Ecocentric
Psychology, so dedicated to awakening the human consciousness,
needs to wake itself up to one of the most ancient human truths:
We cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.133
~james hillman
Immersion in the natural world benefits our mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. It is especially important to fortify this connection as climate crisis progresses. Public health social worker and certified ecotherapist Phoenix Smith sums it up well: “We all must strengthen ourselves for what is to come as a result of climate disruption. We know that living on Earth is going to become more difficult as temperatures continue to rise, natural disasters continue to get stronger and the gaps between the rich and poor increase. Nature connection strengthens us, provides healing and restoration from trauma, can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, brings communities together, reducing isolation, and invokes awe and joy.” 134
I have lived close to the natural world for most of my adult life, for a good stretch directly in the wilds. Its solace provides a Yin, safe container to allow my heartaches to ease and figure themselves out. Its Yang fierceness challenges my survival skills, initiating and enriching me. Cities fill our psyches with reflections of our minds, but the natural world fills us with images and shapes, sounds and scents, from the original matrix from which we have evolved. The wild world embeds us in a larger context and reminds us we are humbly dependent upon all the plants, creatures, and elements with which we share the planet. Returning to what we are intrinsically embedded in helps us care more for the more-than-human world. Yet because many of us have forgotten our connection to the natural world, we need intellectual justification to rebuild the bridge back to nature.
There is hardly an aspect of ourselves not reflected in the wild, and it in us. John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” 135 We recognize the truth of this when we try to scale down fossil fuel consumption and industrial growth (degrowth) and quickly discover all aspects of our lives affected, including the triggering of our difficult emotions. For this reason, healing through climate change is an opportunity to transform all aspects of ourselves. The natural world—especially now, in crisis—provides a metaphorical “mirror” (just like intimate human relationships do) for radical healing. We can view climate crisis as a guru, challenging and humbling us at every turn. When we learn from and adjust to it, dance rather than fight with it, we can attain a sustainable, ecocentric perspective.
Intimacy with the natural world allows us a more profound and nuanced experience of that world, which in turn helps us heal corresponding aspects of our own psyches. Tending to a struggling sapling or fitting a lame deer with a splint reminds us we too are injured, and helps us treat ourselves with compassion. These positive feedback loops of compassionate reciprocity propel us out of numb comfort and increase our self-care and kindness with one another. This uplifting dynamic is in stark contrast to the downward spiral resulting from no nature connection, not working through our heartaches, and the isolation and apathy that follow. If we can’t become comfortable in and care for our own bodies, how can we care for the body of the Earth?
The Science of Common Sense
Mental health disorders have increased in proportion to urbanization and disconnection from the natural world. Those living in the city have a 20 percent higher anxiety risk and a 40 percent higher risk of mood disorders than those living in rural areas. And those born and raised in cities have a twofold likelihood of developing schizophrenia.136 A study from Stanford University shows that time spent in nature helps to reduce symptoms of depression. Researchers found that a ninety-minute walk in nature helps reduce rumination (repetitive negative thinking associated with increased risk for mental illness) compared with walking for the same amount of time in an urban environment. It also suggests that easier access to nature spaces in urban settings could be imperative for improving mental health in a quickly-urbanizing world.137
One factor in depression is our lack of contact with the earth itself—with soil. Recently it was discovered that soil bacteria activate neurons in our brains that release the neurotransmitter serotonin into the prefrontal cortex, an area of our brains associated with mood regulation.138 A lack of serotonin is associated with depressive symptoms. Certain soil bacteria confer benefits similar to those attributed to antidepressant medications.139 It makes adaptive sense that we’d be rewarded with feel-good neurochemistry by digging in the dirt, since the activity increases our chances of planting food to feed ourselves and survive. Gardening and growing food, for example, not only expose us to micro-critters that help us feel better, but also reconnect us to nature’s rhythms.
