Harry Blackmun

“ The case poses — if only we choose to acknowledge and reach them — significant aspects of a wide, growing, and disturbing problem, that is, the Nation's and the world's deteriorating environment with its resulting ecological disturbances. Must our law be so rigid and our procedural concepts so inflexible that we render ourselves helpless when the existing methods and the traditional [p756] concepts do not quite fit and do not prove to be entirely adequate for new issues? ”

“ If he is a true lover of the wilderness, as is likely, or he would not be near Mineral King in the first place it will not be long before he yearns for the good old days when masses of people — that 14,000 influx per day — and their thus far uncontrollable waste were unknown to Mineral King. ”

“ The complex, the Court notes, will accommodate 14,000 visitors a day (3,100 overnight; some 800 employees; 10 restaurants; 20 ski lifts) . The State of California has proposed to build a new road from Hammond to Mineral King. That road, to the extent of 9.2 miles, is to traverse Sequoia National Park. It will have only two lanes, with occasional passing areas, but it will be capable, it is said, of accommodating 700-800 vehicles per hour and a peak of 1,200 per hour. ”

“ And this does not include service vehicles and employees' cars. Is this the way we perpetuate the wilderness and its beauty, solitude, and quiet?
2. The second relates to the fairly obvious fact that any resident of the Mineral King area — the real "user" — is an unlikely adversary for this Disney-governmental project. He naturally will be inclined to regard the situation as one that should benefit him economically. His fishing or camping or guiding or handyman or general out-door prowess perhaps will find an early and ready market among the visitors. ”

“ Hardin, 326 F.Supp. 988, 991 (Md.1971) .↑ "No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde ”