Earth Works: Selected Essays

Speaking for the Land

296 t the dedication ceremony for the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in June 1934, the pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold began his remarks by declaring: “For twenty centuries and longer, all civilized thought has rested upon one basic premise: that it is the destiny of man to exploit and enslave the earth. The biblical injunction to ‘go forth and multiply ’ is merely one of many dogmas which imply this attitude of philosophical imperialism.” Leopold was not shy about making such grand claims, especially when, as in this brief talk, he wished to distill a complex argument into a few words. One could cite many examples of “civilized thought,” including the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Native American cultures, that do not advocate enslavement of the Earth. And one could cite biblical injunctions that urge us to be caretakers rather than exploiters of the creation. Still, there was ample evidence in Leopold’s time that the majority of his fellow citizens regarded the Earth as purely a source of raw materials, to be mined, dammed, deforested , plowed, paved, and otherwise manipulated to suit human needs, without regard for the needs of other species and with scant regard for the needs of future generations. This attitude of “philosophical imperialism,” which wrought so much damage in the Dust Bowl years, remains powerful in our day, and is now wreaking havoc on a global scale. In his remarks at the dedication ceremony, Leopold went on to say that the drive for human dominion over the Earth had produced “ecological destruction on a scale almost geological in magnitude.” For illustration, he pointed to Speaking for the Land 297 Speaking for the Land the wildfires and dust storms that were afflicting Wisconsin and other prairie states, a disaster brought on by the clearing of forests, draining of wetlands, overgrazing of rangelands, careless plowing, and drought. One of the most severe storms had swept the Great Plains the previous month, in May 1934, blackening the sky and blowing soil all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Crops were buried. Some roads had to be cleared with snowplows. In Chicago, motorists used headlights at midday. Before the drought broke, later in the decade, half a million people had been rendered homeless, several million had been forced to migrate in search of jobs, and a legacy of fertility built up on the prairie over thousands of years had been squandered. It would be easy to compile a list of ecological disasters from our own day that are comparable in magnitude to the Dust Bowl. One recalls, for example, the devastation of New Orleans and other cities along the Gulf coast by Hurricane Katrina, a hurricane likely rendered more violent by ocean warming, and floodwaters rendered more lethal by the dredging of coastal wetlands for oil production and by the channeling of the Mississippi River for shipping. One thinks of Prince William Sound in Alaska smeared with oil from the Exxon Valdez, and of the Great Lakes despoiled by sewage, industrial pollution, and invasive species. One thinks of the oxygen-starved region in the Gulf of Mexico where no fish can survive, a dead zone the size of New Jersey caused by the runoff of agricultural fertilizer from the Mississippi basin. One thinks of mountains in Appalachia blasted open in the search for cheap coal, and the resulting debris sliding downhill to clog rivers and bury homes. One thinks of forests killed by acid rain, the fat of polar bears and the milk of nursing mothers laced with toxins, a thinning ozone layer allowing passage of more ultraviolet rays, the leaching and death of coral reefs from offshore pollution and rising water temperatures, the exhaustion of ocean fisheries, and the accelerating pace of species extinction. One thinks of global climate disruption, which threatens to cause an order of suffering that will make the Dust Bowl seem mild by comparison. One thinks, alas, of all too many examples of what happens when a domineering attitude toward the Earth, unconstrained by prudence or reverence , employs ever more powerful technology to serve the appetites of ever more people. Aldo Leopold remains a vital figure for us today because he analyzed the sources of ecological damage with unprecedented clarity, and he wrote about possible 298 Earth works remedies as compellingly as any American ever has. Although he was among the earliest champions of wilderness protection, he thought and wrote mainly about land...