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The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium
A contemporary defense of conservationist Aldo Leopold’s vision for human interaction with the environment.
Informed by his experiences as a hunter, forester, wildlife manager, ecologist, conservationist, and professor, Aldo Leopold developed a view he called the land ethic. In a classic essay, published posthumously in A Sand County Almanac, Leopold advocated for an expansion of our ethical obligations beyond the purely human to include what he variously termed the “land community” or the “biotic community”—communities of interdependent humans, nonhuman animals, plants, soils, and waters, understood collectively. This philosophy has been extremely influential in environmental ethics as well as conservation biology and related fields.
Using an approach grounded in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of science, Roberta L. Millstein reexamines Leopold’s land ethic in light of contemporary ecology. Despite the enormous influence of the land ethic, it has sometimes been dismissed as either empirically out of date or ethically flawed. Millstein argues that these dismissals are based on problematic readings of Leopold’s ideas. In this book, she provides new interpretations of the central concepts underlying the land interdependence, land community, and land health. She also offers a fresh take on of his argument for extending our ethics to include land communities as well as Leopold-inspired guidelines for how the land ethic can steer conservation and restoration policy.
Informed by his experiences as a hunter, forester, wildlife manager, ecologist, conservationist, and professor, Aldo Leopold developed a view he called the land ethic. In a classic essay, published posthumously in A Sand County Almanac, Leopold advocated for an expansion of our ethical obligations beyond the purely human to include what he variously termed the “land community” or the “biotic community”—communities of interdependent humans, nonhuman animals, plants, soils, and waters, understood collectively. This philosophy has been extremely influential in environmental ethics as well as conservation biology and related fields.
Using an approach grounded in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of science, Roberta L. Millstein reexamines Leopold’s land ethic in light of contemporary ecology. Despite the enormous influence of the land ethic, it has sometimes been dismissed as either empirically out of date or ethically flawed. Millstein argues that these dismissals are based on problematic readings of Leopold’s ideas. In this book, she provides new interpretations of the central concepts underlying the land interdependence, land community, and land health. She also offers a fresh take on of his argument for extending our ethics to include land communities as well as Leopold-inspired guidelines for how the land ethic can steer conservation and restoration policy.
192 pages, Paperback
Published August 28, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 30, 2024
Like a great many people, I am a fan of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac. I am also a philosopher, so I was very interested to see that in recent years Roberta Millstein, a great philosopher of science (with a focus on evolutionary biology and ecology/environment), had begun to publish several journal articles examining Leopold's land ethic. This work has now resulted in a book, The Land is Our Community: Aldo Leopold's Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium (and there is an open access edition, see https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/...).
In six chapters, Millstein explicates and defends several important concepts and arguments drawn from Leopold's writings (going well beyond the the "Land Ethic" essay in the SCA), and then discusses implications for environmental policies. There are chapters focused on Leopold's notion of interdependence, the ideas of land community and land health, and the argument for the land ethic. Along the way, she engages with other secondary scholarship about Leopold's ideas and debunks some of what she thinks are myths that have surrounded the idea of the land ethic.
The result is an updated and more precise statement of Leopold's ideas, and a spirited defense. I cannot offer a detailed review since I am not familiar enough with the literature on Leopold. But I find Millstein's take appealing and inspiring. From a general reader's perspective, it may be that the discussion gets into the weeds a bit, as Millstein brings academic rigor to these topics, but it strikes me that she always strives to keep in touch with the spirit of Leopold's intent. We have good reason to think our ethical obligations extend outward to include the land communities we belong to, given our intimate interdependence.
In six chapters, Millstein explicates and defends several important concepts and arguments drawn from Leopold's writings (going well beyond the the "Land Ethic" essay in the SCA), and then discusses implications for environmental policies. There are chapters focused on Leopold's notion of interdependence, the ideas of land community and land health, and the argument for the land ethic. Along the way, she engages with other secondary scholarship about Leopold's ideas and debunks some of what she thinks are myths that have surrounded the idea of the land ethic.
The result is an updated and more precise statement of Leopold's ideas, and a spirited defense. I cannot offer a detailed review since I am not familiar enough with the literature on Leopold. But I find Millstein's take appealing and inspiring. From a general reader's perspective, it may be that the discussion gets into the weeds a bit, as Millstein brings academic rigor to these topics, but it strikes me that she always strives to keep in touch with the spirit of Leopold's intent. We have good reason to think our ethical obligations extend outward to include the land communities we belong to, given our intimate interdependence.
October 31, 2024
Dr Millstein writes, “With the ongoing climate crisis, rapid extinction of species, and loss of habitat, we need more than ever to understand that we cannot just focus on ourselves without recognizing all the biotic and abiotic entities with which we are independent.” Watch the news to see how our actions have caused catastrophic floods and fires. It is simply time for us to “be better”. To quote Margaret Atwood, “What we do now, before it’s too late, matters.” This book is relevant and powerful. Dr.Millstein, along with Aldo Leopold, just might have the answers to our present environmental crises.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews