Marybeth Lorbiecki lives, writes, and gardens in Hudson, Wisconsin. She is the author of Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire and John Burrough's award winning biography for children, Of 'Things Natural, Wild, and Free: A Story about Aldo Leopold . Her other environmental titles include Earthwise at Home , Earthwise at Play , and Earthwise at School .
This series of interviews with Ms. Lorbiecki will give you a much better picture of both Aldo Leopolds - the man and the movement. He has been credited with much of the force behind todays ecosystem management push. I think he is a heck of an interesting man and the best environmental wordsmith I've ever read.
Q: Can you justify AL's disdain for "comfort at any cost" versus his approach of "comfort must be in step with the land". He seemed to be struggling to move from partial participation in nature to total integration for the healthy existence of a natural world...
Marybeth Lorbiecki: Another difficult but necessary question. Leopold seemed to view things in terms of practical realities and pursuable ideals. They were not in direct antithesis to each other, but rather something like the ying and yang of conservation. Leopold acknowledged many of the contradictions of his own life with his ideals:
"I realize that every time I turn on an electric light, or ride on a Pullman, or pocket the unearned increment on a stock, or a bond, or a piece of real estate, I am 'selling out' to the enemies of conservation. When I submit these thoughts to a printing press, I am helping cut down the woods. When I pour cream in my coffee, I am helping to drain a marsh for cows to graze, and to exterminate the birds of Brazil..."
His list continues. He concludes:
" What to do? I see only two courses open to the likes of us. One is to go live on locusts in the wilderness, if there is any wilderness left. The other is to surreptitiously to set up within the economic Juggernaut certain new cogs and wheels whereby the residual love of nature... may be to recreate at least a fraction of those values which their love of 'progress' is destroying. A briefer way to put it is: if we want Mr. Babbitt to rebuild America, we must let him use the same tools wherewith he destroyed it. He knows no others."
Leopold had an expression "breakfast comes before ethics", which meant that one could not be concerned with environmental ethics when breakfast is an iffy event. He believed that in every striving for better harmony with the land, we must remember the everyday needs of people, who are also members of the land community. Leopold would be very much against any kind of paradigm that would place environmentalists on one side of a table and everyone else on the other.
