Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Louv, Richard (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

and other eminent scientists, including E. O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould, circulated an “Open Letter to the American Religious Community” expressing deep doubts about humanity’s response to the environment. This document was part of what stimulated the creation of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. The scientists wrote that scientific data, laws, and economic incentives are not enough; that protecting habitat is inescapably a moral issue: “We scientists . . . urgently appeal to the world religious community to commit to preserve the environment of the Earth.” One of them, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of physics and religion at Georgetown University, argued, “If the world is just a bowl of molecules banging against each other, then where is the sacredness of nature?”

Gary Paul Nabhan, who is director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and author of The Geography of Childhood, believes that his fellow ecologists are moving toward a deeper appreciation of the cohesiveness of living communities and beginning to recognize that science and religion share a core characteristic: both are humbling to human experience. Says Nabhan, “Science is the human endeavor in which we are frequently reminded how wrong we can be.” If scientists rely only on reason, then “our work has no meaning. It needs to be placed in some spiritual context.”

So does the environment. Children are the key. In 1995, the MIT Press published the results of one of the most extensive surveys of how Americans really think about environmental issues. The researchers were stunned by what they discovered. They noted an increased environmental consciousness observed in language (for example, a patch of land once referred to as a swamp was more likely to be called wetlands) and a core set of environmental values. “For those who have children, the anchoring of environmental ethics in responsibility to descendants gives environmental values a concrete and emotional grounding stronger than that of abstract principles,” according to the MIT report. That environmental values are already intertwined with core values of parental responsibility was, the researchers asserted, “a major finding.” A substantial majority of people surveyed justified environmental protection by explicitly invoking God as the creator, with striking uniformity across subgroups. “What is going on here? Why should so many nonbelievers argue on the basis of God’s creation?” the researchers asked. “It seems that divine creation is the closest concept American culture provides to express the sacredness of nature. Regardless of whether one actually believes in biblical Creation, it is the best vehicle we have to express this value.” If the MIT report is correct, spiritual arguments for the environment, seldom used by the environmental movement, will be far more effective than utilitarian arguments. In other words, arguing for the protection of a particular toad is less potent than calling for the protection of God’s creation (which includes the toad). The consideration of the right of future generations to God’s creation—with its formative and restorative qualities—is a spiritual act, because it looks far beyond our own generation’s needs. This spiritual argument, made on behalf of future children, is the most emotionally powerful weapon we can deploy in defense of the earth and our own species.

God and Mother Nature

The coming decades will be a pivotal time in Western thought and faith. For students, a greater emphasis on spiritual context could stimulate a renewed sense of awe for the mysteries of nature and science. For the environmental movement, an opportunity arises to appeal to more than the usual constituencies, to go beyond utilitarian arguments to a more spiritual motivation: conservation is, at its core, a spiritual act. After all, this is God’s creation that is being conserved for future generations. For parents, this wider conversation will intensify the importance of introducing their children to the biological and the spiritual value of green pastures and still water.

Our families and institutions need to listen carefully to young people’s yearning for what can only be found in nature. Psychologist Edward Hoffman believed that children under age fourteen do not have the capacity or language skills to describe their early spiritual experiences in nature. But my experience has taught me that children and young people have much to tell us about nature and the spirit, if we care to listen. Consider the tale one ninth-grader shared with me, about The Spot, as he called it, where he found his moment of amazement:

As long as I can remember, every time I heard the word “nature” I thought of a forest surrounded by mountain peaks seen off in the distance. I never thought too much of this until one year when I was on a family vacation at Mammoth Mountain. I decided I would try and find a place that was similar to the place I have thought about since I was a kid. So I told my parents I was going to go on a walk. I grabbed my coat and I left.

To my surprise, it only took about five or ten minutes to find The Spot. I stood there in awe; it was exactly how I imagined it. Dozens of massive pine trees were visible. Maybe one hundred feet from where I stood, snow lightly covered the ground; pine needles were scattered about. Out in the distance above the trees was a breathtaking view of the mountaintop. To my side was a small creek. The only sound I could hear was the trickling of the water (and the occasional car on the highway not too far behind me). I was in a star-struck daze for what seemed to be five or ten minutes, but that turned out to be two and a half hours.

My parents had been looking for me because it was getting dark. When we finally met up, I told them I had gotten lost, for how could I share such an experience, such an overwhelming religious experience? This episode really made me think about the real meaning of nature. I have come to the conclusion that