A Land Remembered By Patrick Smith

Aldo Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic” was published in A Sand County Almanac. The short paper confronts the imperfections in the most common approaches in preserving the environment. Leopold’s answer is to develop a new branch of environmental ethics to model humanity’s ever-changing relationship with the environment. Leopold observantly describes the history of ethics, the meaning of community with the land and why it’s appropriate to do so. Toward the end of the essay – as the reader is ready for Leopold to thoroughly explain his moral code – he ambiguously finishes, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Leopold, 224–225). The reader

Aldo Leopold is another American environmentalist who was dominant in the development of modern environmental ethics. Aldo was more for holistic ethics regarding land. According to him, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.” He describes in his article that politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which free-for-all competition has been replaced by co-operative mechanism with an ethical content.” He thought that ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. Also he believes that community should be

For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.

The novel, A Land Remembered, is the epic saga of three generations of MacIveys. The novel begins with a flash back, from the last generation MacIvey, Sol. Sol was a real estate tycoon in Miami and the surrounding areas. He has chosen to give up his life in Miami to live his last hours in the cabin in Punta Rassa , Florida; the cabin his grandfather had built. Thus, the three generations of MacIveys in Florida ends.

Aldo Leopold laid the foundation for environmental awareness decades ahead of a “ecological conscience” (257). There have many pleas to reconnect humanity with nature since the release of Leopold’s cherished book. Intuition and reason tell us that living in harmony with our world is more than idealistic—the future of our planet depends on it. The desire for harmony is not new one. Humans have long time sought to live in peace. It is genuine feelings of love and

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since

The environment around us in Southwest Florida is beautiful, but also delicate. From the tall cabbage palms to the shortest saw palmetto, the foliage that surrounds us represents life in Southwest Florida. The environment in Florida is extremely fragile and steps need to be taken in order to preserve its beauty. The first settlers in Florida sacrificed their living conditions to be surrounded by snakes, bobcats, and bears. From their sacrifice, Americans were able to settle one of the most beautiful places in the United States. Now, Florida has been bulldozed down and is filled with gated communities and retirement centers. The Florida landscape has taken many hits throughout the years, but it still manages to grow up through the concrete and show what Florida used to look like. The fragile environment in South West Florida needs to be protected for future generations to enjoy.

The Native Americans had a “take care of the earth, and the earth will take care of you” attitude, and many of their origins and creation stories reflect that. For example, in “Origins of Folk Stories” from the Iroquois Nation, a young man named Gaqka provides a rock, a symbol of the environment, with tobacco so the rock would share stories with him (36). This mentality not only illustrates the Native’s respect for nature, but it consequently also gave them great success in agriculture. The Native’s success is evident when Virginians and Puritans come to them once they begin starving. Virginian Captain John Smith notes in his

In class, we have discussed that there is a constant battle of protecting the environment, but also wanting

When Tobias and Emma move to the scrub forest of Florida there were no land laws and they settle where they please. Tobias said that the Lord owned the land and he put here for everyone to use and that there is so much that not all of it

As environmental issues continually enter into our view through the news and our own personal research and interests we hear many stories about the good and bad that is happening to our environment. The stories tell us about the efforts made to clean up our rivers oceans and lake and maybe the problems that morally impact us to clean them.

When looking at environmental ethics, we are focusing on our attitudes towards the impact on the biological and geological aspects of our planet and whether human actions maintains or disturbs the balance between the planet's different life forms and geological systems. This essay will include exploring theories and deciding whether we have an individual moral responsibility towards the environment. Many people believe that as humans, we do have a moral responsibility towards the environment and we must preserve and protect it for the future generations. However, others take an anthropocentric view and they

Ehrlich states that there are too few genes in our bodies with other vital life-sustaining missions to be the cause of something like human nature (2002). He argues human nature is dependent upon cultural and environmental factors. Human beings are complex with a very great range of attitudes and extremely diverse behaviors and our genes alone cannot account for all of these behaviors. Environmental scientists themselves vary on their attitude towards advocating for the environment although most scientists agree we have a responsibility to the current predicament. However, there is also the belief that advocacy can reduce credibility. There are generally three reactions to bad news such as if we continue on the path we are on we will lose our life-supporting ecosystems, denial is common. Or one might try to minimize the seriousness or maximize it for some type of personal gain or possible profit. Ehrlich states the fundamental problem is the whole concept of conservation is culture-bound, and that attitudes toward the environment are not predetermined or innate (2002). But are rather reflections of the unique environments in which we mature, and the diverse incentives to which we are exposed (Ehrlich, 2002). There is also the loss of our connection with nature due to urbanization that must also be considered. Cultural evolution is what is needed to change people’s perception of environmental circumstances and this can only

Cultivating the virtue of humility as we deal with our ecological crisis helps us appreciate that any ecological ethic which takes into account both God and humanity and does not reduce both to some extension of undifferentiated nature must begin with a rejection of the unbridled sovereignty of humanity over the earth. In this rejection is the recognition that all work upon the earth must be informed by a clear understanding of and respect for the earth as an autonomous and valuable entity and the laws of nature on which the bounty of the earth depends.

Main TopicsEnvironmental ethics comprises several of the most relevant questions some contemporary societies are facing: to what