notes that viewing the ice melt was much like observing human death. “There was a sense of the glacier coming to an end like this old decrepit man falling into the Earth and dying. It was very evocative” (Orlowski ). Further evidence of the film's appeal to aesthetics is the creators’ self‐selected reviews from mass media outlets published on their website. The website presents quotations from critics in the following order and format: “Hauntingly Beautiful” Huffington Post “Amazingly beautiful” Five Stars—New York Daily News “Visually Breathtaking” Variety (Chasing Inc. , About Film: Synopsis) Although the film's mobilization of aesthetic appeals has had some success in promoting a preservationist ethic by convincing others of the reality of climate change, it is ultimately limited in the way it presents and encourages a relation to the environment. Balog and an employee of the oil business professed their change of heart from skeptic to believer during the film. For them, and perhaps other viewers, witnessing the destruction of the ice made more material the claims of changing global climates. Throughout the film it was the threat of losing the glacial beauty that produced a sense of urgency in the film's speakers—a beauty that, from the perspective of the documentary, exists within its own eradication. We contend that though the images of glacier loss motivated a drive toward preservation in some, the reliance on aesthetic appeals to do so participates in what is referred to as “disaster porn.” This term functions as shorthand to describe the mediated presentation of suffering, trauma, and catastrophe usually in extreme portrayals that objectify the disaster (Recuber ; Wilkinson ; Burman ). In the book on the diachronic meanings and uses of “disaster porn,” Timothy Recuber () notes an early use in Pat Cadigan's () novel Synners to denote the excessive aestheticization of a topic or event, or in some cases, disaster. Disaster porn scholarship, then, is concerned with the presentation of calamities, and it may criticize the entertainment factor of presenting suffering in news media for ratings, or perhaps be concerned with the glorification of a war aesthetic in blockbuster presentations of historical conflicts. As a theoretical descriptor of the affective force of a text or work of art, “disaster porn” is more frequently intersecting with environmental concerns. Every day the public is presented with an increasing abundance of images depicting sinking islands, wildfires, and the aftermath of oceanic storms that have recently decimated a coast line. Scholars have taken notice of the ubiquity of disaster media in the form of news and cinema and have come to differing conclusions on their influence on human behavior in the context of climate change. Alexa Weik von Mossner () observes that the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow mobilizes images of melodrama and disaster that grip the cognitive process of the viewer in a visceral way by making consumable abstract climate catastrophe scenarios, and in turn evoking the affective processes that allow the viewer to understand the risk of climate disaster. Against this, in a working paper for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Thomas D. Lowe () conducted an experiment wherein participants watched The Day After Tomorrow and were given pre‐ and post‐test questionnaires to determine how a filmic experience of climate disaster influenced the viewers' risk perception of climate change. Lowe concludes that despite viewers holding concerns about climate degradation and catastrophe, apocalyptic scenarios have no effect on their already existing perceptions, or at worst influence a disconnect between the understood implications of climate disaster and their willingness to take action. As Heather Rogers () writes, these images of such apocalyptic magnitude can create feelings of apathy and fatalism. The disaster aesthetic presented in Chasing Ice participates in the same visual paradigm as disaster porn. The film's narrative is undeniably striking. It leaves the viewer with a sense of incomprehensibility surrounding the magnitude and pace of climate change. This, however, is the crux of the problem. The time‐lapses demonstrate the pace of glacial loss in a way that makes the timeframe of climate change legible on a human scale, but simultaneously elicits a sense of helplessness as viewers watch the glaciers disappear before their eyes. Previous scholars have identified this phenomenon as “narcotizing dysfunction,” an apathetic feeling the onlooker receives because the mediation of an event is so frequent that consuming the images begins to feel like participating in the alleviation of those social harms, or the event becomes so inordinate and dramatized that no individual action can rise to the feeling of significance (Lazarsfeld and Merton ). The aesthetics of the film evoke a feeling of crisis, but fail to provide a set of strategies for coping with the anxiety aroused by witnessing climate change in this way. Audiences are encouraged to dwell in the aesthetic experience of destruction, but are not