A Land Ethic Measured in Neighbours, Not Treaties

Writing in Aeon, Craig Maier makes the case that caring for the planet entails decisions that are intimate — about our farms, our homes, our human and our wild neighbours. That is a different register from the usual environmental appeal, which arrives as a planetary abstraction and asks for restraint in the name of a number. The wager behind the intimate framing is that people act on what is close and specific: the creek that floods the lower field, the tree that shades the driveway, the animal in the bin. Once the wild is a neighbour rather than a category, the argument for restraint changes shape. It becomes less about a globe you will never see and more about a place you have to keep living in.