From the text: What is the purpose of a fragmented ecological education if the remaining subjects are still dominated by the anti-ecological and “progress at all costs” ideology that acritically adopts a model of rationality that is partly responsible for the devastation of the Earth, when this is precisely what ecology tries to expose?
The following speech is meant to contribute towards an answer to a basic question asked in the ministerial document 'Ecological Alphabets' (2007). Although he used different terminology, Aldo Leopold showed the same concern many decades ago, and he also anticipated the present times. In fact, he advocated for a Land Ethic and observed that “our educational and economic systems go in opposite directions,” and he considered this tendency “the risk most threatens the evolution of a Land Ethic”. The extraordinary fact is that Leopold not only denounced the failure to teach from a strictly environmentalist point of view; reflecting on the possible solutions, he hoped not only for a specific ecological study, but instead for an ecological non-anthropocentric approach capable of permeating all the subjects. This visionary position held strategic value, but it remained only roughly- developed and marginalized for a long time; today, in a context of transition toward a degrowth society, it deserves to be reconsidered in light of developments that will become more and more necessary.

Contribution to the 3rd International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Venice in 2012.