Scientists also have discovered an anti-inflammatory fat in soil bacteria that boosts our health. They discovered that when soil bacteria are taken in by our immune cells, they release a special fatty acid that inhibits cascading inflammatory reactions. Inflammation can be a major contributor to many diseases, from depression to cancer and from arthritis to coronary artery disease. Injection of the inflammation-reducing soil bacteria into mice has demonstrated that these symbiotic microorganisms could prevent a PTSD-like syndrome and decrease the animals’ anxiety under stress in the future.140 Senior author of the study, Christopher Lowry, even envisions a “stress-vaccine” to inoculate against high-stress situations.141 Perhaps we could simply play in the soil to derive similar immunity.
Note the tragic irony here: our disconnect from nature and the land increases depression. When we’re depressed we’re more likely to disregard nature. Neglecting nature exacerbates climate change, which increases anxiety and depression.142 We’ve come full circle in another positive feedback loop yielding negative results. The exponential effect of many such climate-disrupting positive feedback loops—especially those that occur partly inside us—makes it difficult for climate models to predict, or for us to truly grasp, our climate future.
Positive Feedback Loops and the Exponential Effect
“The greatest failure of the human race,” said the late physicist Albert Bartlett, “is our inability to understand the exponential function.” 143 With regard to climate change, the exponential function refers to disturbances to the climate building upon one another in a nonlinear, exponential, way—such as how two squared yields four, but four squared yields sixteen, and so on. The exponential function explains how climate crisis has gained on us so quickly. Professor of journalism and best-selling author K.C. Cole explains it this way: “Climate change was able to creep up on most of us with cat feet because it snowballs in the same way, well, as snowballs snowball. Each subsequent change builds on the change before. The bigger it gets, the faster it grows. Just as our brains have limits grappling with numbers, our senses have limits grasping sizes much beyond our personal, human-sized, scale, where different laws of nature dominate.” 144
Just as no one knows the precise, cumulative and exponential effects climate disruption will continue to have, no one yet knows the cumulative and exponential effects of the remedies we will enact. These remedies are coming fast and furious now. As massive amounts of funds are being allocated to climate solutions, large tree planting projects have begun, renewables are at an all-time high, and their production is projected to outpace all other forms of energy generation. However, if fossil fuel use increases into the near future, as it is projected to, this could outweigh many of solar energy’s benefits.145 While there are shortcomings and limitations to these strategies, they pose more net gain than loss.
Conversely, one example of an environmental positive feedback loop leading to exponential negative change pertains to Arctic ice. Arctic ice depleted by melting from global warming reflects less light back into space. This loss of albedo (reflection of light) from the ice causes the oceans to absorb more heat, which in turn melts more of the ice, resulting in more heat absorption, on and on in a vicious cycle. Another example is drought that has led to a proliferation of bark beetles in Washington state. Drought worsened by climate change weakens the trees, which makes them susceptible to infestation by the beetles. The beetles kill the trees, creating more tinder for wildfires, which exacerbate drought, resiliency, and the biodiversity of the local environment, and climate change globally.
The IPCC, the world authority for the most accurate and comprehensive climate science (with its shortcomings, discussed in Appendix I), excludes discussion of such positive feedback loops in its reporting, and some scientists claim this omission is one reason to consider its projections conservative. Because the IPCC models don’t consider all the recently updated positive feedback loops that lead to dangerous tipping points, their reports underestimate the rate of climate collapse.146 Other reasons for IPCC conservatism (also comprehensively discussed in the Appendix I) include the IPCC’s failure to consider the impact from the majority of methane emissions and the fact that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) 147 technologies have not been substantially implemented despite IPCC projections assuming their contribution to reducing greenhouse gases. Cofounder and United States program director for the popular climate change group 350, Jamie Henn, tweeted, “This is the scariest thing about the IPCC Report—it’s the watered down, consensus version. The latest science is much, much, much more terrifying.”
