In a course I teach on environmental ethics, I ask students to read the opinion of the Supreme Court in Sierra Club v. Morton. This case involves an environmentalist challenge to a decision by the U.S. Forest Service to lease the Mineral King Valley, a quasi-wilderness area in the middle of Sequoia National Park, to Walt Disney Enterprises to develop a ski resort. But let the Court describe the facts:

I asked how many of the students had visited Mineral King or thought they would visit it as long as it remained undeveloped. There were about six hands. Why so few? Too many mosquitoes, someone said. No movies, said another. Another offered to explain in scrupulous detail the difference between chilblain and trench foot. These young people came from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. They were not eager to subsist, for any length of time, on pemmican and rye biscuits.