Download The Land Ethic Aldo Leopold

The Land Ethic
Aldo Leopold
Dr. Green
Ethical Community
• How are these borders determined?
• Narrow Borders
– Odysseus could hang his slaves because they
were his property
• Wider Borders
– Slavery is no longer considered ethical
• How Wide Should the Borders be Drawn?
What Is Ethics?
• Philosophically
– a differentiation of social from anti-social
conduct
• Ecologically
– limitations on freedom of action in the struggle
for existence
Evolutionary Change
• Free-for-all competition replaced with
cooperation as individuals develop
interdependencies
– Biological symbioses
Stages of Evolution
• Relations of individuals
– Code of Moses
• Relations within society
– Individual to society in the Golden Rule
– Society to individual in democracy
• Relations to nature
– Still treated as property
Assumptions of Ethics
• that the individual is a member of a
community of interdependent parts
– Instincts tell one to compete for a place in the
community
– Ethics tells one to cooperate
Land Ethic
• The land ethic enlarges the boundaries of
the community to include
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Soils
Waters
Plants
Animals
The Biological Pyramid
• Members
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Predators
Birds and rodents
Insects
Plants
Soil
• Relationships—food chains
– Stability from highly organized webs of connections
– Energy flows
• Evolution
– Slow
Status of Humans
• Two views
– Conqueror of the land-community
• Land is commodity
• Self-interest is primary
– A member and citizen of it who must respect to
total community
• Land is a biotic systems with economic and noneconomic elements
Humans
• Division found in
– Forestry
– Wildlife management
– Agriculture
Why Humans Must Change
• Conquering is self-defeating
• The conqueror claims to know
– what makes the community work
– what and who is valuable
– what and who is worth-less
• It always turns out that he knows neither, and this
is why his conquests eventually defeat
themselves.
– Systems are too complex to be known fully
Need for a Land Ethic
• Most members of the land community have no
economic value
• Without economic value, they are not considered
in our calculations
– Fabricate economic value—songbirds
– Eradication of
• predators—wolf
• Noncommercial trees
• Entire biotic communities—bogs, marshes etc.
• Those that are eliminated are needed for the
healthy functioning of the ecosystem
Civilization and Environment
• Environment sets the possibilities or
civilizations
– Kentucky and bluegrass
– Southwest
• With livestock progressive erosion
• With plants and irrigation, the Pueblo culture
• Plant succession constrains civilizations
Ecological Health
• Consists in the capacity for self-renewal
Human Intervention
• Changes are induced too rapidly
• Changes produce unpredicted and often
untraceable readjustments
• Depletion of
– Energy storage, i.e., soil
– Cover—erosion
– Water
Problems
• Can the land adjust?
– Yes
• Western Europe
• Japan
• Northeast US
– No
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Asia Minor
North Africa
South America
Southwest US
Problems
• Can less intrusive means be developed?
– Keep populations below the carrying capacity
– The less violent the man made changes, the
greater the probability of successful
readjustment in the pyramid.
– Violence, in turn, varies with human population
density
• A dense population requires more violent
conversion.
Requirements of a Land Ethics
• Organisms have a right to continue
• Preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty
of the biotic community
Alternatives
• Government regulation
– Problems become too large, too complex, or too widely
dispersed to be performed by government.
• Private self-interest
– Conservation has failed to conserve
• Land Ethic
– An ethical obligation on the part of the private owner is
the only visible remedy for these situations.
Impediments to a Land Ethics
• Improper education
– Ecological training is scarce
• Outgrowing the land
Jared Diamond
Collapse
• Causes of collapse
– Environmental damage
– Climate change
– Hostile neighbors
– Interdependencies
– Social response
Environmental Damage
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Deforestation
Soil exhaustion
Water scarcity
Over-exploiting resources
Environmental impact
Introduction of new species
Over-population
Environmental toxicity through pollution
Induced climate change
Energy shortage
Future Problems
• Natural resource problems
– Habitat exhaustion
– Food
– Ecological diversity
– Soil exhaustion
• Pollution
– Chemical
– Alien species
Future Problems
• Ceilings
– Energy
– Water
– Photosynthetic capacity
• Population
– Size
– Impact