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Ecologism

Leopold and Carson

  • 5 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

Recall questions on Leopold's land ethic and wilderness conservation, and on Carson's exposure of synthetic pesticides, bioaccumulation and the grassroots environmental movement she inspired.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Process

What did Rachel Carson expose about synthetic pesticides?

Key term

How does the land ethic change the human role?

Key term

What did Leopold mean by conservation as harmony between people and the land, and what did he think it required?

Process

What did Carson propose in place of blanket chemical spraying, and what principle lay behind it?

Key term

What underlying attitude to nature did Carson attack?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Explain Leopold's land ethic.

    Model answer

    It extends moral consideration beyond people to soils, waters, plants and animals, so that the community to which ethics apply includes the whole of the land.

  2. 2

    How does the land ethic change the human role?

    Model answer

    It turns human beings from conquerors of the land into plain members and citizens of the biotic community, dependent upon it rather than owning it.

  3. 3

    By what standard did Leopold say an action should be judged?

    Model answer

    An action is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, and wrong when it tends to do the opposite.

  4. 4

    Why did Leopold come to oppose the extermination of predators?

    Model answer

    He saw that removing wolves allowed deer to multiply until they stripped the mountainside bare, which taught him that a healthy system needs its predators.

  5. 5

    What did Leopold contribute to wilderness protection?

    Model answer

    He argued that wilderness has value in its own right and serves as a healthy benchmark against which damaged land can be measured, and he campaigned successfully for the first designated wilderness areas on American public land.

  6. 6

    What did Leopold mean by conservation as harmony between people and the land, and what did he think it required?

    Model answer

    He meant a state in which human use does not impair the land's capacity to renew itself, and he thought it could not be achieved by government programmes alone but needed an ecological conscience in individual landowners.

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