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

looked at our land, we discovered an emptiness that held a beauty not previously perceived. Boulders, once hidden, were revealed, placed as if in a garden. There were quiet places for reflection. The hard soil, scorched by the fire, was now soft and yielding to the foot. The undulations of the land were all visible. This emptiness, this new space, holds an excitement for us. It is a gate into a world only partly glimpsed. Our task is to walk through and discover where the gate leads.

I relate this story as metaphor. When we contemplate the unraveling relationship between children and nature, we might consider it a fire going through, and only that. We look forward to renewal.

Time to Plant

Healing the broken bond between children and nature may seem to be an overwhelming, even impossible, task. But we must hold the conviction that the direction of this trend can be changed, or at least slowed. The alternative to holding and acting on that belief is unthinkable for human health and for the natural environment.

We can be encouraged by the recent past.

Those of us who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s remember a time when people thought little of tossing an empty soda can or a cigarette butt out a car window. Such habits are now the exception. The recycling and anti-smoking campaigns are perhaps the best example of how social and political pressure can work hand in hand to effect societal change in just one generation. We can apply the lessons of these earlier campaigns. One perspective comes from Michael Pertschuk, co-founder of the Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C., former Federal Trade Commission chairman under President Carter, and among the most important figures associated with the launch of the anti-smoking campaign in the early 1960s. Pertschuk is currently a leader in efforts to oppose market expansion into developing countries by the transnational tobacco industry. He has written four books on citizen advocacy. And he is eager to see a movement to reestablish the link between nature and future generations of young people.

Unlike the civil rights and labor movements, the tobacco control movement developed top-down, stemming from scientific research and public statements of concern by health authorities; simultaneously, but unconnected at first, the anti-smoking movement was also bottom-up, born out of the pain and shortened lives from passive smoking—breathing the tobacco smoke from others’ smoking habits.

“It was only when the science of passive smoking’s threat to the lives of involuntary smokers—now scientifically labeled ETS, Environmental Tobacco Smoke—was proved beyond question that these two half-movements came together,” says Pertschuk. “And it was only the combination of potent scientific authorities and the passionate outcry of organized community neighbors, in small groups operating out of attics and garages challenging the accepted norms that gave smokers ownership of the air they polluted, that a movement that would radically change social norms took root.” National groups, including the lung, heart, and cancer health voluntary associations, joined the movement, organizing and lobbying for laws to create smoke-free environments, backed by massive public education campaigns on the health benefits of smoke-free air. “Just so, the budding movement to reconnect childhood to nature draws potent support from the science of the health risks of nature-parched childhoods, and the growing passion of parents and others who see their children shuttered up on their couches and computer stands.” And just so, this movement will rise from the awareness and determination of individuals as well as organized, national networks.

Good works are already taking root. We see the steady if gradual growth of the environment-based education movement, the schoolyard habitat movement, and the simple-living movement; the awakening of environmental organizations and places of worship; the schoolyard greening efforts in the United States and Europe; growing realization that both our physical and mental health are linked to the natural environment. We also see a growing interest in lightening our litigious load by reforming our legal system. Although tort reform is controversial, and its interpretation in the eye of the lawyer, legal reforms must begin to ease the fear of lawsuit felt by so many families. Several national groups are also working for community design changes that connect walking and nature, including the Rails to Trails Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land (TPL), and Active Living by Design. TPL’s goal is to ensure a park within reach of every American home. Active Living by Design, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and part of the UNC School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, devises approaches to increase physical activity through community design and public policies; one of its components focuses on nature in the city.

We also see the potential convergence of several trends and campaigns: New Urbanism, Smart Growth, Livable Communities, Green Urbanism, and a neo-agriculture movement. Many of these groups are moving in the same direction. They are pushed by a growing distaste for dependence on Middle East oil, or any fossil fuels, along with concern about global warming and other environmental pressures; they are pulled by a yearning for alternatives to the cities and towns in which they now live. The individuals in these organizations share a sharpened knowledge that our built environment directly affects our physical and emotional health, and a deep sadness at the widening gap between nature and everyday life. When they focus on the young, each of these movements takes on special meaning—and power.

Deeper knowledge will also bring more power. The greatest need is for controlled experimental studies, according to the University of Illinois researchers Taylor and Kuo. Such research could show that nature not only promotes healthy childhood development, but does it more effectively than the methods commonly used in place of nature. Although expensive to gather, such knowledge could have enormous influence in the fight to preserve and ultimately increase the amount of nature available to children, and to us all.

More Reasons for Optimism

In West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal is still king, mountain-leveling machines are lowering horizons.