provided with tools to address that destruction. Throughout the film, no models are provided for acting to resolve the climate change crisis. While Balog frames himself as taking action by establishing the EIS, the individuals in the film engage in no on‐screen political advocacy or changes in personal lifestyle, and the film offers audiences no resources for organizing against ecological destruction. The film's engagement with the wondrous beauty of destruction wrought by climate change and its subsequent failure to offer a set of tools for political or systemic advocacy, leave audiences without strategies for coping with the sense of dread induced by the realization that environmental destruction is accelerating. Instead of encouraging audiences to mobilize against environmental crisis, the film instead invites them to revel in the horrifying beauty of glacial loss. Addressing climate change demands we address the powerful corporate and government structures that most significantly contribute to it. Thus, the film's environmental framework is flawed. Rather than asking audiences to take on the daunting but necessary work of demanding broad systems‐level changes that might address the destruction the film portrays, Balog and his crew produce a piece of art that invites audiences to take aesthetic pleasure in the very destruction the film claims to abhor. As we, the audience, look on and observe the annihilation of Earth's climates as we know them, we are alienated from that disaster much like the viewer of a landscape painting is alienated from the illustrated place. The landscape becomes something we look into, maybe for a moment feel a connection with, but that is a faraway place, in a different time, at least for now—until environmental collapse comes to bear more visibly and imminently on our own home places. III.B. Keep America Beautiful: Relocating Trash Through Anti‐Littering Campaigns Our second case study involves the relocation of environmental degradation away from particular audiences. This phenomenon offers individuals a means to maintain an environmentally harmful lifestyle without sacrificing local aesthetics. Perhaps America's most well‐known public service announcement is the 1971 “Crying Indian” commercial aired as part of the Keep America Beautiful campaign.2 The ad features Iron Eyes Cody—a popular Italian actor known for playing Native Americans in Hollywood films—in stereotypical Native American costume paddling a canoe down a river that grows ever‐more polluted as his path progresses. Eventually, he pulls the boat ashore on a trash‐strewn beach as the narrator tells the audience “Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.” The man walks onto the shoulder of a busy freeway where the narrator continues, “and others don't,” as someone in a car throws a bag of fast‐food wrappers out his window, spilling them onto the man's moccasins. The man turns toward the camera, a single tear rolling down his cheek, as the narrator finishes, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” The ad was part of a broad national campaign, called Keep America Beautiful, intended to address America's perceived littering problem. The program, founded in 1953, continues to be a leader in anti‐littering campaigns today. Most recently, they launched the “I want to be recycled” ad campaign. This series is comprised of a number of commercials that narrate the aspirations of everyday items hoping to become something grander after recycling—an aluminum can that wants to be part of a stadium, a plastic drink bottle that wants to see the ocean and eventually becomes part of a bench, and so on. Taken at face value, the ads appear to promote an obvious environmentalist stance. By reducing litter and recycling, individuals can do their part to fulfill the campaign's titular goal: keeping America beautiful. The reality, however, is more troubling. Keep America Beautiful was founded by the American Can Company and the Owens‐Illinois Glass Company (Dunaway ). The campaign began as a response to anti‐disposables legislation in Vermont, passed as a result of advocacy from dairy farmers frustrated with glass bottles being thrown into their haystacks and injuring their cows (Rogers ). Bottle and can manufacturers, worried about the potential for similar legislation to become widespread, founded Keep America Beautiful in order to forward an alternative to reduced consumption. If people would just throw the disposable packaging away in appropriate containers, the campaign suggested, there would be no problem with continued use of disposable packaging. By focusing on litter, rather than the problems with production and disposal that accompany disposable packaging, Keep America Beautiful successfully shifted the conversation away from environmentalist concerns to aesthetic ones. The problem, this campaign asserted, was not with using disposable packaging, but was with throwing trash on the ground where it would become an eyesore for those living in a world full of litter. The solution, from this perspective, is simple: by disposing of trash in the proper receptacle, audiences