The Land Ethic by Aldo Leopold

“This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecological evolution.” (Leopold 58). Leopold discusses how we treat the land and what it means to have a land ethic. There were many things that he talked about that I hadn’t really considered before. For example, we live from the land but do we take the time to ensure its’ safety and that it will be protected for our future. “There is no ethic dealing with man’s relation to the land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus’ slave-girls, is still property.” (Leopold 59). I liked this quote in particular because it really helps a person see how we treat the world around us. We treat the world like we used to treat slaves, as property. Since we evolved into a different ethic about slaves we no longer treat people like that. Leopold hopes that we can one day come to a different ethic about our land and come to a point where we treat it differently like we did with slaves. “Our formula in such cases is to relegate their conservation to government as refuges, monuments, or parks.” (Leopold 66). Leopold is talking about our “solution” to protecting out land. We don’t decide to protect the land as a whole we decide to take portions of it and set them aside to be protected. “The land ethic as a product of social evolution because nothing so important as an ‘ethic’ is ever written.” (Leopold 77). It is crucial that we as a people come to a point where we decide we want to actively take care of our environment. Once we as a people evolve to new ethics and new understandings we can come to a place to take care of our environment in an active way. We have come to new ethics is regards to many different things, but have been rapidly growing in technology and less of a need for the environment. I think that we will eventually get to a point where we need and want to come up with a new way to treat the world around us. I enjoyed Leopold’s perspective and think if more people got this thought in their head there might be more of a sense of urgency when it came to changing our land ethic.

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/environment