...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Interpretation
This quote critiques those who ignore the harmful effects of pollution and environmental degradation.
In this quote, Russell Kirk emphasizes that only those who lack moral integrity or vision can justify the destruction of natural landscapes and ecosystems. He argues that the degradation of the countryside represents a failure to recognize the intrinsic value of nature and the long-term consequences of environmental harm on both the land and humanity.
In practice
In a speech advocating for environmental protection, you can use this quote to highlight the importance of preserving natural landscapes.
True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.
Rather than ennobling the public mind and cementing the social fabric, applied science speedily became the chief weapon of a gross individualism, which was anathema to the frugal and righteous (John Quincy) Adams, the source of enormous fortunes divorced from duty, the instrument of unscrupulous ambition and rapacious materialism. Presently, it came to scar the very of the country which Adams loved, a disfiguring process uninterrupted since his day.
The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.
The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.
The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.
Wild is the music of autumnal winds Amongst the faded woods.
Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.
I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, _x000D_ So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; _x000D_ And, deepening still the dreamlike charm, _x000D_ Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
A fish is more valuable swimming in the sea maintaining the integrity of oceanic eco-systems than it is on anyone's plate.
Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?
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