could fix the litter problem and beautify their neighborhoods, parks, and roadways. With trash thrown away in cans, Americans could reclaim the pristine beauty of the United States and continue their everyday lives without worrying about pollution. In reality, however, this solution did not address the waste problem, but merely moved it. Today, the ubiquity of disposable packaging contributes to a massive trash problem. The Environmental Protection Agency indicates that in 2013 the average American produced roughly 4.4 pounds of trash per day (US EPA ). Thanks to anti‐littering campaigns, this trash is whisked away without most of us ever needing to consider what happens to it after we drop it in the garbage bin. Much of that waste, however, ends up in landfills or finds its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or similar ocean trash gyres. While anti‐littering campaigns have, in many instances, helped to ensure positive aesthetic experiences for Americans moving through their everyday lives, they have contributed to the continued overconsumption of disposables that contribute to global waste problems. Because the average American encounters the aesthetic nightmare that results from our consumptive practices only infrequently, aesthetically based campaigns have been unable to motivate meaningful change in consumptive practices. Additionally, the focus on aesthetics in these campaigns has encouraged individuals to attend more intensively to their local encounters than to the global stage in which environmental degradation occurs. Keep America Beautiful suggests to consumers that a focus on their local, everyday aesthetic encounters constitutes significant environmentalist action. This focus serves to individualize environmentalism, dissuading people from engaging in anti‐corporate advocacy that might have bigger environmental effects. Aesthetic motivations, then, have historically proved insufficient for meaningful engagement with waste management and have worked to prop up a focus on individuals and local aesthetics at the expense of broader advocacy. III.C. Filling in the Landscape: Collective Forgetting Through Landfill Reclamation Anti‐littering campaigns are not the only instance of aesthetic appeals obscuring the environmental degradation that results from modern consumptive practices. Attempts to escape the aesthetic hellscape of landfills have served to create beautiful spaces that erase the horror of our own waste from the public view. Cities across the United States have been converting trash dumps into public recreation spaces for at least a century (Harnik, Taylor, and Welle ). The parks serve to reclaim waste spaces for urban populations whose access to green spaces is rapidly shrinking as metropolitan areas grow. Proponents of landfill parks argue that the vast tracts of low‐cost land located near urban centers serve as ideal locations for parks (Harnik, Taylor, and Welle ). Additionally, they frame these reclaimed spaces as lush gardens of paradise and “place[s] of beautiful possibilities” that overcome the destruction of waste disposal (Museum of the City, n.d.). This narrative encourages audiences to forget the ecological damage beneath their feet as they enjoy their positive aesthetic encounters with these spaces.3 A primary example of turning a view of ecological damage into a positive aesthetic experience resides in one of the largest landfill reclamation projects in the world currently underway in New York State. The Freshkills landfill on Staten Island, which opened in 1948 and grew to 2,200 acres of garbage before it was closed in 2001, is being converted into New York's largest park (Warerkar ). When the park is completed in 2036, it will be three times the size of Central Park (NYC Parks, n.d.). By the time of its closing, Freshkills Landfill had become one of the most hated sites in New York. Today, however, Freshkills is host to playgrounds, biking trails, and acres of green space (Vinnitskaya ). Supporters of the project argue that the park has turned a public curse into a public blessing, saving residents from the constant stench of the landfill and providing them with a new recreational resource (Bliss ). The project, however, cannot erase the decades of environmental destruction that resulted from converting the natural marshes of Staten Island into New York City's primary garbage disposal zone. While landfill reclamation has successfully removed the landfill from the public eye, the garbage remains under their feet. Today, New York City's garbage is shipped to landfills in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, leaving New Yorkers to continue producing waste at the same rate without the necessity of engaging with that waste (Bliss ). The practice of converting landfills into parks has garnered significant attention, particularly from travel and lifestyle websites. The sites praise the aesthetic reclamation of landfills, calling the recreational spaces “stunning,” “incredible,” “beautiful,” and “ingenious” (Bender ; Bruce ; Mordas‐Schenkein ). Bender tells readers that Thanks to some impressive technology