The human-environmental positive feedback loops just mentioned (such as depression and lack of care for nature) and the more strictly environmental loops (such as albedo loss and rising ocean temperatures) overlap and exacerbate each other. When any one positive feedback loop collides with another, their effects magnify exponentially, causing us to feel exponentially worse. As a result, we may feel more helpless and less proactive to tackle the original stressor of climate crisis. For example, environmental disaster in one sector of the biosphere affects other aspects of the environment, leading to exponential decline, which exponentially exacerbates how we feel. The worse we feel inside, the worse we treat each other and the planet, while the resulting environmental impoverishment causes us more angst and despair, usually leading to more environmental neglect. It is therefore more imperative than ever to fortify our triangle of resilience relationships.
Climate disruption also triggers our historical love wounds. Per the exponential formula—and if we don’t intervene with a curative response—we can quickly spiral into the same despondency and neglect as when the positive feedback loops just mentioned collide. The way out of this seeming catch-22 is first to change perspective by using emotional triggering as an opportunity for growth and greater care. We do this by consciously working with our emotional responses, finding (even simple) ways to care for the natural world, and taking action in the world with others—engaging with all our triangle of resilience relationships.
Multiple, interacting positive feedback loops can be visualized as many infinity signs joined at their centers—like a mobile, with all of their loops intersecting with and feeding the others. We can also understand these exponential effects as the Yin-Yang circle in dysregulation without a regenerative balance of dark (healthy destruction and minimizing) and light (sustainable growth and progress), resulting in a downward emotional-biological spiral and collapse. Identifying the anatomy of eco-human positive feedback loops can help us unwind this insidious holistic disease process. We can reverse these vicious cycles and create exponential good by turning the downward trend upward.
Climate crisis has become a battleground between good and evil, sanity and ignorance. It is Star Wars on the world stage: the best, most life-affirming human values versus the most evil, death-affirming vices. Even though climate cure remains a huge uphill task, we must try. On the dark side is unreckoned pain, our imbalanced domination over nature, and isolation—our three triangle of resilience relationships in disrepair. Fueling the side of good are our finer jewels of being human, cultivated via our triangle of resilience relationships and the regenerative solutions we create. These are the fundamental drivers behind a love and respect for all forms of life and the healing of climate crisis.
Nature, for Its Own Sake
Some children, and even adults, have never left the city. Whether due to habit, obligation, poverty, or other restraints, the reasons are many. But there is abundant scientific evidence for the benefits of natural environments on our mental health. So, we should do the best we can to get out.
Not only does nature have a positive effect on us, cities negatively affect us. Scientists have recently found “the childhood experience of green space can actually predict mental health in later life.” 148 Other studies show that city noise pollution damages our health, reduces quality of life, and predisposes us to serious stress-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer, sleep problems, brain aberrations, and respiratory issues.149 It is especially damaging to children. In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared noise pollution second only to air pollution as the biggest threat to public health.150 Another study suggests “exposure to residential road traffic noise increases the risk of depressive symptoms.” 151
Machine noise that fills the urban soundscape is highly abrasive and causes us to stressfully retreat into ourselves and tune out, breeding isolation and psychic distress. In contrast, it’s pleasurable and relaxing to tune into the sounds of nature. They invite us in, promoting openness and union. We delight when a soft chorus of birds’ wings alights on a tree, its leaves shimmering in the sunlight. Or how the ever-changing, constant melody of a stream eases us to sleep. We are reminded of everything to which we belong. When we garden, we become more aware of the soil and rain, sun and shade, decay and renewal we depend upon to survive and thrive. All this increases our care for the natural world, boosting our capacity for climate cure. Connecting with nature not only boosts our overall wellness, it decreases the time we spend in health-eroding city environments.
Doctors in Scotland have even begun writing “nature prescriptions” for their patients (something I have done for decades with my patients, along with poetry prescriptions).152 While it’s great that medical professionals are recognizing the primal healing power of nature, it’s also sad we have dissociated so much from the natural world that we need doctors to prescribe what was once common sense. Hitherto, nature was once a remedy we didn’t have to search for and in fact couldn’t avoid. Though helpful in the short-term, framing nature’s benefits as “medication” could ultimately do harm by relegating the natural world to a human-centric realm of consumerism. This skewed perspective is also problematic because once we think something (or someone) doesn’t immediately benefit us, we tend to stop caring for it and abandon it. This perpetuates the me of humanity at the expense of we with the natural world. For this reason, appreciating the sacredness of the natural world—for its equal right to thrive, and beyond its utility to us—is a decisive change of perspective for healing through climate disease.
