Looking Back at Aldo Leopold

One of my favorite environmentalists of the 20th Century, Aldo Leopold not only wrote an important book (A Sand County Almanac) but also demonstrated in his own life our capacity for significant and meaningful change.  "Think Like A Mountain" and "A Fierce Green Fire" are two of my favorite essays in Leopold's book, pointing as they do to the power of empathy to bring change.  But "The Land Ethic" is the most important idea in the book, and an idea we still struggle to make part of our contemporary environmental practice.  Oh, and I don't think Leopold is quite as stern or humorless as my portrait of him would otherwise indicate.