Last week I went to a talk by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. I was impressed with his devotion to the notion of finding ways to connect young people with nature. He mentioned that even in Northern California, a place that is still largely forested, children no longer spend much time outdoors in nature. Young folk, he says, know nature as an abstract: the arctic ice fields, the Amazon river and rainforests—all places they are supposed to protect and be concerned about. But they have no experience of the wild, the patterned, the sacred landscape of nature. They do not have “a landscape of the heart” to ground them and to return to over their lifetimes. Read the rest of this entry »

I was one of hundreds of people in Washington Square Park in NYC yesterday demanding that Congress Step It Up and create legislation that leads to an 80 percent reduction in carbon by 2050. Step It Up.org created the 1 Sky priorities: Green Jobs Now, Cut Carbon 80% by 2050 and No New Coal. I love the term 1 Sky. It says it all, no?

If you are in the U.S., won’t you join us to lobby your congresspersons to commit to the 1 Sky priorities? We need leaders in Congress who will create and vote for aligned legislation. Step It Up asks not only that legislators say they support environmental policy, but asks what they will do about it. Read the rest of this entry »