Environmental Issues and the Importance of Connecting With Nature

Biology and Connecting With Nature

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." - D.H. Lawrence

Beyond any doubt, studies now confirm that due to the stress that is flowing out of our disconnected "bleeding roots", complex personal, environmental and social problems are created. As humans we have been inclined to look outside of ourselves -- at the polluted lakes and brown clouds that floats over our cities -- and regard those impacts as the problem. Wann in his book Bil-Logic explains that we only recently have shifted our attention to see the environmental crisis in a more holistic way: "Pollution is a collection of symptoms of poor products and processes that do not fit natural systems" (Bio-Logic 1). Studies have shown that "Americans spend less than one day per lifetime in tune with nature" (Reconnecting 17). We are born and raised indoors, artificially secluded from the natural world. The indoors then discipline our thoughts and feelings. "Our separation from the pulse of snow, wind, rain, temperature, clouds and sunlight robs us of their life values" (How 17). We form our habits from our contact with our indoor surroundings, such as the school, house, or even the office, not from wonders that nature offers. Research at the University of Global Education in Washington shows that new methods and materials that aid in connecting with nature rebind our natural roots wi...

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...e the different ways that they could reconnect with nature and save the earth.

Bibliography

1. Cohen, Michael J. How Nature Works: Regenerating Kinship with Planet Earth. Stillpoint Publishing, 1988.

2. Cohen, Michael J. Reconnecting with Nature: The restoration of the missing link in Western thinking. Nature ProjectConnect, 1995

3. Goldfarb, Theodore D. Taking sides, Clashing views on Controversial Environmental Issues. The Dushkin publishing Group, Inc. 1991.

4. Wann, David. Bio-Logic: Designing with Nature to Protect the Environment. Johnson Printing company, 1994.

5. Andrews, Valerie. A Passion for This Earth: Exploring a New Partnership of Man, Woman and nature. Harper San Francisco, 1990.

6. Project Nature connect (1996). The secrets- of -nature Trail and game. Available at http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/trail1.html. [september 1996].