Aldo Leopold Legacy Center
Shaping the Consequences of Commerce
As the pace of society and levels of consumption continue to increase, we tend to be less able to participate in providing for ourselves, our family members, or other people in our communities. There is less time to cook dinner, share meals, or volunteer. These activities, once the function of family and community, are increasingly bought and sold.
“There are two things that interest me; the relationship of people to each other, and the relationship of people to land.” – Aldo Leopold
In the 1940s, Leopold observed that trends in urban and industrial growth were moving people away from, rather than toward, “an intense consciousness of land.” This worried Leopold, because without a “vital relation” to land, how could we develop the sort of admiration, respect, and love that could support a more ethical relationship to land?
As our relations with both people and land become less personal and less participatory, we participate more and more in the world-girdling chains of commerce and industry. The less we are able to bring ethics to bear in personal and community relations, the greater the need to practice a “consumption ethic,” in order to ensure that the products and services we buy are not causing harm to faraway people and places. Yet what we know about the people and places connected to producing a specific product is often very little. The worries that keep us up at night include the impact of our actions on other people and the land, as well as the balance in our checkbook, yet these may be reconciled with changes in our lifestyles and different choices in the marketplace.
Buy Less
Using fewer resources is a fundamental step toward reconciling conservation and consumption. In finding ways to buy less, we reduce demand for raw materials and lower the rates of extraction and pollution, putting less pressure on the ecosystems that support our global economy.
Recently, the serious study of happiness has shown that for many of us in the developed world, increasing material wealth no longer equates with increasing happiness. Once income rises above the poverty level, the positive affects of more wealth dramatically lessens. The Center for the New American Dream has captured the spirit of this vital realization with the phrase, “More Fun, Less Stuff.”
Buy Local
Buying local not only cuts massive amounts of fossil fuels used in transporting goods but can also support good land use and bring the benefits of such relationships with land close to home.
By cutting out many middlemen, buying locally also means that more of the consumer dollar goes directly to land owners. Many rural farmers, ranchers and foresters have felt compelled to exploit their land in order to make a living in the increasingly competitive global market; with a local market, many landowners can make a living while integrating land stewardship with commodity production. Buying locally allows many landowners who were frustrated by globalization to enjoy the satisfaction of doing right by the land they love.
Buy Certified
A “not in my backyard” attitude, when compounded with rising consumption levels, has pushed resource extraction and industrial development to other countries, where looser environmental and labor laws leave us with difficult questions to answer about how our lifestyles impact the ability of distant people to determine their own way of life, and to maintain significant cultural links to the land when they desire to.
Buying certified products allows us to support conservation in distant places when obtaining goods we cannot find close to home. For products from other states and overseas, it allows us to support good land use and healthy communities in places where we may not be able to support effective legislation against harming land. A trustworthy third party is critical to making these eco-labels work.
Learn More and Share
There are many good resources for learning about how and why to consume less. A key component of translating individual actions into meaningful change in our communities is sharing our knowledge, information, and ethic with others. Talking about ideas of consumption and conservation with others encourages a broader group of people to think about reducing their impact.
Learn more about how to make your home consume less:
Visit Architecture 2030's website for homeowners, click here.