How has this quote escaped attention all these years?
It is to the point, universal, inspirational and succinct. It amounts to a mission statement for humanity. It could change the world.
“Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”
Not dramatic enough for a manifesto? Give it another look. It is a powerful and radical thought presented in disarmingly graceful, understated and non-confrontational prose. It ought to be plastered all over those posters the kids make for Earth Day. But it won’t be, I can almost guarantee. I’ve never seen it quoted anywhere.
Henry David Thoreau worked that sentence into the middle of his journal entry for Feb. 17, 1841, an entry that otherwise was not likely to stir the modern soul. The preceding sentence, a not atypical Thoreau commentary on society, if a rather ho-hum one, reads: “The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights — fuel — and shop rent.”
Still, Thoreau’s journal is widely read today and always in print, something that can be said of but a comparative handful of journals, like those of Lewis and Clark or Anne Frank. Yet somehow Thoreau’s sound bite for society has lain there on the page undiscovered or, at a minimum, unheralded and unused for generations.
That is a shame, because it says in one sentence what the environmental movement has been trying to say for more than four decades, implicitly or explicitly, not always successfully: In everything we do, consider carefully what its impact on the environment will be and act accordingly.
Imagine if people took Thoreau’s question into consideration as they went about their personal and professional lives. It would affect how big our houses are, how we heat and cool them and at what temperature. It would affect what kinds of vehicles we choose to drive, how often we drive, and how far we drive. It would affect our choices in clothing, food, career, family size and leisure activities. There would be far less consumption, and far less waste. Do I need four pairs of hiking boots?
Pay the question heed and it will bite the ankles of corporate America every moment of every day.
Actually, were business to pay it heed, were Thoreau’s words ever truly to become part of corporate decision-making, we’d have a revolution. Would GE have dumped PCBs in the Housatonic and Hudson rivers 40 years ago if its workplace ethic was permeated by Thoreauvian philosophy? No.
True, GE is getting green these days, and so are many other companies, but we are a long, long way from considering whether “our deed will warrant the expense of nature.”
I showed this quote to a trusted friend of impeccable environmental sensibility, a person who treads very lightly on the Earth. His one reservation was that people might need to read it twice before the meaning washed over their consciousness.
There are other quotes that could be called into service, but they either are not quite as succinct, or slightly off-point.
Aldo Leopold, author of the classic “A Sand County Almanac,” penned a nice one-liner a half-century ago: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” A little too textbookish, alas.
Wendell Berry, an elegant essayist and contemporary, wrote, “This is the justice we are learning from the ecologists; you cannot damage what you are dependent upon without damaging yourself.” A neat observation, but not quite workable as the catchphrase for an environmentally refined civilization.
John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and one of the great early figures in preservation work, wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This is a great and graceful synthesis of ecology, but a tad too abstract to serve as the philosophical I-beam for sustainable lifestyles.
Thoreau’s maxim works. It ought to be put on refrigerator magnets and computer screens, in boardrooms and on billboards.
“Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”
Second thought, forget the billboards.