"It's Time We Developed An Ecological Conscience"

By V.B. Price
ALBUQUERQUE TRIBUNE, JUNE 21, 2003

If it weren't for ecological pioneers like Aldo Leopold, the champion of
the first wilderness area in America, New Mexico's Gila Wilderness,
matters like protecting the Rio Grande silvery minnow, opposing the
extension of Paseo del Norte through the Petroglyph National Monument, and investigating the public hazard of the Sandia National Laboratories'
Mixed Waste Landfill probably wouldn't be enlivening the body politic today.

Without Leopold, and many others, the land would continue to be viewed
as a mere resource to be plundered, not as a world of inestimable
intrinsic value to which our lives and well being are inextricably
bound.

Leopold brought to the public's attention a simple, undeniable reality
about the land we inhabit, a reality not unlike the lessons we all
learned about taking care of our homes and gardens when we were kids: If
we don't take care of where we live and what we have, our world breaks
down. And the neglect and waste and ugliness become intolerable.

Every respectful camper and hiker detests the moron who litters the
trail and doesn't leave his campsite cleaner than when he found it.
Litter is a defilement. So is pollution. So is destruction of habitat.
So is desecrating sacred ground.

This may seem like a simple-minded view of ecology, but it's an approach
to life that makes perfect sense to all conscientious parents on the
planet who teach their children frugality, cleanliness, and gratitude,
the cornerstones of a respectful and responsible life.

Leopold called such an approach "ecological conscience." He meant,
basically, that each of us is part and parcel of where we live, of our
habitats, be it the earth or the household.
Leopold maintained it was "the impertinence of civilization" to massacre
species, to clear cut forests, and, I'm sure if he'd lived to see it,
drive roadways though someone else's sacred grounds, like the
Petroglyphs, or idly dump nuclear and industrial waste in unlined pits
close to a major city.

Leopold was no special interest lobbyist, as land advocates have been
wrongly branded lately. He spoke for the place we live, and against our
careless disregard of its welfare.

He created what he called "the land ehic" which he described like this: "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." The biotic community, of course, includes all life forms, including us.

Peter Hay, the author of Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought,
describes Leopold's thinking: He was "the first to argue for a widening of the sphere of ethics to include the natural world, so that it would be deemed
unethical - wrong- to regard the environment as our slave, just as the
last 200 years have come to regard it wrong to treat human beings as
slaves."

The land ethic, Leopold wrote in his famous book, "A Sand County
Almanac," "simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals or, collectively: the land." Humans, Hay
explains, cease "to be the conqueror of 'land community' and
[become]...a 'plain member and citizen of it' with the obligations of
respect for the community and its individual members that membership of
a community entails."

For those of us who believe that human beings belong to such a land ethic community, complete with obligations and privileges of survival, the idea of people dumping radioactive and chemical wastes into a 2.6 acre landfill south of Albuquerque from 1959 to 1988, a mix of wastes Sandia National Laboratories feels is too dangerous to move, is simply appalling. But the land ethic is such a convincing argument, and has been taken up by so many, that it more and more finds a way to win.

The Citizen Action Coalition, the lone public conscience watchdog of the Sandia National Lab's mixed waste landfill won a major political victory recently when NM Environment Secretary Ron Curry agreed to hold a public hearing on the matter, one that will perhaps air the myriad concerns citizens of our city have expressed.

Aldo Leopold, a great transplanted New Mexican, would be proud of them.

Price is an Albuquerque freelance writer, author, and commentator.