To Save Land, We Must Save the People

Photo by John Cotterman

Wendell Berry, again, is perceptive in his observations, here excerpted from his 2013 speech to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and reproduced in his latest published collection of essays, Our Only World (2015):

“If we want to save the land, we must save the people who belong to the land. If we want to save the people, we must save the land the people belong to…. The connection is necessary of course because it is inescapable. All of us who are living owe our lives directly to our connection to the land…. I am not talking about the connection that is implied by such a term as ‘environmentalism.’  I am talking about the connection we make economically, by work, by living, by making a living….
      The loss of a saving connection between the land and the people begins and continues with the destruction of locally based household economics…
      (T)he most effective means of local self-determination would be a well-developed local economy based upon the use and protection of local resources, including local human intelligence and skills….And here we realize that a local economy, supplying local needs so far as possible from local fields and woodlands, is necessarily diverse….
​      (T)he fact is that if the land and the people are ever to be saved, they will be saved by local people enacting together a proper respect for themselves and their places.”
                                                                                                                      --Chuck Roe, President, SCP

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