My Response to The Land Ethic (Excerpt from A Sand County Almanac) by Aldo Leopold

"This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love?" (Leopold 60) These questions really do make me think. I sing the national anthem with my country, but what is it that I love about my country so much. What is it that we all love about the country so much? After this question, he then uses a sarcastic tone and asks how can we love this planet so much if we are constantly hurting it.


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We litter and we are constantly polluting our country, so we cannot possibly like it that much. Not only are we polluting our environment, but those beautiful animals that we also claim to love so much. How many of us actually take care of our environment or have actually contributed to it. Not many of us, but we sure do love our country. I do not think we love it that much. It just takes one person to take a stance and then others will follow, but what if we all took a stance. I do not think that people realize that if everyone contributed a little in the world, that actually means the whole world contributed and the whole world will become a much better place to live in.

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"The usual answer to this dilemma is 'more conservation education.'" (Leopold 63) Now that I have discussed how we should be helping the environment we love so much, I know that is impossible if we are not educated on it. How are we going to show something love that we know little about. If everyone was more educated on simple ways to help the environment and what actually happens to the environment when we do not do certain things, then I strongly feel we would be more proactive in doing so. We do not all realize that we are actually killing the environment and there will be no more environment if we continue. I am just as guilty of doing this as others, but I have made some changes over the years.

"We have no land ethic yet." (Leopold 65) He says this as if he has hope that we change and actually show love for our environment in action and not just by words. We are co-existing with the land, but do not seem to see the value of it and how much is contributes to our present and past developments. All of these had to do with the environment in some way. We are not educating everyone on this, so the value of it depreciates day by day. The environment has become the least of our worries and we continue to hurt it. Although, do not ever think that we will not say how much we love it. That is something that we will continue to do even though we are lying.