Aldo Leopold advocates for land ethics and not environmental laws due to experiences with legal restrictions whereby individuals find means of evading surveillance and arrest. Thus, he calls for values and a moral sense of right and wrong regarding environmental conservation (Millstein, p. 394). Ethics are distinct from human legislation since they innately direct people to treat the environment with respect for everyone’s benefit. Individuals and communities who genuinely care for the environment have an inner drive to protect the land and report those in violation.
For one, the prevailing trends will adversely affect human health in several ways if left unchecked. Currently, landowners use the land however way they please. There is an open disregard to the effects of malpractices on adjacent pieces of land, such as the seepage of industrial wastes on agricultural farms. Moreover, large companies and influential owners can evade legal challenges when found in contravention of laws (Millstein, p. 1112). Eventually, water pollution will worsen, habitat destruction will increase, and entire ecosystems disrupted, leading to mass extinctions and severe life changes if current trends continue.
Sand County Almanac is a proper representation of what environmental studies entail. Among other things, it entails instances of environmental degradation and their effects on human and animal life (Leopold, p 188-216). The author goes beyond lamentations and offers concrete advice on taming environmental issues (Gare, p. 397). For instance, he questions the effectiveness of laws (legal system) in ecological preservation and calls for ethics among communities and individuals, providing an all-around environmental discourse.
Works Cited
Gare, Arran. “Internalizing Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic: The Communitarian Perspective on Ecological Sustainability and Social Policy.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 3, 2021, p. 397. Web.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River, Penguin Classics, 2020, pp. 187–226.
Millstein, Roberta L. “Debunking Myths about Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.” Biological Conservation, vol. 217, 2018, pp. 391–96. EBSCOhost, Web.
Millstein, Roberta L. “Functions and Functioning in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and in Ecology.” Philosophy of Science, vol. 87, no. 5, 2020, pp. 1107–18. EBSCOhost, Web.