and forward‐thinking people, there can be glory beyond the garbage. A number of projects across the globe have managed to conceal massive mounds of waste and turned them into natural treasures—embarking on such dramatic transformations that, when it's all done, some visitors don't even know that something much different used to lie underneath. (). The “glory” that emerges in these reclaimed spaces serves to hide the massive environmental degradation that results from modern consumptive practices. Bender's suggestions that “some visitors don't even know that something much different used to lie underneath” historicizes waste, obscuring the constant presence of waste at the sites. Waste is not something that “used to lie underneath” these sites. Rather, it is something that does lie underneath these sites, slowly rotting, threatening to pollute water tables, and leaching toxins into the soil of the surrounding areas. The move to “reclaim” landfills by converting them into spaces for public recreation aestheticizes waste and is demonstrative of the ease with which environmental aesthetics can be appropriated to create a veneer of ecological friendliness in a system of unrestrained waste production. Garbage parks operate as an act of forgetting. Instead of coming to terms with the excess manufactured by the structure of modern life, dumping turf on landfills displaces the memories of that waste creation. We do not mean individualized memories, but the cultural ones that might hold an account of how we got here, and what was lost on the way. In other words, the beings, natural resources, and places that were forever changed to accommodate the intense consumption habits of the increasingly populated globe may become more difficult to recall as landfills, and other similar waste sites, are beautified. Erasing the stain on the supposed smooth and functional order of modernity that rotates between consumption, destruction, and redevelopment makes possible the continuation of this cycle until there is nothing left. Aesthetics, in this case, cannot function as an ethical paradigm for motivating environmentalism because the way industrial culture understands and utilizes aesthetics does not necessitate changes in consumptive practices. This case study bespeaks the encapsulation of beauty‐compelled aesthetics by the logics, structures, and practices that are co‐productive with the causes of environmental destruction. III.D. The Bad and the Ugly: Wastelanding Discourses and Desert Destruction In addition to dissuading meaningful action, relocating waste, and inhibiting the public's ability to comprehend the environmental effects of modern ways of life, aesthetic frames also present a barrier to environmental protection of landscapes perceived to have no positive aesthetic value. While many are quick to call for the preservation of uniquely beautiful landscapes such as the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park or the Sequoias and Redwoods, landscapes that are perceived as barren have fewer advocates. By forwarding natural beauty as a primary reason for preserving environments, then, advocates implicitly suggest to their audiences that landscapes that are not beautiful are unworthy of saving. In this section, we draw on a rich body of scholarship that points to the wastelanding of the desert as a justification for environmental degradation (Voyles ). While the deserts of the western United States have significant cultural and aesthetic value for many indigenous peoples, modern Western discourses have eschewed this perspective and frame the desert largely as barren and empty space (Kuletz ). Many in modern American society think of the desert as “a dry, lifeless, unforgiving wasteland that most of civilized society does its best to avoid” (Hager ). This depiction of the landscape as aesthetically bankrupt justifies the treatment of the desert as a site for toxic activities, especially nuclear mining, testing, and dumping (Endres ). These activities, in turn, have “tainted” the desert, turning it into not only a perceived aesthetic wasteland, but a materially toxic one as well (Kuletz ). Wastelanding, therefore, is both a discursive and material practice justified because of the perceived lack of aesthetic value. Anti‐nuclear advocates have attempted to counteract this trend by pointing to the positive aesthetic qualities of the desert. For example, in an interview for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Oral History Project on the Nevada Test Site, activist Anne Symens‐Bucher stated, “I had a notion of the desert as a place that I would not sort of enjoy esthetically, so I was really struck by the beauty of the place. I wasn't expecting it to be a place that I would consider beautiful” (Becker ). Symens‐Bucher's testimony highlights a key flaw with aesthetic framing of environmentalism. While she experienced a positive aesthetic encounter with the desert, she did so only after traveling to the desert as part of an advocacy group. Her impetus to protect the desert arose not from her aesthetic appreciation of the space, but from other concerns. Those