Aldo Leopold said we should learn to “think like a mountain,” recognizing a complexity and independence in natural entities that ground an obligation to protect them from destruction by humans. But why do only natural entities deserve protection? I trace the history of Columbus’s own City Center Mall, which was built in the 1980s and flourished for some years before declining into bankruptcy and eventually being demolished. Malls too, I argue, possess complexity and independence, and yet unlike mountains they seem (like Rodney Dangerfield) to get no respect: nobody seems to find their destruction morally objectionable. My paper proposes that mountains and malls actually have more in common than one might imagine –a conclusion with important implications for environmental thinking.
Steven Vogel’s book Thinking like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy after the End of Nature was recently published by MIT Press. He is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Denison University, and author as well of Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (SUNY Press).
