"Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land [including animals that live on the land]. No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions. The proof that conservation [of land and animals] has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial." (my italics added)
From Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac—and Sketches Here and There (Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 209-210.
Where are the philosophers and priests when we need them?
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