"We have been carrying on two parallel conversations, one about respecting human diversity, the other about preserving natural diversity. Unless we merge those conversations, both will be futile. Our efforts to honor human differences cannot succeed apart from our effort to honor the buzzing, blooming, bewildering variety of life of earth. All life rises from the same source, and so does all fellow feeling, whether the fellow moves on two legs or four, on scaly bellies or feathered wings. If we care only for human needs, we betray the land; if we care only for the earth and its wild offspring, we betray our own kind. The profusion of creatures and cultures is the most remarkable fact about our planet, and the study and stewardship of that profusion seems to me our fundamental task."
Scott Russell Sanders
About the author:
Scott Russell Sanders was born in Memphis, Tennessee. 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.
In the past decade he has published A Conservationist Manifesto, his vision of a shift from a culture of consumption to a culture of caretaking; Earth Works, a selection of his best essays from the past thirty years; the novel Divine Animal; Dancing in Dreamtime, a collection of eco-science fiction stories; and Stone Country: Then & Now, a new and enlarged edition of his documentary narrative co-authored with photographer Jeffrey Wolin. His children's books include Aurora Means Dawn, Warm as Wool, Meeting Trees, and The Floating House.
He is currently at work on a collection of short stories, a book about the meaning of wealth, and a collection of essays about the role of imagination in an age of climate disruption. His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path.
Published as his biography, June 2023
