Tread softly: Reflection 5

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. I think most people apply this logic to their daily interactions. However, when we pay less fortunate countries to allow us to dump or electronic waste there we are only looking out for our best interests.The amount of chemical laden waste that Americans need to dispose of every year is staggering. Every old computer, printer, and television has very dangerous chemicals in them. But they have to be dumped somewhere. If we left them here they would pollute our waters, raise our risk of certain cancers, and cause elevated fetal deaths.  So we basically pay less privileged countries to be allow ourselves to ravage their lands and give them cancer instead of us. This is an extreme example of unethical human relations but on a smaller scale, not recycling in your home has the same effect; the waste has to go somewhere. Out of sight out of mind is not the solution. When does an item no longer become your property? When it is placed in the trash? When it leaves your zip code? When it become recycled into something new? When it sits in landfill for hundreds of years? When is it no longer your property? I have never pondered this. Sadly, I am sure that somewhere the is the "Leah trash pile" even though I am an avid recycler, try to buy minimally packaged good, and look for ways to reuse or give more life to items, I do generate trash. I guess I would have to say that it is yours until it is recycled or for the duration that it sits in trash dumps. Are the chemical run off also then your property? I guess so. Not that anyone claims there trash that is in the dumps but if you used it in its life, it has no other owner.
I like the quote "the Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society, democracy to integrate social organization to the individual." Which is precisely why I seek to one day hold a political office, focusing on mayoral. The population is growing so fast and the world is pretty full of people already. As it continues to grow civilizations are going to become even closer to each other (physically/spatially) and soon there wont be a yours and mine. There will only be an ours. As the reading says "the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts."
The days of grandeur where man took what needed as vital to his survival and to manifest destiny is over. We belong to the land as much as it belongs to us. Only the soil and water can not protect itself we must be there for its best interests and to preserve it. Have you ever seen the moving "The Happening?" (SPOILED ALERT) Basically, all the trees get mad that so many of them are being destroyed and through communicating with each other they decide to release a pheromone or something airborne that makes people want to kill themselves. Hence, dead people don't harm trees. Unlikely scenario but with a strong message. How much can we push this planet until it starts pushing back? When I moved to Florida I marveled at how beautiful the landscaping was. Now I no longer see beauty I see artificiality. Its all fake, unhealthy looking. Same goes for flying over Florida. Looking down to see the endless canals, and fingerling lakes, and man made ponds, it really looks like at any time Florida could just sink into the ocean. How much of the landscape is the way nature intended it versus what we have created and engineered?
Think of the American Dust bowl. Mother nature being heartless and robbing the soil of moisture? No the Dust Bowl was caused by humans poor management of crop lands and soil erosion. For the most part we are lucky that we seemed to have learned our lesson in this specific scenario but there are many that are unfolding now as well as in the future that will get catastrophically worse before we learn and they get better.
"Obey the law, vote right, join some organizations, and practice what conservation is profitable in your land." Good motto. I firmly support all of those endeavors. Except for maybe some of the obey the law doctrines. But none of which are related to conservation or the environment. I follow all of those laws.
I am originally from (first 20 years of life) a farming community in southwestern Wisconsin and had never heard of the Soil Conservation District Laws. In a way I can understand the farmers only adapting the proposed changes that we profitable. This goes back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and  being able to make enough money to provide for your family on a yearly basis is understandable but in  no way is acceptable for the consequences that mismanagement will bring in the future. It reminds me of a sand hour glass. The sand going through the glass is having to be able to make enough profit to provide for your family but not looking for future sustainability is like a making the hole gradually get bigger. The window of opportunity will only get smaller as time progresses.
The substitutes for land ethics sounds much like the children's rhyme "If that mockingbird don't sing." If something isn't working right for you go buy something else or a new one. How ever with soil management we can't go buy more soil or new soil. When does something become of value to where we can not afford to lose it? When is the threshold of having to do something begin?
On the land pyramid I had always heard that people were in the same categories as bears, large omnivores. Or even that bears were one above us as bears eat people and people do not eat bears. However I have never heard of people being categorized with raccoon and squirrels. First off, what kind of meat does a squirrel eat? Nuts? Is they surveyor counting nuts as meat because they are a protein. I don't think that counts. Maybe I need to become further educated and learn that squirrels love filet mignon. Do raccoons operate trawl line fishing boats and enjoys sashimi grade ahi like I do? Doubtful. But that would be really cool if they did.
Just as plankton is the essential first step in the food chain of the sea, healthy soil is the first step in the food chain for terrestrial beings. I have heard of using prairie grasses to detoxify once damaged lands. I know that ferns and river birch absorb soil contaminates faster than other like species. There has actually been some land recovery of places that had previously been condemned dumping grounds for waste have been brought back to life though carefully calculated land management.
Well said that the products of fertile soil maybe both qualitative and quantitatively superior. Simply, my vegetable garden in fairly sandy soil which lacks the fertile humus and pirth grows significantly less and also inferior size, color, and quality of vegetables. It is my responsibility to enrich this 20 x 30 foot plot yearly so my soil is enriched and my harvests more bountiful.
I have never heard anyone denounce land conservation as being futile. Indeed all ideas need a well rounded depth of comprehension to be appreciated but there has to be a jump off point for everything. Land conservation and land conservation activism are beneficial to the everyone who depends on the soil as well as the soil itself. The author says that our current problem is one of attitudes and implementation. But I don't see how you plan on changing some one's attitude until you educate them through conservation so they are behind the implementation of aspects. They form their own pyramid and are interdependent on each other.
The image is Aldo Leopold, the founder of ecology sitting on an "Aldo Leopold" Style bench writing a journal entry in 1946.