A land ethic (or land ethics) is a philosophy that seeks to guide the actions when humans utilize or mak changes to the land. This specific term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his book A Sand County Almanac (1949). Within this work, he wrote that there is a need for a "new ethic", an "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it". However, while Leopold is credited with coining this term, specific land ethics were in place prior to his writing Sand County Almanac. For example, Leopold himself defines and argues against an economic land ethic.
Read more about Land Ethic: Leopold's Land Ethic
Famous quotes containing the words land and/or ethic:
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)