A Conservationist Manifesto

by Scott Russell Sanders

As an antidote to the destructive culture of consumption dominating American life today, Scott Russell Sanders calls for a culture of conservation that allows us to savor and preserve the world, instead of devouring it. How might we shift to a more durable and responsible way of life? What changes in values and behavior will be required? Ranging geographically from southern Indiana to the Boundary Waters Wilderness and culturally from the Bible to billboards, Sanders extends the visions of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Rachel Carson to our own day. A Conservationist Manifesto shows the crucial relevance of a conservation ethic at a time of mounting concern about global climate change, depletion of natural resources, extinction of species, and the economic inequities between rich and poor nations. The important message of this powerful book is that conservation is not simply a personal virtue but a public one.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Nature, Essays, Conservation, Ecology

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Scott Russell Sanders is the award-winning author of A Private History of Awe, Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist Manifesto, Dancing in Dreamtime, and two dozen other books of fiction, personal narrative, and essays. His father came from a family of cotton farmers in Mississippi, his mother from an immigrant doctor’s family in Chicago. He spent his early childhood in Tennessee and his school years in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Cambridge, England.

In his writing he is concerned with our place in nature, the practice of community, and the search for a spiritual path. He and his wife, Ruth, a biochemist, have reared two children in their hometown of Bloomington, in the hardwood hill country of southern Indiana. You can visit Scott at www.scottrussellsanders.com.

In August 2020, Counterpoint Press will publish his new collection of essays, The Way of Imagination, a reflection on healing and renewal in a time of climate disruption. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories inspired by photographs.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great reminder, at this new year and (hopefully) beginning of a new era, to focus on fostering communities, with each other and with all beings on this planet.

[Kate Seader · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book I was often annoyed with I sure did invest a lot of critical thinking into its messaging.

My favorite parts were those on rest and figuring out when you have ‘enough’.

Makes many good points on conservation as a whole but they sometimes get lost amongst unnecessary verbiage.

However, for all the good points on conservation, the tone they are put in will shut down anyone who isn’t already invested in green practices.

Anytime the author referred to things they disagreed with it was dripping in condescension.
Referring to fast food as “a sack of sugar and fat”, boasting of not having to “swallow pills to soothe my frazzled nerves” or “other chemical pacifiers”, referring to the entire medium of film as “electronic never-never land flickering on screens”.

There was very little in the way of nuance to how other factors affect people’s ability to follow green practices. It’s a couple of sentences here and there about the authors own privilege. Accessibility and equity should be woven through all our discussions of conservation. Otherwise we risk shutting out the people it will affect the most.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Whatever else we teach our children, we owe them an ecological education (...) By the time they finish school, children who have received an ecological education know in their bones that the wellbeing of people depends on the wellbeing of Earth, from the neighborhood to the watershed to the planet".

The practice of conservation is both an individual and collective, societal matter. It is a personal and a public virtue, one that will seal our fate - no less. ‘A Conservationist Manifesto’ reminds me of the seminal work of Aldo Leopold. As such it is not new content. It does not redefine ecology or environmental ethics. It is rather a renewed content fueled by 70 years or so of human history since Leopold’s ‘A Sand County Almanac’.

A Conservationist Manifesto is as necessary and as beautifully written as the essays from the past, there be from Thoreau, Carson, Muir or Leopold.

I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!

[Indiana University Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read lately. Sanders' call to move from a culture of consumption to one of conservation is more timely than ever now in the wake of our uncertain financial future, depleting oil supply, and global climate change. This book makes me think twice about my actions as they not only affect me, but also the planet and everyone else who lives on it. I am better for reading it, and hopefully this positive impact will be felt by the Earth as well. I can't recommend this book enough. It will change your life.

[Juan Bacigalupi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some well written points, but comes across too preachy (this from an environmental advocate) and seems to ignore certain realities of our modern society.

[Fedra Herman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The work of conservation is inspired by wonder, gratitude, reason, and love […] - love for wild and settled places, for animals and plants, for people living now and those yet to come” - S. R. Sanders

Until I came across “A Conservationist Manifesto” in the University of Queensland’s library, I had never read a book with essays before, and the name Scott Russell Sanders was still unknown to me. When opening this book and quickly scanning the preface, I knew I had found my next “read”.

“A Conservationist Manifesto” is a collection of essays published in 2009. It focuses on American society and its culture of overconsumption. Thanks to the entertainment industry, American “life values” are now influencing human societies across the globe, which is why I believe this book contains wisdom for all people living in the 21st century.

Sanders’ thought-provoking way of writing makes you question the way we live in this modern age. He shares his vision about shifting away from a culture of consumption to a culture of conservation and caretaking. Instead of devouring our world, we should savour and preserve it.

Humans still have a very long way to go. But, the short stories included in this book show how small changes in human values and behaviour are slowly changing the world.

More about the author:
Scott R. Sanders spent his career as a Professor of English teaching at Indiana University. When he retired in 2009, he did not give up writing, and until this very day, he is still working on new stories and essays about the meaning of wealth and living in the age of climate disruption.

