What happens when the elite capture beautiful places?
News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | JUNE 14, 2024
A Mountainous Impasse
Over the weekend, news broke in my home state, Wyoming, of a massive landslide in the mountains near Yellowstone National Park and the nearby town of Jackson Hole. The slide on Teton Pass, caused by water-saturated ground, obliterated a major section of road, making a jaw-dropping mess. Yet national outlets missed the implications. Most of the initial reporting I saw focused on how this would make it harder for tourists to visit the park. My first thoughts, however, went to the workers who must make a long commute every day from communities in Idaho, as living expenses in Jackson Hole are out of control.
Jackson, in whose hospital I was born and where I spent the first few years of my life on a ranch where my dad worked as a cowhand, is now a playground for the rich. Its breathtaking beauty has been captured by the elite. The median home price in May 2024 was $3 million, up more than 11 percent from the year before. That’s $1,300 a square foot. Of course, no one who can afford a $3 million home is serving food, stocking shelves, plumbing drains, or otherwise working similar low-paying jobs. Those people must live elsewhere, and they must drive to work.
Places like Jackson are a stark reminder that in our current system, inequality is the norm, not the exception, and that access to money and power mean access to places of beauty. The pristine wilderness (acquired by the dispossession of land from Indigenous peoples), clean air, breathtaking mountain vistas, clear streams, and alpine lakes — these are not for everyone, not anymore, not in the ways they could be. Imagine if they were, though. Imagine if we all had stronger claims to these beautiful places. Imagine the dedication to equity this would take, and the ways that dedication could remake the world. What kind of communities could we build? What kind of world might we have?
Send us a note on what that world might look like. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo of Teton Mountains by Aftab Uzzaman
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