Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Is Our Disconnect From Nature a Disorder?

April 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: EUGENE SERGEEV/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Somewhere during the American experience, between Teddy Roosevelt and color TV, being outdoors and maybe even working up a sweat started to lose its universal appeal. There remain those who fetishize the outdoors, from Ted Nugent to REI shoppers, and the urge to connect with nature never vanished. But as Americans became more urban and more cocooned in their cars and air conditioning, the values of nature were honored more by their absence than in their activities. The price of this disconnect is usually tallied via our bodies, with a simple equation that a lack of outdoor activity must ... Read More

More like this: Environment, The 101
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Children’s Books Increasingly Ignore Natural World

January 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Picture an illustrated children’s book — one that has won a prestigious award — and your mind conjures up images of furry animals, puffy clouds, and eager boys and girls enjoying adventures in the wild. In fact, our kids are entering a much different world in their earliest literary experiences — one in which nature plays an increasingly minor role. That’s the conclusion of a newly published study, which suggests these books reflect our growing estrangement from the natural environment. A group of researchers led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist J. Allen Williams ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings
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Long Slog for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

September 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Long Slog for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Against all odds, the critically endangered ivory-billed woodpecker may still be hanging on in a desolate handful of bottomland swamps in the American Southeast. Depending on who's asked, the last putative sighting of the large black-and-white bird occurred in early 2007 in the Florida Panhandle or the spring of 2008 in a Louisiana bayou. And there hasn't been an undisputed report of ivory-bills for nearly 70 years, more than twice the bird's maximum lifespan. The putative rediscovery of the bird in 2005, announced with much fanfare at a Washington, D.C., press conference that included ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Teaching Kids to Love Nature (and Buy Less Stuff)

August 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In their eloquent preface to The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It), Charles Saylan and Daniel T. Blumstein wistfully recall how freely they roamed an immense wilderness when they were young, only to find, as adults, that the "unexplored places that inspired us so deeply are now mostly gone." They had lived through a doubling of the world's population, initially with "a sense of pride and wonder at technologies that seemed like something out of science fiction" — among them, the green revolution that seemingly averted a Malthusian catastrophe. But then came the ... Read More

More like this: Education, September-October 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
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New Studies Help Boy Scouts ‘Be Prepared’

August 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Boy Scouts of America, while last year celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding, reviewed and commissioned much research into how the organization is accomplishing its core mission of promoting good character traits and prosocial behaviors — as well as reaching out to a new generation of kids. Scout leaders hope that the studies will offer guidance to program leaders for the organization's next 100 years. If Scouting is to maintain influence in the next era, it must reverse its declining membership. Participation peaked in 1973 with 4.8 million scouts and has since plunged 42 ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Reconnecting Children and Nature

July 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Traditionally, nature has served as humanity's greatest teacher, the place where artists, poets and scientists go for inspiration. The natural world has the ability to draw us in and allow us to experience a sense of wonder. But what happens when children fail to bond with nature? Nature deficit disorder isn't a medical term but a social phenomenon identified by Richard Louv, the author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature deficit disorder describes the high cost of separation between nature and children — including attention deficit ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Environment
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CSI: Wildlife — Solving Mysterious Animal Deaths

June 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Carol Meteyer unfurled the Sandhill crane's gray wings across the steel examination table, and for a moment, the 4-foot-tall bird regained its former majesty. In that instant, the laboratory's windowless cinderblock walls, cement floor and fluorescent lights disappeared. It was easy to imagine the crane's wings cupping the prairie air as it landed in an Oklahoma field, its long gray neck stretched, its red crown the only bright spot in a dun landscape. FedEx had delivered the crane, along with three others, that morning. The day before, it had stood in a farm field in Oklahoma, its head ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, Environment, July-August 2011, Profile, Science
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T.C. Boyle Interview: Nature and the Novelist

March 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Mankind's relationship with the natural world has dominated the news of late, with terrifying images of tsunami damage and well-founded fears of nuclear contamination. But even during periods when we don’t seem quite so puny or powerless, the topic captivates T.C. Boyle. The much-honored and best-selling novelist often writes about people who take a hubristic attitude toward nature, assuming they can either tame it or bend it to meet their own needs. The natural world tends to elbow its way past their arrogance, or idealism, or combination of the two, vividly revealing the scope of their ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Ray Allen Scores in the Nature-Nurture Debate

February 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Michael Jordan is the greatest player in NBA history. You see his image everywhere, eight years after he retired. He even graces the pages of the introductory psychology textbook that I use — but not because of his outlandish skills. Midway through his career, Jordan decided to switch sports and try his hand at major league baseball. Although he clearly had substantial baseball skills, he wasn't ready for the big leagues, so his foray was considered a failure. Then he switched back and resumed his reign as the king of basketball. The lesson of Jordan's career in sports is that talent ... Read More

More like this: Science, Think Again
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Thoreau Was Right: Nature Hones the Mind

January 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A long line of the world's thinkers — from Immanuel Kant to William James to Deepak Chopra — have recommended we take walks in nature to relieve stress and refocus our thoughts. And nature writers — from Henry David Thoreau to John Muir to Edward Abbey — have extolled the restorative benefits of nature. "Everybody," Muir said, "needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." Turns out they were ahead of their time. "Attention Restoration Theory" or ART, which posits that a walk in the woods helps refocus the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Health
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