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.

Vision

Progress happens when people take blind steps into the unknown. They notice that something is missing and set out to fill in the gap. They turn their lives over to figuring out how to make their vision happen, moving by trial and error through possibilities, and putting up with people unable to see what they do, or who are trying to protect their special interests.

John Muir saw sheep destroying the flowering wilderness meadows of the Sierra Nevada, worked to save them, and help create the National Park system in the process. Rachel Carson discovered the devastating effects of pesticides and alerted people to the problem. Aldo Leopold tried out different strategies for reclaiming barren land in Wisconsin and kick-started the ecology movement. Sigurd Olson worked to save the wilderness, especially the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. Wendell Berry figured out how one could do sustainable farming, feeding people while doing minimal damage to the land. John Burroughs wanted people to see nature that exists around them, even in the city.

Stepping into the unknown involves taking risks because we don’t know where we’ll end up. Yet trying something new uncovers paths into the unknown areas of our abilities. The witness of the land prophets and elders who have gone before us tell us that this is the only way that change happens.