Viewing the more-than-human world of nature primarily as a collection of “resources” also exemplifies our self-serving position and our entitlement to destroy it for our “benefit.” Author and journalist Ben Ehrenreich writes, “There is no way out of this [climate change] but to cease to view the Earth, and its populations, as an endless sink of resources from which wealth can be extracted.” 153 We must recognize that without a thriving wilderness, we imperil our well-being in ways we are just now discovering. This is one more reason why respecting the natural world as sacred, even absent any knowledge of its benefits to us, is imperative.
A more equitable perspective sees us as equals with nature or, more wisely, as subordinate and at its mercy. The practice of Shinrin-Yoku, a Japanese term for forest bathing, can help cultivate a sense of communion and humility with the natural world. This description from the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy shares some of its core relational qualities: “Forest Therapy is not an extractive process, where we treat forests as a ‘resource’ from which we extract well-being for humans. Instead, it is a deeply relational practice, characterized by a sense of loving and tender connection. This connection leads naturally to an ethic of tenderness and reciprocity.” Forest therapy is about creating relationships between humans and the more-than-human world, in which the relationship itself becomes a field of healing and a source of joyful well-being.154
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It is undeniable that humans possess a selfish, egocentric side. If we could only revere the natural world as much as we do ourselves, our selfishness could help preserve the biosphere. Many ecocentric, indigenous cultures seem to have solved this conundrum. Native American and Amazonian peoples, for example, believe that all things share a common “spirit,” meaning every aspect of the natural world, including humans, is part of an integral whole. This worldview is ingrained in children from a young age, allowing them to treat the more-than-human world with the same importance as themselves. Such perspective helps allay the selfish, harmful aspect of human nature on the environment.
Until we deeply grasp that we must safeguard nature for its own sake, we will continue to commodify and destroy what is irreplaceably beautiful and exponentially inspiring. This foundational ethos also applies to averting pandemics worse than COVID-19.155 The biosphere is an integral part of who we are on every level, impervious to summing-up in mathematical equations or positive feedback loops. We may never be able to discover all its benefits or describe them. Nor should we. We can rest in the humble intuition and self-evident truth that we need it to thrive. In a saner world, we shouldn’t be forced to visit the mountains. Yet, because not everyone feels an intuitive call to the mountains, nature-positive science reports can help some get into the outdoors more often.
The Evidence for Belonging
In-person connection with nature engenders an enduring emotional bond with the natural world and, therefore, caring for the environment as we do others we love. A nationwide poll by the Nature Conservancy shows: “Exposing kids to nature is a crucial step to getting kids to care about environmental issues, the poll finds. Those with personal, positive experiences with nature were twice as likely to view themselves as strong environmentalists and were significantly more likely to express concern about water issues, air pollution, climate change and the overall condition of the environment.” 156
More support comes from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, discussing the impact of nature on children: “When a problem [referring to climate change] seems distant or abstract, it can easily be pushed aside by more pressing, immediate concerns, like schoolwork or relationship worries. But scientists have learned that there is a way to overcome these deterrents: developing a compassionate relationship with the natural world. Research suggests that the desire to conserve is intricately tied to our connection to nature—or the degree to which we enjoy spending time in nature, empathize with our fellow creatures, and feel a sense of oneness with nature. That emotional connection increases our sense of personal responsibility toward nature and makes us want to do more to preserve it.” 157
A Washington Post article titled “The Radical Political Implications of Spending Time Outdoors” asks, “But could spending time in natural scenery also have larger implications for how we behave politically, or how we treat one another?” The study suggests the answer is yes: “there’s a link between actually experiencing the natural world, and behaving in a sustainable way.” 158 This finding is supported by a more recent, large-scale study in England demonstrating the link between exposure to nature and eco-friendly behavior; the study also found that those not exposed to green spaces were less inclined to act green.159 So, if you can’t make the switch to an electric car and know you can do more than recycle, try getting out to the wilds more often and see what happens as a result.
