Assignment Two - Madysen Early - Environmental Ethics
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Madysen Early
Assignment Two: The Land Ethic
Environmental Ethics
Due: 11/07/2023
In Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic,” he puts an emphasis on the extent to which we as humans
offer our ethical concern to other communities. Such extended communities can be identified as soils,
waters, plants, animals, and collectively make up his definition of the land. I stand defensively in support
of Leopold’s work, as I believe as humans we should be extending our moral concern beyond our own
communities, and to ones inclusive of the land. It is important to be in support of the land ethic because
this is our best shot at the salvation of conserving the land we have now.
Leopold’s ecocentric environmental ethics views the people and the land as two communities
intertwined completely. He believed that caring for people cannot be separated from caring for the land.
When looking at ethical dilemmas, and more specifically how to relate to our environment, I do not
believe you can get a better understanding of how we should be treating our environment than
Leopold’s methods and beliefs. The land ethic promotes a holistic ecological approach. This way of
thinking prioritizes the entire environment as a whole, before the needs of the individual. This supports
Leopold’s ideas in the way that it views all our ecosystems as interconnected. He did not view the land
ethic as a set of rules to follow, but more of a moral value that came about naturally. He identified our
ability to be as ethical as possible only in relation to what we could see, understand, feel, love or
otherwise have faith in. This can and should include our waters, soils plants and animals.
It is important to account for human psychology and the impact it has on our cognitive decisions
and moral values when looking at the ethics of humans. However, I do not believe that this will serve as
an opposition to Leopold’s ideas, but rather it acts as a guide on how to shift the human mindset to be
more supportive of Leopold’s land ethics. Instinct suggests that you will defend and protect yourself
against harm at all costs. It is innate, impulsive and motivational. It also implies that you will defend and
protect those who you share close relationships with, or personal connections within any capacity. This
Madysen Early
Assignment Two: The Land Ethic
Environmental Ethics
Due: 11/07/2023
logic would then suggest that so long as we as humans view our land and environment as a member that
we have a personal connection to, then we will strive to protect and maintain it. That, at minimum, we
will not do anything to directly harm it. By extending our love and care for the environment and closing
the gap between our communities, we will then view it as our own community, and feel compelled
instinctually to protect it. This mindset is what will harvest the harmonic environment that Leopold
alludes to in his essay. By seeing the land as our own community, we establish a new sense of belonging.
Once we feel as though we belong with that community, as equals, we will then start to love and respect
our land the exact same way.
Moral rationalizing and reasoning is a process that is hard to follow. Jean Piaget and Lawrence
Kohlberg attempted to document this in the trolley situation. Joshua Greene, a philosopher and
neuroscientist, took a look (with the help of Jonathan Cohen) at the brain behavior of people thinking
about the trolley situation. He found that multiple networks in the brain lit up when people thought
about taking direct responsibility for doing harm to someone, even if for the greater benefit of the
group. These areas were in the frontal lobe, which concludes they were feeling emotions for these
hypothetical people. However, when tasked with deciphering the hand-off situation, only the rational
calculation area was notable. This study serves as a perfect example of how we can use human
psychology, and benefit from it, as we apply it to the land ethic. If the humans in the study had an
emotional response to people who were entirely made up in a hypothetical situation, surely the same
emotions, if not more powerful ones, will be evoked when they are faced with a member of their own
community. The “hands-off” mindset would align with the separation of care for people and care for the
land. We do not see ourselves as the land, so if we hurt the land we do not have the same emotional
response as if we hurt another person. However, by intertwining our communities as humans, animals,
Madysen Early
Assignment Two: The Land Ethic
Environmental Ethics
Due: 11/07/2023
plants, soils and waters, we are giving ourselves the “hands-on” mindset. If something is to happen to
our community, it is at our own expense because we are the ones responsible for allowing our
community to be compromised in any way. Hurting the land would be equivalent to hurting a person in
this framework.
Understanding and implementing the land ethic is crucial to our future environment. By allowing
ourselves to be emotionally invested in our land, we are allowing ourselves to have the utmost
understanding of it. Of course, as humans are diverse in many ways, cultural settings can have an impact
on the way we prioritize our land. In some cultures, the land actually takes priority over the people. In
others, the people take priority over the land. The issue here is that some cultures may compromise
their land if they are prioritizing other things, particularly ones that may be harmful to the land. Even a
culture with values such as an individualism can be damaging to our land. Prioritizing an individual rather
than the group, say in a high production country or city, can and will dramatically and negatively impact
our land and environment. Such cultural values have an influence, and are the direct cause of the effects
of environmental attitudes and behaviors.
In my opinion, Leopold was right on track with the idea of land ethics. We need to be equals
with our land in order to make ethically just decisions. It is hard to imagine we will be able to preserve
and maximize the life of our land and the resources it has provided us if we are not acting ethically when
dealing with it.
It is clear that the responsibility for taking care of our land lies in the hands of us as
civilized humans. We must take responsibility and reunite the care of people with the care of our land.
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