Nature Journal- The Land Ethic

I thought that Aldo Leopold took an interesting stance on land conservation and ethics. He commented on the fact that humans often take advantage of the land the we live and use but don’t realize it. He focuses a lot of his writing on land ethics, which is somewhat of a strange concept to me. It makes sense to have ethics in a decision-making or business setting, but to apply ethics to the land? That seems a bit more complicated. In typical ethical dilemmas, one party has to decide whether or not something is morally right/wrong un regards to an action that may or may not harm a second party. In this situation, we as humans are the party making the decision and the second party is the environment, which really has no say in how we treat it. We as humans are making use of what the environment is providing for us, but edge dangerously close to taking advantage of it. Leopold argues that we are definitely taking advantage of the earth and the environment. By utilizing earth’s resources, we are bettering our own environment- but at what cost? Leopold encourages his reader to “think like a mountain”. I think what he means in this scenario is to look at the bigger picture. Short term from a view through a magnifying glass, we are helping ourselves with no immediate consequences and no ethical decisions are involved. However, when thinking like a mountain, we can step back and look at the environment and all that it can provide for years and years to come. Then the true harm and consequences come into light. This shows us how important it is to make ethical decision now so that we don’t face further consequences down the line.