The common denominator in all these studies is emotional connection. Intimacy with nature is fostered most robustly by being in nature, not learning about it. When we develop a relationship with nature—as we do with one another and with animals we love—we bond with and care for it. We tend not to care as much about animals and places with which we don’t have a personal relationship (Resource 3: Harvey).
Simple common sense suggests that reconnecting with the environment would have profound implications for everything alive, in more ways than can be immediately identified. Unfortunately, common sense is no longer common knowledge. A connection with nature that improves cognitive function and positively influences our emotions is a good recipe for bequeathing to our children a world transformed by the best version of ourselves. This contributes to the upward-spiraling positive feedback loops we so desperately need.
If you want to help mitigate climate crisis, connect with nature and take your children with you. It’s good for your mental health and good for the planet.
Denying Climate Disease
For decades I have witnessed how patients deal with illness. Many aren’t proactive enough until they have no choice, and even then they have a hard time changing habits that contribute to their illness. Others don’t want to admit they are sick at all, which is why honesty is the first step to healing.
A similar honesty is needed to address climate crisis. Denying the severity of the climate crisis (evidenced by the climate science in Appendix I) delays the first step toward healing through it. Admitting what’s true relies on our emotional capacity to bear the truth. Per our fear-mark, we are selectively aware of what we consciously or unconsciously assume we can emotionally handle, and we ignore what scares us too much.
To truly grasp difficult issues and take meaningful action, we need emotional willingness—the courage—to be impacted by what seems larger or more powerful than we are. Courage, from the Latin cour, is heart-centered. Poet and elder Maya Angelou refers to courage as the most important of all virtues.160 But the impetus to let go into what seems like it will destroy us feels counterintuitive. Surrendering to and growing through the fear of what we think we can’t handle (but often can) confers more courage. It is a leap of faith to being blessedly broken open by more difficult challenges.
When we experience that good can come from temporarily feeling bad, we grow. We develop the courage, maybe even excitement, to allow in the dark night when it knocks on our heart-door. A common, milder example of such healing paradox is successfully having a difficult conversation with another to clear up misunderstandings and hurt feelings. After, we feel better about the relationship. Embracing and skillfully working with difficulty benefits us in the longer term.
The denial we exhibit during personal illness or emotional challenge is the same we apply to climate crisis, a potential terminal illness for most everything alive. One evening, a man with stage IV cancer attended my local climate change discussion and support group. He shared that he won’t be alive next year and that knowing he is going to die soon has radically changed his appreciation for life and being in the moment. But the point he drove home is that climate crisis is equally a terminal diagnosis, and to ignore it because it might not kill us today or tomorrow is akin to knowingly having cancer and not confronting it. Just as tending early to personal illness helps our prognosis, addressing climate crisis now improves our chances of surviving it.
Similarly to how cancer or blood loss to a limb reaches a tipping point beyond which we can’t reverse it, our planet is approaching such a tipping point, if we haven’t in fact already reached it.161 Our capacity for wholesale denial of this crisis saddens me deeply, for it’s going to take many more of us coming together to get through the challenging years ahead. I am not referring to saving the planet or our species, per se, as much as I am to staying afloat through the predicted changes to come—if we don’t radically take this to heart and to the streets, now.
We must muster the courage to reverse our denialist and complacent track record and address climate chaos as seriously as is required before we are in its terminal stages. Marion Woodman said, “Most of us have to crash into the wall before we can wake up.” 162 Arriving at this desperate point, we might be forced to treat our feverish, cancer-ridden planet chemo-style, via geoengineering or some other pervasively toxic means.
