Spring 1989 RADICAL AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM 79 'aesthetic' goals and desires to their earlier preoccupation with necessities and eonveniences. "11 Here, the enjoyment of nature is an integral part of the consumer society. The private automobile (and the life style it has spawned) is in many respects the ultimate eeologieal villain, and an untouched wildemess the prototype of eeolog- ical harmony; yet, for most Americans it is perfectly consistent to drive a thousand miles to spend a holiday in a national park. They possess a vast, beautiful, and sparsely populated continent and are also able to draw upon the natural resourees of large portions of the globe by virtue of their economie and politieal dominance. In consequence, Ameriea ean sin1ultaneously enjoy the material benefits of an expanding economy and the aesthetic benefits of unspoilt nature. The two poles of "wildemess" and "civilization" mutually coexist in an internally coherent whole, and philosophers of both poles are assigned a promi- nent place in this culture. Paradoxically as it may seem, it is no accident that Star Wars teehnology and deep eeology both find their fullest expression in that leading sector of Western civilization, California. Deep ecology runs parallel to the consumer society without seriously question- ing its ecological and socio-political basis. In its celebration of American wilder- ness, it also displays an uncomfortable convergenee with the prevailing climate of nationalism in the Ameriean wildemess movement. For spokesmen such as the historian Roderick Nash, the national park system is America's distinctive cultural contribution to the world, reflective not merely of its economic but of its philosophical and ecological maturity as weIl. In what Walter Lippman called the Ameriean eentury, the "Ameriean invention of national parks" must be exported worldwide. Betraying an economie determinism that would make even a Marxist shudder, N ash believes that environmental preservation is a "full stomach" phenomenon that is confined to the rieh, urban, and sophisticated. N onetheless, he hopes that "the less developed nations may eventually evolve economically and intelleetually to the point where nature preservation is more than a business. ,,12