Aldo Leopold and the history of the West

[CatherineL]

My two-cents-worth reflection for today comes from Aldo Leopold’s A Criticism of the Booster Spirit (1923). Leopold was addressing the urge among small towns and growing cities in the West to promote “progress” and ignore environmental consequences. It was the 1920’s, remember. Before the Dust Bowl happened, Leopold wrote:

“The uses of Boosterism need no defense from me. The philosophy of boost is premised on certain tenets, which are proclaimed every little while… but do not appear to have been collected in a creed.”

Leopold lists 10 “tenets”. Here is #10: “Skilled craftsmen may move to our town if they want to, but we must have oil men and motor tourists, for they are the salt of the earth.”

My point in returning to these words: For better or worse, our Western states are populated by the descendants of the “Boosters.” Their motivations are not well understood by coastal big-city residents. Terri Tempest Williams has addressed these questions many times as she describes how desert communities often align with mining or oil interests, sometimes at the expense of their own health. Many attributions of motives among voters in Western states, now being circulated among amateur and professional journalists, are leaving out this side of the story. Go back to Aldo Leopold and then think about how a real estate developer from the East Coast fits into this history. And also think about why immigrants are fine as cheap day labor but not fine if they ask for a living wage or a voice in society.