Visiting the Climate Doctor
Geoengineering refers to a collection of technological interventions designed to mitigate climatic warming. One such method is called solar radiation management (SRM), which is the spraying of aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s warming rays, thus cooling the Earth. SRM mimics the sun-dimming particles a volcanic eruption spews into space. Depending on what substances are used, SRM could in effect “pharmaceutically medicate” our atmosphere, a kind of celestial chemotherapy. SRM also carries large risks such as increased droughts, hurricanes, and biodiversity loss.163 164
Worse, SRM is not a one-time deal; it would require endless repeat applications. To quote a National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) study: “Importantly, SRM approaches to managing climate change require initial and ongoing addition of aerosols to the atmosphere, with increasingly greater additions as emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) rise, given the risk of sudden and potentially catastrophic warming if aerosol levels are not maintained.” 165
Harvard scientists are preparing to test geoengineering the stratosphere as we near the desperate threshold that will require this kind of emergency room-style plan to cool the planet.166 The potential side effects seem as unimaginable as spraying a vegetable garden or school playground with the carcinogen glyphosate, found in the herbicide Roundup. While the Harvard team is testing with calcium carbonate, a relatively benign substance, another preferred SRM substance is sulfur dioxide, a known carcinogen.167
Climate crisis is similar to metastatic cancer, in that both are characterized by rampant overgrowth. In the lexicon of Chinese medicine, this is an expansive, consumptive Yang disorder. Is it any wonder that along with human lung cancer, (the second most common form of cancer behind female breast cancer), we have also caused cancer in the air space outside our lungs? And how, along with the increasing prevalence of lung cancer in women,168 climate change is also rapidly spreading through the sacred feminine, mother Earth? The poetry is consistent: destructive Yang energy is out of control at the expense of nurturing Yin.
Holistic medicine advocates implementing lifestyle changes prior to taking medicine to cure disease. Geoengineering is being tested because we have neither mandated nor made the changes required to mitigate environmental crisis. Geoengineering is a late-stage treatment for attacking climate illness, just as chemotherapy is for fighting cancer. Both are allopathic, warlike efforts. Environmental journalist Jonathan Watts says of our polluted planet: “The take-home message is that we should have gone to the doctor sooner.” 169 Better late than never: we can make that appointment now.
GMOs and Climate Crisis
Genetically modified organism (GMO) “farming” is a form of monoculture, industrial-style agriculture that depends on toxic pesticides and artificial, petroleum-based fertilizers. Peer-reviewed research demonstrates that this method of farming—especially because it causes habitat loss and is reliant on pesticides—is the primary cause of the current, global insect apocalypse,170 which is both accelerating climate change and is in turn exacerbated by it. “If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind,” said Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, the study’s lead scientist.
The mainstay of GMO farming is what’s called “Roundup Ready” crops. These are genetically altered plants, such as corn and soy, that are resistant to the toxic herbicide Roundup. Thus, the spraying of Roundup kills weeds without killing food crops. Whether or not GMO foods are just as healthy as organic foods is an important issue, yet ultimately too anthropocentric. A larger, less appreciated, eco-human problem is that GMO farming methods necessitate large amounts of pesticides, which injure everything and everyone. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a probable carcinogen 171 that also degrades the soil, injures earthworms, and in formulation, negatively impacts beneficial fungi.172 The poison remains on the plants, which humans and animals then consume; glyphosate is also potentially harmful to farm workers.173
A decade ago, I founded GMO Eradication Movement (GEM) 174 to empower citizens like you and me to resist buying GMO products, because I realized our government was not going to limit, properly label, or oversee the proliferation of GMOs into our food chain. I therefore created a three-tiered, eleven-step process to identify, resist, and spread the good word about bad GMOs (see Appendix II).175 The goal has been to create a citizen-based empowerment movement that would achieve the same ends as a top-down, government-issued ban.
