A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

I want you to picture the United States in 1872 The Civil War ended just seven years ago, and the whole country is racing west. The rule of the American frontier is simple: the land exists to be owned, you stake it, you claim it, you sell it, you use it. That’s the dream. And then on march 1, 1872 the President of the United States signs a law that breaks that rule completely. He takes more than 2 million acres of Wyoming and Montana, a place called Yellowstone, and declares it can never be owned by anyone, not a railroad, not a tycoon, not a single private soul. Instead, the law says it belongs to all of us for our benefit and enjoyment forever. Think about how strange that was. In a century built on private property, the government looked at one of the most spectacular places on earth and said, “This one’s for everybody. That was a genuinely radical idea, so radical that no country had ever really tried it.

And here’s the twist: United States didn’t just invent the national park, we handed the idea to the world, and now more than 100 countries said yes, it might be the best idea this country’s ever had. And somehow, right now, in 2026 we’re quietly debating whether public land should stay public at all. Welcome to a climate change. I’m your host, Matt Matern. Today, we’re continuing our 250 for 250 series, where we’re marking America’s 250th birthday and our own 250th episode with the environmental stories that built this country, and like a few others in this run, no guest, it’s just me and you and the story of what one writer called the best idea America ever had.

So let’s just sit on this radical idea, for a minute, because it’s easy to miss how new it was. For most of human history, the most beautiful land belonged to whoever was the most powerful in Europe. The great forests and hunting grounds were the private playgrounds of kings and aristocrats. The idea that a country’s crown jewels, its canyons, its waterfalls, its ancient forests should be owned by the public, open to anyone, regardless of their bank account.

That had basically never been done. Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and environmental, has called national parks the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic. They reflect us at our best rather than our worst. Filmmaker and documentarian Ken Burns has gone even further, arguing the national park idea was in its own way as radical as the Declaration of Independence, applied democracy written into the land itself, and like a lot of radical ideas, this one almost didn’t survive, because passing a law is one thing, defending it and growing it is another, and that’s where two very different men fit into the story.

If you caught our Earth Day episode last week, I mentioned a Republican president who protected more than 200 million acres of this country. Well, today we’re digging into that story, but it starts with someone who never held office at all. The first man is John Muir, a Scottish immigrant who loved the wilderness and walked 1000s of miles through the American landscape and fell completely in love with the Sierra Nevada. Muir wasn’t a politician, he was a writer and a wanderer, but he wrote about mountains and glaciers with such force that he changed how Americans saw their own country. In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club to protect the wild places he loved. He understood something crucial: beautiful words weren’t going to be enough. He needed power. The second man had plenty of it.

Theodore Roosevelt, president, hunter, cowboy, force of nature in May of 1903 Roosevelt came west, and he ditched his official entourage to spend three nights camping in Yosemite with John Muir, just the two of them, more or less, sleeping under the giant sequoias, waking up under a fresh dusting of snow. We don’t have a transcript what they said around that fire, but we do know what came after, because Theodore Roosevelt walked out of those woods, and he became arguably the greatest conservationist ever to hold office. Let me give you the numbers, because they’re staggering. Over his presidency, Roosevelt protected roughly 230 million acres of land, 230 million acres of land, just to put a sense of how big 230 million acres are.

It’s 359,000 square miles, that would make it the second largest state in the United States. It’s 1.3 times larger than Texas, and about twice the size of California. It and represents about 10% of the entire United States land area. He established five national parks. He signed the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave the presidents the power to protect important places instantly, and he used it to create 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon, he set up 150 national forests and 51 federal bird reserves, an area larger than most countries set aside in the space of a few years, because a writer and a president believed in the same wild idea. Then, in 1916 the country made it permanent. Congress created the National Park Service to care for these places, and I love the exact words they chose, unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations, not this generation, future ones.

