Drink Fresh Snow

Today I read a fine article on how much we are estranged with nature. Excerpts:

We human beings have a remarkable capacity to shrug our shoulders in the face of the extraordinary. We usually ignore it to deal with our own lives, because we have "somewhere to get to".

We in the developed world live in a bubble society that fatally disjoins us from nature , leaving us spiritually and emotionally impoverished and intellectually ill-equipped to gauge the global effects of our behavior. No other society in history has lived so cocooned from the routine vagaries of climate and weather.

Up to 93 percent of Westerners' lives are now lived indoors. Research suggests that 99 percent of Americans spend less than one day in a life time in conscious sensory contact with nature. Out of 1440 minutes in a day, Britons average just one minute in the countryside or seaside.

Living inside the bubble, seeing only reflections of ourselves, is it any wonder we lose sight of the world outside? How can we escape the bubble? Don't bank on Katrina teaching a lesson.

We need to connect with nature before it connects, terminally, with us. Get a relationship with a tree. Make tea from wild nettles. Watch a pile of leaves when winter wind hits it. Drink fresh snow. And then translate the insights we gain back into the bubble world and its sleeping citizenry. Agitate, arouse, enthuse.

And above all, communicate one simple message. Having "somewhere to get to" just won't do any more.

David Nicholson-Lord, former environment editor in The Independent on Sunday. Published in Adbusters , Jan-Feb 2006 issue .