“Adopting a land ethic is easy and painless for most of us today because it imposes the primary burden to act on someone else.”
—Douglas W. MacCleery, United States Forestry Service forester, writing about a decade ago.
And more:
“While few of us are resource producers any more, we all remain resource consumers. This is the one area we all can act upon that could have a positive effect on resource use, demand and management. Yet few of us connect our resource consumption to what must be done to the land to make it possible. At the same time many of us espouse the land ethic, our operating motto in the marketplace seems to be ‘shop ’til you drop’ or, ‘Whoever dies with the most toys wins.’ ”
The early marketing of the holiday season has begun. This is a good time of year to consider the United States’s per-capita use of energy and materials, which is way ahead of most of the rest of the world.
I heard these comments by MacCleery quoted today by Tom Worthley, a University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension forester, speaking at the Connecticut Forest & Research Forum in West Hartford.
As the holiday buildup intensifies, there will be more on this.