People who hadn’t been born yet were written into law as the owners of the American land. So, what did that radical idea actually become today the National Park System spans 433 sites and more than 85 million acres in all 50 states, 63 of them carry the capital letter title National Park, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Smokies, the rest are all monuments, seashores, battlefields, historic sites, the whole sprawling family of American memory and landscape. And here’s the part I love: every one of them is yours, not yours like a metaphor, yours like a deed. If you’re an American, you’re part owner of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone’s geysers of the redwoods. You’ll never get a property tax bill, and no one can ever evict you, because the whole point was that these places can’t be bought or sold. The poorest person in this country and the richest hold exactly equal title, and the world noticed after Yellowstone, the idea spread, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, eventually well over 100 countries with national parks of their own, protecting billions of acres. It’s one of the most successful exports in American history.

We didn’t sell it, we gave it away, and the world said yes, which brings us to the uncomfortable part. Because you think an idea this good would be safe by now, settled, untouchable. Well, it isn’t. Over the last year, the question that Yellowstone answered back in 1872 should this land stay public, got reopened in 2025 A proposal moved through Congress to sell off public land, at one point more than a million acres of it, to private buyers, and I want to give you the argument fairly, because it isn’t crazy on its face, the federal government owns an enormous amount of land. The park system alone carries a deferred maintenance backlog north of $33 billion and the case was made that selling some of the holdings could fund repairs and ease the housing crunch in the West. The administration’s own budget called the federal estate bloated. That’s the argument. Here’s what happened to it.

It collapsed, and not along the lines you’d expect. The fiercest opposition came from Western conservatives, hunters, anglers, ranchers. One of the people who helped kill it was a Republican congressman and the former Secretary of Interior, Ryan Zinke, who put it about as plainly as it could be put, once the land is sold, we’ll never get it back. The provision was pulled, and if the pattern sounds familiar, it should. Last episode, my guest, Michael Loewinger, walked us through the campaign to abolish FEMA, and what stopped that? In the end, it was a bipartisan block of Congress standing up and saying no, we’re not going to do that same move, different agency. When someone tries to tear down something Americans actually depend on, coalition tends to rise up that’s bigger than either party.

You saw it again with a parks budget. Early proposals would have cut the park service deeper than at any point in its history. Hundreds of rangers and scientists were already being pushed out, but in January 2026 a bipartisan vote in Congress rejected the worst of it and kept the parks funded, a real win. All the people showed up, made noise, and it worked, but that same budget quietly dropped the language guaranteeing the national parks must stay in federal hands. The guardrail, it’s gone, which means the sell-off question isn’t settled, it’s just paused. So, here’s why it isn’t just a history lesson.

The parks aren’t a done deal. That 1872 idea that some land belongs to all of us and can never be sold is right now a live argument. It got defended this year by ordinary people who decided it was worth defending, and only defending again. And this is where you come in, because here’s the lesson buried in this whole story, and our last two episodes too. These things have never protected themselves, not the parks, not the EPA, not FEMA. Every single time it took people. Deciding it mattered and saying so out loud, so do something today. Here’s three things, all easy. One, go visit a national park, a monument, historic site. There are 433 of them, and there’s almost certainly one near you. You can’t love what you’ve never met.

Two, support the people who watch over them, the park service and groups like the National Parks Conservation Association that fight these funding battles in Washington, so you don’t have to. This leads to a larger story that’s gathering momentum in the US, as well as around the world, which is 30% by 2030 a major global and statewide conservation initiative that aims to protect and conserve at least 30% of the earth’s inland waters and coastal and marine areas by the year 2030 California has formally adopted this goal to combat climate change and biodiversity loss, and other places are doing the same, and some are even pushing to have 50% of our lands put aside by 2050 so that’s where we can be pushing for as we move forward, and three, the big one, when the sell-off question comes back, and it will be the voice that says no, call whoever represents you.

It’s the most American thing in this whole story, because showing up is exactly how every one of these places got protected in the first place. A century and a half ago, this country had an idea so good the whole world copied it, that the most beautiful land we have should belong to everyone and to our great grandchildren, and never to the highest bidder. That idea is still ours, but only if we keep it. This storyline comes directly out of America’s best idea, the National Parks, part of our “250 for 250” series.

So, if this one moved you, do me a favor, take someone you love to a national park this year, that’s the whole idea. These places stay ours only if we use them, defend them, vote for them. I’m Matt Matern. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and we’ll see you next time. And remember, do something today.