One Percent - Aldo Leopold

It makes a difference. The one percent.

You’ve seen the commercials. One person does something nice for someone, like picking up a package he dropped or holding the door. Someone else sees this and does something nice for another person down the street, and so on. A chain-reaction of helping others. But it’s more than a feel-good moment.

An experiment with the particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois found a one percent difference between the number of muons and antimuons that arise from the decay of particles known as B mesons. This one percent more of matter particles than antimatter is the reason we don’t explode into smithereens.

Trying to save the natural world can seem like such a large task that we don’t even try. But we can save parts of nature in the cities where we live, whether this is blocking the company that picks up our trash from also dumping toxic waste into our landfill, creating a free recycling program, or convincing people to stop buying plastic water bottles. Aldo Leopold restored a sandy are along the Wisconsin River. His efforts led to the formation of The Wilderness Society and the idea that it’s often not too late to undo the damage we’ve done to nature. Others saw his work and started their own, like the effort to preserve sandhill cranes near Baraboo, Wisconsin.

In practical terms, what we do on the local level won’t slow global warming or save the glaciers from melting. Not by itself, but when our one percent is added to the one percent of others, we begin to have an effect on larger matters. And by working with our neighbors who may not agree with us but who trust us, we help change their minds and they begin to do their one percent.

One percent in the world is capable of changing everything.