Organic gardening and farming provide us with better-quality and safer food, as well as foster beneficial insects and healthy soil that support biodiversity and preserve the foundation of our food chain. Add permaculture techniques to the organic mix, and this form of growing food becomes regenerative, boosting inherent natural processes and sequestering vast amounts of carbon to mitigate climate change. Yes, humans can actually enhance nature by maximizing its inherent design.
GMO Eradication Movement’s resistance to GMOs is the kind of grassroots climate resistance movement we need to exert against the fossil fuel industry, especially since the mandate to desist from carbon polluting is not coming from the top down, as it should.176 Many complain about our government’s tyranny over us, but we invite it by our failure to unite and rebel, grassroots-style, to drastically reduce our emissions and lifestyles. It seems we require a “nanny state” government to impose the strict regulations we need to save ourselves from carbon emissions and self-extermination. The Green New Deal—a congressional resolution that lays out an overarching plan for significantly addressing climate crisis—and any other version of life-saving sanity, is in our hands, if only we could tolerate initiating degrowth on our own by downscaling our lives.
Switching from a commercial corn or soy product to an organic or even commercial non-GMO variety is often more expensive, but doable, because a similar, easy enough substitution exists. Most of us, however, can’t do without our combustion engine cars or at least occasionally flying in airplanes because the alternatives aren’t so convenient. To keep our emissions in check, we can travel by train, ride-share, use public transport, or best, ride a bicycle or walk. The more we do, the better we feel about ourselves. The more we set an example and spread the word, the more we benefit everything else.
1. Nature, unplugged: Clear some time (as much as you see fit) so you don’t “have” to be on your phone or computer (or iPad, iPod, or gaming device) for important calls. Let anyone who might wonder or worry about you know that you’ll be unplugged. Also consider letting them know where you will be in case of emergency. Go into nature without any of these devices and enjoy.
2. If you can’t spend a whole day in nature, begin by taking as much time as you can and increase from there. Notice how you feel when you disconnect from social media. Use the empty space to connect with yourself and the natural world. If you can’t go out into nature without any devices, try not taking any pictures, so the preoccupation with “capturing the moment” does not impede your immediate experience, which can result in losing the moment! You can also practice being silent for stints, such as going on a hike with a friend and agreeing not to talk. Behold and be held by the natural world.
3. To honor your relationship with the natural world, choose three activities (more if you like) from this list to honor the many obvious and unobvious ways connecting with nature helps you:
• Hike or walk: Choose a place to do this two times a week for at least twenty minutes (or what you can) in a natural environment, preferably as devoid as possible of cars and city noise. Instead of listening to music on your hike, tune into the natural sounds around you: your feet on the Earth, the wind, animals, water. Give yourself the gift to enjoy direct, unimpeded connection with the outdoors.
• Start a vegetable garden. This is on many people’s bucket list and too often stays at the bottom. Starting a garden not only connects you to the Earth, it feeds your stomach and your brain. If you don’t want to grow food, consider starting an herb garden. If you don’t have existing earth, consider: pots, raised beds, wall gardens (Resource 2: “Real Simple”), or contribute to a community garden. If gardening daunts you, start small.
• Next time you meet a friend, organize a meeting, or engage in a hobby, consider doing it outdoors in a natural setting!
• Next time you see an insect and have the time, spend five to ten minutes hanging out with it, or them. You might choose to watch the nuanced machinations of a praying mantis, marvel at the organized chaos of an anthill, or the undulating topsy-turvy flight of a butterfly or moth.
133. Hickman, “What Psychotherapy Can Do for the Climate and Biodiversity Crises.”
134. Smith, “We All Must Strengthen Ourselves.”
135. Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra.
136. Jordan, “Stanford Researchers Find Mental Health Prescription: Nature.”
137. Bratman, Hamilton, Hahn, Daily, and Gross, “Nature Experience Reduces Rumination and Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex Activation.”
138. Than, “Depressed? Go Play in the Dirt.”
139. University of Colorado at Boulder, “Healthy, Stress-Busting Fat Found Hidden in Dirt.”
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid.
