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Aldo Leopold The Land Ethic Summary

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The Land Ethic Argument Outline Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” is an essay describing why we should not treat our land as our property. The first part of half of his essay is based on an anecdote that alludes to Odysseus returning from Troy to behead his slaves. His comparison there is that as once it was alright to treat people as property, it is now just fine to do the same thing to your land. Additionally, as ethics of the treatment of people changed as with the ethics of land treatment. He argues that we should treat our land with care and respect as we now treat one another, for we will be ushering a new era of change the is all for the better. The second half of the essay begins with "The Ecological Conscience". Starting off by stating “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land” and going on to describe how our fight for land is improving it is moving far too slow. This transforms into the …show more content…

In politics a cross-cutting cleavage is when a particular group is expected to go one way with their vote, but a part of the population divots in another direction (causing a cleavage) unexpectedly. Here he argues that all of humanity is one population and there are two types, A and B, that cut across the expectation of caring and respecting the land. He argues that type A: “regards the land as soil, and its function as commodity-production” and “the basic commodities are sport and meat… Artificial propagation is acceptable as a permanent as well as a temporary recourse-- it its unit costs permit”. Then, he argues type B: “Regards the land as a biota, and its function as something broader“ and “Worries about a whole series of biotic side-issues“ the side issues range from management principles of wildflowers to the cost in predators of producing a game crop. This shows that while we are connected to our environment in one regard or another, we are never fully present and ready to

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John Muir, a naturalist and preservation pioneer of nature took an ethical stand for land ethics when he shared his thoughts that all living things are equally important parts of the land, and animals and plants have as much right to live and survive as people do. In the 1600’s when Europeans began to settle in North America, there were 1037 million acres of forestland. Today, a little over 700 million acres in the United States is forestland—only thanks to preservation laws. In the 1800’s, that number of tress and forests decreased tremendously because expansion and progression recklessly exploited natural resources by clear-cutting forest to use wood for fuel and building supplies.

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At what point are we going to take responsibility and protect the Earth instead of allowing it to be destroyed? The Earth can only handle a so much growth before it reaches its max sustainability. In each text, sustainability refers to how much growth the Earth can maintain without being destroyed. Wendell Berry, Jared Diamond, and Bill McKibben all use rhetoric to appeal to their audience using ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is an appeal to the audience’s ethics.

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President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, was known for his love of nature. This was conveyed most strongly in his speeches, such as “Conservation as a National Duty”, in which he advocated for the preservation of natural resources in the interests of the nation and its people. In this speech as well as others he gave during his term as President, he stressed that conservation did not just pertain to preserving natural resources or deferring their exhaustion; rather, it was closely intertwined with the patriotic duty of ensuring that the nation would be able to provide for future generations, and was second only to the “great fundamental questions of morality”. One such example of how Roosevelt connected conservation with morality is found in his “The New Nationalism” speech, given in Osawatomie, Kansas in 1910. Here, he compares the way he believes the nation must behave in terms of conservation to the manner in which a farmer acts in reference to his children and the land that provides for them.

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After reading it a question arises whether or not right now at this very second are taking our land for granted? Another part of me thinks it’s just part of life and to advance as a society all of the actions of the early settlers were considered the better good for the land. However, in my opinion we must open our eyes to these problems so see what we can do as a society to address them. Overall I am in agreement with Aldo Leopald’s vision of the American Land ethic. I also believe whatever that has been done to the land cannot be undone.

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Aldo Leopold presents many ideas that make our minds turn at fast speeds with what’s happening to our land in the present day. These ideas he presents entangle themselves into our daily lives and daily reading. Gold Fame Citrus is just another one of those things that entangles itself within the ideas of Aldo Leopold. The more you read Leopold and let it sink in the better clarity you'll have given the scenes in Gold Fame Citrus; they take on a new life. Leopold’s agreeable and disagreeable ethics are intertwined within Claire Watkins novel, Gold Fame Citrus.

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Additionally, from an environmentalist view, wilderness should not be seen as a separate entity but rather one with humanity. Consequently, where one does not just go to a nature preserve to feel reconnected momentarily,

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Why was it that the land used to belong to us?” (188). This whole chapter serves as a realization within the community. They can no longer be dormant and they have to be prepared to protect themselves. It’s almost like a wake-up call for the reader to realize that the following chapters were going to be gruesome because certain situations were about to start coming into play.

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The harsh reality surrounds the fact that as time and technology advances, the separation between people and nature increases as well. Louv, in his rhetoric from Last Child in the Woods (2008), argues why the separation between society and nature is distressing.

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Many people who go into nature always see it as something beautiful and aesthetic, but they never see the other side to nature. Humankind’s connection with nature isn’t a real one. They always look at the bright side of nature but are blind to the true dark side of nature. JB MacKinnon’s article “False Idyll” (2012), reveals that nature is not just flowers in a field but can also be the survival of the fittest. He backs up his claim by talking about nature through anecdotes and expert’s research.

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The steps taken in this essay to repair a tree and care for its surroundings is the kind of consciousness needed in the first place to protect and preserve the trees and the ecosystem that surrounds them. The tone Merwin used is important because it is constructive. His tone is not accusing, or outrageous, but the only call for action the speaker implies is the description of doing the impossible. If Merwin did not take the approach he did when establishing his tone, it could potentially diminish the effect on the reader if the reader feels attacked or judged, damaging the audience’s opinion. Merwin simply wanted to make the reader think about how much our environment matters, how delicate, and how irreversible the effects on it are, beyond mainstream

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He also explained that just as the deers are afraid of the wolves , so are the mountains afraid of the deer and the other species with the fear of losing its vegetation. For this he has phrased that “The wilderness we hunt is the salvation of the world” which means that that it must not be destroyed. His main point here is that only the land can understand the true significance of an individual who is playing its role in the ecosystem. This is story that tells us the importance of very living species in nature and our eco system. If anything or any specie is absent, then there is a high probability of imbalance in eco system.

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Therefore, we need to think about tomorrow with respect to every action that we take in the environment and in this case we can say that sustainable development requires slower population growth. With this in mind, we need to be educated through our cultures about the impact we caused to the environment as we continue to reproduce.   The challenge of environmental ethics has led to the attempt to apply traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; the preservation of biodiversity as an ethical goal; the broader concerns of some thinkers with wilderness, the built environment and the politics of poverty; the ethics of sustainability and climate change, and some directions for possible future developments of the discipline [ CITATION And15 \l 1033 ]. With this multi-dimensional approach one can see that it is more of a cultural issue to think of it from its origin.

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Review of Literature Environmental issues began to be discussed and debated only towards the end of the 20th century. Since then significant amount of literature has been penned down raising awareness about issues of pollution, deforestation, animal rights and several others however it has failed to result in major changes, ideas or even actions to save the environment. Several species of animals have become extinct; pollution level is at an all-time high, global warming is leading to severe climate changes all across the globe but these problems do not seem to alarm the decision makers. Leydier & Martin (2013) also states that, “despite the increasing expression of concern in political and media debates about issues such as climate change, pollution and threats to biodiversity, “political ecology” (operating at the confluence of scientific developments, political engagement and ethical debates) is still trying to find its bearings” (p.7). It is quite evident that environmental issues are not treated in equivalence to political, economic, social or even religious issues.

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