A Review Of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold, in his essay collection A Sand County Almanac explores the natural world, and the symbiotic relationship that’s shared between plant and animal, while also insinuating how humans live in opposition to that fragile synchrony, for we live to reshape our environment for contemporary gains. Leopold is able to write the essay as an ecological historian, who’s knowledge comes from the topography of the Wisconsin landscape, the rings of an Oak tree, or a single atom entombed in a limestone ledge. The first two sections of the book gravitate around two opposing forces conservation and modern progress (scientific advancement, economical growth.

“Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objective, or the scientific point of view. The means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, lets the chips fall where they may.” (163)

Since pre-industrial revolution humans have
Life and death are engrained in evolution, but the fundamental issue in the context of the book is who has the divine right to dictate the fate of that magnitude. In America’s short history, we have used the axe at a disproportionately greater rate than the shovel. The chips are scattered under every skyscraper, highway, and dam. How exactly can cost benefit analysis be used to measure the transformation of a thriving forest into cow pasture or a golf course? The mathematician is biased in his or her calculation and is simply shortsighted. The modern perception of the good life is materialistic, and elastic. That ideology pays no heed to evolution or future consequences that result from over consumption, or eradication of certain plants and animals. The axe is simply a byproduct of our manifestation of the good