The wealthy mine operator has a good reason to pretend he doesn't get Leopold.

This is the root of the problem with Leopold's idea: it requires people to think too much against their natural tendencies. It is the natural tendency of essentially every other creature on Earth to find a niche and stay put, being constrained from unlimited growth by predators and the availability of food and water. This is not the case for human beings. Humans, gifted with brains capable of fine ideas such as Leopold's, nevertheless have a quite different propensity from other creatures; our unspoken policy is one of continuous expansion. Whether through nature or nurture, our inclination is toward exploration, exploitation, and accumulation.

This is what Leopold is up against. To be practical, his land ethic would require a change of heart in every human being in the world, and it would have to be a...
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