The Land is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium With Roberta Millstei

Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is now 75 years old – does it stand the test of time?

Using an approach grounded in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of science, Roberta Millstein offers a new interpretation and defense of Leopold’s land ethic in light of contemporary ecology. Despite the enormous influence of the land ethic, it has sometimes been dismissed as either out-of-date or ethically flawed.

Millstein argues that these dismissals are unfounded—they are based on problematic interpretations of Leopold’s ideas. In this virtual program, she provides new, more defensible interpretations of the central concepts underlying the land ethic: interdependence, land community, and land health. She also offers a fresh interpretation of his argument for extending our ethics to include land communities as well as Leopold-inspired guidelines for how the land ethic can steer conservation and restoration policy.