Some of my favourite quotes:

“American films, television programs, and advertising shape the appetites of citizens everywhere. The dominant media in our society proclaim that happiness, meaning, and security are to be found through piling up money and buying things. Whatever troubles us, shopping can fix it; whatever hollowness we feel, shopping can fill it; whatever questions haunt us, shopping can provide the answers.” - S. R. Sanders

“The only clouds in the sky are the ones we’ve made” - S. R. Sanders

“Just because we can’t live without doing harm doesn’t mean we can’t do less harm. The world’s crisis is an opportunity - to reorient our lives away from material consumption and toward inner richness, to heal ourselves as well as the planet.” - S. R. Sanders

[Kadie Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To set land free from serving us is to recognize that Earth is neither our slave nor our property ... The Sabbath and the wilderness remind us what is true everywhere and at all times, but which in our arrogance we keep forgetting - that we did not make the earth, but we are guests here, that we are answerable to a reality deeper and older and more sacred than our own will."

"The practice of simplicity is more strenuous than the pursuit of luxury."

I have concluded that the whole misfortune of men comes from a single thing, and that is their inability to remain at rest in a room. -Blaise Pascal

"I could not so easily name the fulfillment I seek, but I know it has nothing to do with mystic transport to other realms. This everyday realm is deep and vast and subtle enough for me; I wish to live here with full awareness."

[Mackenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Sanders offers some captivating insight into environmental issues and offers some viable proposals for conservation (some not so much), the overall feel of the book is pretentious. The man wrote it in his garden cabin/hut he had built to "get more in tune with nature." How can you write a book about conservation from an unnecessary building that used raw materials? Come on.

[Amber P · Rating 3 out of 5]

ehhh, pretty sure this was a textbook for an ESci course at WWU. Found it in a box outside someone's house on a bike ride once :)

Good, definitely echoes my own thoughts about how we should treat the Earth.

[Benjamin Padilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book of essays. Highly recommended!

[Alejandro Arellano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Amid so many wounds this knowledge keeps me humble, keeps me hopeful, keeps me sane.”

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sanders's writing style is the stuff that legends are made of: smooth, clear, vivid, spare. The essays in this collection are uneven, though. From the naïveté of "The Warehouse and the Wilderness," a prolonged rant against postmodern literary theory, a subject about which Sanders admits he knows very little, to the brilliance of "Stillness," a tight essay structured by his first visit to a private cabin on a piece of property he owns. My favorite piece was "Simplicity and Sanity," which offered an insightful and careful reading of Thoreau's work, primarily Walden, and which related Thoreau's lifelong search for a better life to our present economic and ecological condition.

The collection is worthy of a read, but readers should not feel guilty about abandoning an unsatisfying essay and jumping to the next.

[Jeffrey Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Russell Sanders is a wonderful writer. I am so fortunate to have happened upon this book when I was researching another project, one I put on hold because this collection of essays pulled me in. Effectively describing the beauty of the natural world and advocating for its protection are difficult tasks for any writer. The author takes us there with insight, empathy and the skill required to allow us to see the world through his eyes.

Written a decade ago, A Conservationist Manifesto is a still vital and important call for us to revisit our patterns of "need it now" consumption (often requiring deep dives into debt) and obsession with doing things faster. It will make you think and ideally, examine your own impulses and decisions.

[Longfellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of essays inspires me to seek out the many other quality nature writers our country has been blessed with over the last one hundred and fifty years or so. Sanders makes it clear that these voices, whether still living (Wendell Berry, to name one) or long dead (Thoreau and Emerson), offer us observations crucial to repairing our current relationship with the earth. In addition to holding this responsible and humble view in common, these writers (and Sanders belongs in this group as well) offer an aesthetic and contemplative perspective that reminds us to appreciate simple beauties as well as to intentionally seek balance between tasks and stillness.

[Karen Mcintyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Sanders speak at a library re-dedication and searched for his work. I really did not want to read another ecology manifesto --- but this one is different. He creates a hopeful world view in the midst of the potential disaster that will come unless we get a grip on our consumerism and overuse of the worlds gifts which we quickly trash!

His writing is almost poetic and his use of both metaphor and etymology is both beautiful and helpful in understanding the concepts he promotes. Along with being individual "arks" as we practice individual simplicity, he shows the beauty and gift of community for our salvation and for the salvation of the whole earth! READ IT!

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanders is one of those writers who ought to be much better known than he is. This book collects several of his previously published essays, all of them centered in some way around the satisfactions that come from living simply and lightly upon the land. I especially liked his reflections on the meaning of words such as "commonwealth" (hint: not about money) and his thought-provoking suggestion about using the Sabbath as an occasion to give the earth a rest from us. This is also a beautifully packaged little book, as irresistable in form as it is in content.

[Jen]

Scott Russell Sanders is an inspiration! I heard him do a reading recently and was able to have lunch with him--a joy! I am not too far into this book yet, but it raises great questions/thoughts! Also, his compelation of short stories "Wilderness Plots" is amazing and I highly recommend it too!

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent essays. Well written. Not much new under the sun, however. These essays retread familiar eco-themes.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful, caring, simple (in a good way) book. Feels a little like dadsplaining sometimes, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly!