behave cannot be generated from observational facts – the moral ‘ought’ cannot be
derived from an observation of what ‘is’. This is a recurrent problem with ecologism
and we discuss it in more detail later. Another philosophical, or ethical, claim is
that the history of morality is characterised by an expanding circle of concern,
whereby we now consider the ownership of other human beings – slavery – wrong,
but we have not yet expanded the circle of concern to include the land. The land
ethic enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and
animals. In fact Leopold links these two philosophical claims by arguing that
morality has undergone an ecological evolution, suggesting that the moral ought
emerges over time from a growing realisation of what is. Such evolution has its
origins in:
the tendency of interdependent individuals or groups to evolve modes of co-
operation. The ecologist calls these symbioses. Politics and economics are
advanced symbioses in which the original free-for-all competition has been
replaced, in part, by co-operative mechanisms with an ethical content.
(Leopold, 1987: 143)
The extension of ethics to land is an ‘evolutionary possibility and an ecological
necessity’. Certainly, Leopold argues, individual thinkers have condemned the abuse
of the land, but ‘society’ has yet to embrace the land ethic. The conservation
movement is the embryo of such social affirmation. Leopold’s land ethic was shaped
by his experiences of state-led conservation of the 1930s and 1940s in the United
States, and this led him to a salutary conclusion: respect for the land cannot be
achieved if the state assumes sole moral responsibility for the environment. Rather,
individualsmust change their motivations, and this is a powerful and central claim
of the ecological movement. Leopold noted that farmers were prepared to take
ecologically friendly measures so long as those measures were consistent with their
profit margins. He observes that the existence of obligations is taken for granted
when what is at issue are better roads or schools but ‘their existence is not taken
for granted, nor as yet seriously discussed, in bettering the behaviour of the water
that falls on the land, or in the preserving of the beauty or diversity of the farm
landscape’ (Leopold, 1987: 145).
A difficulty which Leopold observes in moving from dominion over the land,
driven by the desire for profit, to stewardship of the land, is that many members
of the land community have no economic value: ‘of the 22,000 higher plants and
animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be
sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use’ (Leopold, 1987: 145). But such
plants and animals have, Leopold claims, ‘biotic rights’. This would seem to entail
a rejection of a human-centred attitude to the environment, but it is unclear whether
this is really the case, with Leopold suggesting that if a private landowner were
ecologically minded he would be proud to be the custodian of an eco-system that
adds ‘diversity and beauty’ to his farm and community (Leopold, 1987: 146).
Furthermore, the assumed lack of profit in ‘waste’ areas has proved to be wrong,
but only after the destruction of most of it.
To express the interdependence of nature Leopold uses the image of a pyramid,
with a plant layer resting on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent
layer on the insects, and so on up through various animal groups to the apex layer,
which consists of the larger carnivores. There exist lines of dependency between
Chapter 16 Ecologism 363