Citing the unsustainable emotional toll of genuine awe, the Sierra Club formally petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to implement a strict, phased ban on experiencing nature unironically. Under the proposed rule, all visitors to federal lands would be required to maintain a baseline level of ecological despair or performative detachment.
The 400-page regulatory filing, drafted in response to the latest IPCC synthesis report, argues that unregulated, sincere enjoyment of a sunset or a pine forest constitutes an unmitigated drain on the climate movement’s psychological reserves. The organization noted that while incidental smiling near a watershed is currently permitted under Scope 1 emissions guidelines, allowing hikers to simply have a nice time without crippling anxiety about stranded assets or the upcoming fire season is no longer viable for a planet in transition.
We can no longer tolerate the unchecked extraction of joy from vulnerable ecosystems without at least a passing acknowledgment of the Holocene extinction.
The National Park Service has reportedly already begun pilot-testing the mandate at Yosemite and Yellowstone, where visitors are now required to verbally apologize to a designated sequoia or glacier before initiating a hike. To support the regulatory shift, outdoor retailers including REI and Patagonia have pledged to phase out brightly colored recreational gear, replacing their spring catalogs with muted, somber tones specifically designed to reflect the inevitable collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
The measure faces stiff opposition from fossil fuel lobbying groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, which filed a counter-motion arguing that consumers should remain completely oblivious to the energy transition and continue purchasing high-clearance vehicles for unencumbered, unironic leisure. A final decision on the nature-awe phase-out is expected to be published in the Federal Register before the COP30 summit in Belém, though analysts widely expect the enforcement timeline to slip as millions of Americans continue to accidentally find the woods quite pretty.