who lack Symens‐Bucher's extant environmentalist bent, however, are unlikely to feel motivated to protect a landscape they already perceive as a wasteland. Considering the limited number of people who travel to the desert in order to have an aesthetic encounter—even if the beauty of the desert had motivated Symens‐Bucher's environmentalism—the frame is less than ideal. Even those who encounter the desert and recognize its beauty are not always persuaded to preserve it. Later in the conversation, interviewer Suzanne Becker noted, “it doesn't matter whether I'm talking to, people who are environmentally minded or people that have worked at the test site. … anybody you talk to says it's beautiful out there” (, 10). Individuals who worked at the test site may have recognized the beauty of the landscape, but that recognition was insufficient to deter them from engaging in environmentally harmful nuclear tests. Wastelanding, then, seems to serve as a far more powerful frame than beauty in shaping our treatment of the desert. IV. CONCLUSION Each of these case studies is an indictment of the way that aesthetics has been used to shape and reshape the landscape, our understanding of it, and relation with it. Taken together, all four of these case studies demonstrate that aesthetics as an advocacy tool to address environmental degradation is insufficient. While aesthetic motivations may sometimes result in positive environmental change, we have highlighted a number of reasons why these motivations are often either insufficient to prompt the broad systemic changes necessary to address environmental crises, or actually work against the aims of the environmentalist movement. In many instances, inspiring action to alleviate the consequences of environmental degradation on the grounds of aesthetics exceptionalizes some landscapes as worthy of being preserved, and sacrifices others for the sake of the industries accelerating them. Other times, aesthetic appeals may be limited because beauty is created and objectified in the very catastrophic events that must be stopped to preserve the planet's landscapes and diverse ecologies. Aesthetics may also be commodified to function as a pleasant form of forgetting wherein the environmental consequences of modern life can be eschewed by forging a new attractive landscape atop the scars of environmental history. The aesthetics of the beautiful and “green” displace both memory and the consequences of global overconsumption. Producing pounds of trash per day is of no concern so long as it does not end up in Yosemite. In this sense, the land without aesthetic value is sacrificed to the externalities of modernity. Aesthetics is not, nor has it ever been, a sufficient heuristic for an environmental ethic that recognizes all landscapes and their beings as worthy of preservation. Nor can aesthetic frames alone motivate the difficult changes in our modern practices necessary to overcome environmental degradation. Environmentalists, then, must work to move beyond our reliance on aesthetic frames for motivating action. 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In line with the thoughts and writings of John Muir, preservationist efforts seek to maintain the affective dimensions of nature including the spiritual and beautiful aura of a natural world. As we argue throughout our article, the attempt to maintain an aesthetically pristine wilderness without addressing the human‐nature divide inherent to that worldview frames nature in ways that are counterproductive for environmentalist movements (DeLuca and Demo ). 2. “Keep America Beautiful—(Crying Indian) 70s PSA Commercial.” https://youtu.be/8Suu84khNGY. 3. Our argument is not that garbage parks are less aesthetically valuable than landfills, or that communities gain no positive benefits from garbage parks. Rather, we suggest that the positive engagements communities have with garbage parks come at the expense of meaningful environmental change. Certainly, garbage parks provide beautiful recreation areas at low cost to the cities they serve. However, the aesthetic benefits of garbage parks are not synonymous with environmental benefits. Indeed, residents who journey to these parks are never confronted with the environmental impacts of the garbage beneath their feet and are therefore never asked to change their consumptive practices. In other words, while the beauty of these parks may provide a benefit to residents, the ugliness of the landfills is more likely to motivate residents to understand the negative impact of their own production of waste. © The American Society for Aesthetics This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The American Society for Aesthetics
TI - Complicating Aesthetic Environmentalism: Four Criticisms of Aesthetic Motivations for Environmental Action
JO - The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
DO - 10.1111/jaac.12600
DA - 2018-10-31
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/complicating-aesthetic-environmentalism-four-criticisms-of-aesthetic-IvtcHSUEyP
SP - 441
EP - 451
VL - 76
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -