Yesterday,
I discovered a remarkable TED talk by David Roberts. Roberts is a blogger who
writes about energy and politics for Grist. His aim in this 15-minute
presentation, remixed with music and extra imagery, is to summarize and simplify the science
of climate change. Just the facts ma’am. Now, I study fossils, not climate, so
I’m not on a first-name basis with all the relevant data. Yet, given my understanding
of current climatological consensus, Roberts has his facts straight.
His core message
is, to put it bluntly, terrifying. On our present trajectory (“business as
usual”), the forecast for the end of this century is at least a 4-degree
Celsius increase in global temperature, generating rampant coastal flooding, inland
desertification, and human suffering on a vast, unfathomable scale. A couple of
centuries after that, we may be facing a scorched Earth, unlivable for humans in
many regions.
For me,
the exactness of such projected increases in global temperatures, habitat loss,
and species extinctions is not the issue. If you accept the scientific method
as valid, and respect the strong consensus of the world’s top scientists, we’re on the
fast-track to Hades, with less than a generation to make a major course
correction.
This, of
course, is not exactly breaking news. For the past few decades, scientists and
environmentalists have been telling whoever would listen that we must change
our ways and strike a balance with nature, or face catastrophic consequences. I
myself have often participated in this echo chamber, doling out dire statistics
in hopes of engaging people in action. The unspoken assumption has been that
cold, hard facts, the kind the Roberts offers us, are all that’s needed for
people to “get it” and alter their unsustainable ways.
The
problem is, humans aren’t rational creatures. At least, not when it comes to
shifting their behavior. If you doubt this claim, look at the tactics used by the
true experts in behavior modification.
Marketing
executives have long understood that humans respond to emotional messages,
especially through imagery. Want to persuade a lot of people to buy a new car? Beautiful,
scantily clad bodies in pristine natural settings are far more powerful
motivators than horsepower or fuel efficiency statistics. So what’s the emotion
we need to foster if we’re to shift human behaviors in the direction of
sustainability? In a word, love.
As the
late evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould once claimed [1], “We cannot win
this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond
between ourselves and nature—for we will not fight to save what we do not
love.” The good news is that, thanks to a lengthy evolutionary tenure living in
intimate contact with the nonhuman world, the capacity to fall in love with nature lays dormant within all of us,
waiting to be reawakened [2]. Embracing this emotional need, the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently launched a
“Love, Not Loss” campaign [3], arguing that we must replace the standard
doom-and-gloom message with one of love. (Check out their powerful video here.)
Our goal, they say, must be to help humanity to once again fall in love with
nature. I could not agree more.
And the
best time to initiate this love affair? Childhood.
Today,
few kids escape the frightening barrage of bad eco-news, frequently learning
about our rampant environmental destruction early in elementary school. And the
stunning images they see—polar bears standing on shrinking chunks of ice;
Amazon rainforest leveled under a mechanized onslaught—too often generate fear
rather than love, numbness rather than action. Here I concur with David Sobel
[4], who argues that, when it comes to education, there should be no disasters
before fourth grade.
So how do
we turn things around and help people fall in love with nature? Well, a growing
mountain of evidence suggests that the best place to start is wherever you happen
to be—that is, your local place. Plenty of firsthand, multisensory experience, together with a healthy dose of wonder, are essential ingredients, especially for children. Learning about
the history and workings of your local environs are also critical.
In
contrast with traditional approaches, place-based learning is all about
hands-on, inquiry-driven, often outdoor activities [4, 5]. Going beyond
traditional disciplinary boundaries like math and social studies, emphasis is placed
on integrative projects that transform communities into classrooms.
Far from
being parochial, learning in place simply begins in local landscapes and migrates
outward. Better to understand that nearby oak or fir forest before trying to
comprehend (let alone care about) the Amazon rainforest. Many are surprised to
learn that a place-based approach to learning fosters not only a stronger
connection with local nature, but heightened academic performance across the
board. And it isn’t just for schoolteachers. To fully take root, parents,
caregivers, and informal educators must embrace this revolutionary approach.
In short,
falling in love with nature begins at home, preferably as children, in our
local communities, inspired by wonder. A strong sense of
place rooted in emotional connection reveals the beauty of the natural world,
the truth of our embeddedness within nature, and the goodness inherent in
caring for one’s home ground. It provides the foundation for Aldo
Leopold’s land ethic: “A thing is right
when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Don’t
misunderstand me. If we are to navigate a sustainable path out of our current
predicament, we have to be honest with ourselves and learn the facts, difficult
though they may be. And we are going to need all the technological help we can get along the way. Yet knowledge and technology without emotional connection are simply not
going to be enough. That’s why helping children fall in love with nature deserves
to be an urgent international priority, on par with reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and preserving species and wild places.
References
1. Gould, S. J. 1993. Unenchanted
evening. Eight Little Piggies:
Reflections in Natural History. Norton, New York. Quotation from p. 40.
2. Sampson, S. D. 2012. The
topophilia hypothesis: Ecopsychology meets evolutionary psychology. Pp. 23-53
in P. H. Kahn and P. H. Hasbach (eds.), Ecopsychology:
Science Totems, and the Technological Species. MIT Press, Boston.
4. Sobel, D. 2004. Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms
& Communities. Orion Society, Barrington, MA.
5. Sobel, D. 2008. Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for
Educators. Stenhouse, Portland, Maine.
Image Sources (from top to bottom)
1. http://junkscience.com/2012/06/14/sun-runs-obligatory-northern-summer-stranded-poley-pictorial/
2. http://nowastewednesdays.com/2011/04/27/
3. http://www.thenaturalcapital.com/2009/10/getting-kids-into-nature-great-websites.html
4. http://studio3music.com/things-to-do/less-tv-what’s-a-parent-to-do/