142. American Psychological Association, “Climate Change’s Toll on Mental Health.”
143. Bartlett, “Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a Talk by Al Bartlett.”
144. Cole, “Why You Didn’t See It Coming.”
145. Monbiot, “For the Sake of Life on Earth, We Must Put a Limit on Wealth.”
146. Queally, “What’s Not in the Latest Terrifying IPCC Report? The ‘Much, Much, Much More Terrifying’ New Research on Climate Tipping Points.” Watts, “Risks Of ‘Domino Effect’ of Tipping Points Greater than Thought, Study Says.”
147. A term broadly referring to the removal of massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and safely storing it. See Appendix I: “The Science of Climate Crisis” for more.
148. Betuel, “Scientists Discover a Major Lasting Benefit of Growing Up Outside the City.”
149. Bartz, “How City Noise is Slowly Killing You,”
150. Hänninen, et al., “Environmental Burden of Disease in Europe: Assessing Nine Risk Factors in Six Countries.”
151. Orban et al., “Residential Road Traffic Noise and High Depressive Symptoms after Five Years of Follow-up: Results from the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study.”
152. Housman, “Scottish Doctors Are Now Issuing Prescriptions to Go Hiking.”
153. Ehrenreich, “To Those Who Think We Can Reform Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis.”
154. Association of Nature and Forest Therapy, “The Practice of Forest Therapy.”
155. National History Museum, “Scientists Say We Will Face Worse Pandemics Than COVID-19 Unless We Protect Nature.”
156. The Nature Conservancy, “Poll Suggests Kids Need to Get Outdoors and Play!”
157. Suttie, “How to Raise an Environmentalist.”
158. Mooney, “The Radical Political Implications of Spending Time Outdoors.”
159. Ian Alcock et al., “Associations between Pro-Environmental Behaviour and Neighbourhood Nature, Nature Visit Frequency and Nature Appreciation: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Survey in England.”
160. Ju, “Courage Is the Most Important Virtue, Says Writer and Civil Rights Activist Maya Angelou at Convocation.”
161. Harvey, “Tipping points’ could exacerbate climate crisis, scientists fear.”
162. Horváth, “Marion Woodman: Holding the Tension of the Opposites.”
163. Dunne, “Unregulated Solar Geoengineering Could Spark Droughts and Hurricanes, Study Warns.”
164. Christopher H. Trisos et al., “Potentially Dangerous Consequences for Biodiversity of Solar Geoengineering Implementation and Termination.”
165. Utibe Effiong and Neitzel, “Assessing the Direct Occupational and Public Health Impacts of Solar Radiation Management with Stratospheric Aerosols.”
166. Tollefson, “First Sun-Dimming Experiment Will Test a Way to Cool Earth,.”
167. Effiong and Neitzel, “Assessing the Direct Occupational and Public Health Impacts of Solar Radiation Management with Stratospheric Aerosols.”
168. Elster, “Lung Cancer Is Commonly Associated with Smoking. But Rates of the Disease among Non-smokers – and Women – Are Rising.”
169. Johnson, “‘Ominous’ UN Report Warns Human Activity Has Pushed One Million Plant and Animal Species to Brink of Extinction.”
170. Sanchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, “Worldwide Decline of the Entomofauna: a Review of its Drivers,” 232.
171. Kogevinas, “Probable Carcinogenicity of Glyphosate.”
172. The Soil Association, “The Impact of Glyphosate on Soil Health: the Evidence to Date,”
173. Pesticide Action Network North America, “Farmworkers Represent the Backbone and Marrow of Our Agricultural Economy. Yet This Group Is One of the Least Protected from on-the-Job Harms—Including Exposure to Pesticides.”
174. GMO Eradication Movement (“GEM”), “60 Minutes Australia: Roundup and Cancer,” video.
175. GMO Eradication Movement, “11 Steps for GMO Eradication.”
176. Byskov, “Climate Change: Focusing on How Individuals Can Help Is Very Convenient for Corporations.”