According to The Quivira Coalition: "Climate change is the most pressing issue confronting humanity.  It is also a tremendous opportunity.  Right now, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and other land-based carbon sequestration activities.  Strategies include: enriching soil carbon, farming with perennials, employing climate-friendly livestock practices, conserving natural habitat, restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands, and producing local food."
 
All of these practices reflect what we are currently doing here on the Arapaho Ranch.  Finding a local market for our grass-fed organic beef is our greatest challenge.  Our greatest advantage is that we control close to 600,000 acres of prime native habitat.  But we are located in an area of sparse population, and a demographic that generally chooses to buy products based on convenience and price rather than sustainability.  What has happened across much of America is that shopping has become more convenient, and so many products have become popular specifically because of their ease in preparation.  In order to get a product to a high level of convenience, it is heavily processed.  This is what has caused the demise of local food production across America.  Americans need to realize that this heavily processed food, while cheap and convenient, is killing us.  Way too many of our health problems in this country can be directly attributed to what we eat, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes and many types of cancer.  
 
And as The Quivira Coalition has so eloquently pointed out, we need to return to responsible land practices in order to protect our precious natural resources.  The Arapaho Ranch believes that everyone has an ethical responsibility to take care of the land and the natural resources.  Along with this, each of us has an ethical responsibility to take care of wildlife and native plant communities.  Only in this way can we ever hope to save our planet.  
 
Aldo Leopold in 1949 in the Sand County Almanac wrote: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.  It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
 
These are simple, yet noble thoughts.  How do we determine between what is intrinsically beneficial and what can be sacrificied for the sustenance of man?  My view tends to be extreme in this matter: man is an invasive species.  Of all the known invasive species to any natural system, man is by far the most invasive.  The idea of environmental ethics would be wholly unnecessary if it weren't for the intrusion of man.  So, how do we begin to fully understand the effects of this intrusion?  And if we can begin to grasp just how intrusive man is, then, and only then, can we begin the work that will be required to lighten our footprint.
 
This is our only hope now.  Man must begin to understand how he fits in to any ecosystem, and how he can become less intrusive.  We have made a mess of almost everything that we have touched.  I believe that urban areas need to be more clearly defined, and only farmers should be allowed to live outside these urban areas.  Wild areas must be guarded against man's greed, and farms must become more sustainable.  And by sustainable, I mean they must follow organic practices.  In my opnion, organic practices are the only truly sustainable agricultural practices. 
 
It bothers me that certified organic operations must continually document every practice, and record every off-farm input.  Organic operations must show extreme diligence in proving their integrity - that is, they must prove beyond any shadow of doubt that their practices never fall outside the clearly defined USDA's National Organic Program Standards, while conventional operations, those that are allowed to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides with virtually no oversight and no documentation, are allowed to operate without any recognized standards or guidelines.  It is true that chemicals are labeled with warnings, but who is overseeing their application?  And even when properly applied, what are the long term effects of their use?  The soils in conventional agricultural operations have become so dependent on chemicals that they can no longer support natural plant communities.  We have destroyed most of the native ecosystems in this country by conventional, industrial agricultural practices.  
 
What is the effect - both negative and positive - that humans have on the natural world?  This is the question that we must try to answer.  And this is why we now need an environmental ethics.  In 1962, Rachel Carson predicted the negative consequences of our continued dependence on chemical pesticides and herbicides, especially as targeted pests developed resistances to pesticides while weakened ecosystems continued to fall prey to unanticipated invasive species. 
 
While in theory, contemporary chemicals are supposed to be environmentally safer, who can know the true legacy of our continued, wide-spread use of petrol-chemicals and herbicides.  We haven't eradicated invasive species. On the contrary, what we are witnessing today are invasive weeds and pests that are not only more adaptable, but more aggressive as well.  And through conventional agricultural practices, we have compromised natural systems to the brink of annihilation.  We have developed a monocropping system that has depleted the nutrients in the soil and created, in most cases, irreversible problems with weeds and pests.  These monocropping systems, therefore, have become increasingly dependent on chemicals. 
 
I agree wholeheartedly with The Quivira Coalition, that only through responsible agricultural production can we hope to begin to turn around these long-term negative effects to the environment.  It is up to each of us to do what he can to promote responsible, sustainable agriculture.  And while most of us can't become farmers, each of us can choose to become more educated when buying food.  While local food products might cost more initially because of their higher costs in production, these products will pay long term benefits both to your health and to the health of the environment.