William Rafael Mr. McAda English III H 16 April 2024 Word Count: Sustainability: The Cause for the Survival of Humanity Aldo Leopold poses the ultimate question surrounding humanity for the future of our kind: can humanity have “both progress and plants[? ]” (Leopold 45). Although humanity evolved technologically at unprecedented levels, the side effect of its development has been the abuse of nature. A critical flaw in the design of our modern-day society is that people do not appreciate the actual value of the planet. By recognizing the advocacy for nature in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Walt Whitman’s Songs of Myself, the reader realizes that humanity must acknowledge the role of nature beyond a means of survival and prioritize restoration of natural resources over progression to create a long-term sustainable society. Leopold expresses…show more content… The novel describes the plant as ignored in a corner of a graveyard, yet it is the “sole remnant” of its kind, perhaps the only silphium “in the western half of our country” (Leopold 43). Leopold describes the silphium as a “relic of original Wisconsin” because it used to tickle “the bellies of the buffalo” long before humanity inhabited the prairies (Leopold 43). Eventually, a man cut down the silphium, and with it died “the prairie epoch” (Leopold 43). The death of the silphium demonstrates humanity disregarding the importance of plant life; humans cut down an endangered plant that survived so much of the region’s history for no reason. Leopold perfectly expresses the death of the silphium as another instance of the progress of the “mechanized man, oblivious of flora” (Leopold 44). With the destruction of natural organisms, as in this case, humanity loses an essential and historical aspect of our planet. If humanity destroys the crucial plants of Earth’s history, they will lose a key component of what defines
