A few years ago, The Nation magazine, where I am a columnist, hosted a one-week cruise to Alaska. The full-page ad that ran in the magazine carried the tag line: “Come see the glaciers before they melt.” I called my editor in a fury: How could we joke about melting glaciers while promoting a carbon-spewing holiday? Are we saying that global warming is funny? That we have no role to play in trying to stop it? The ad was pulled, but I realized then that, poor taste aside, this is how a great many of us are consuming wilderness these days—as a kind of nihilistic, final farewell. Gobble it all up
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