If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

If children lose contact with nature they won't fight for it | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

You'll have to excuse me if these next few items aren't timely. I save them when I see them and rarely have time to post them.  Regardless of when they were written they're still very pertinent.

Nature disconnection, screen substitution, who will be the future stewards....if there is anything left. Love Monbiots' articles.

Full article can be read from the link above. 

With half of their time spent at screens, the next generation will be poorly equipped to defend the natural world from harm.'One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow". That radical green pressure group PriceWaterhouseCoopers warns that even if the present rate of global decarbonisation were to double, we would still be on course for 6C of warming by the end of the century. Confining the rise to 2C requires a sixfold reduction in carbon intensity: far beyond the scope of current policies.
‘The great indoors has become a far more dangerous

 place than the diminished world beyond.'

 Illustration by Daniel Pudles

.......A new report shows that the UK has lost 20% of its breeding birds since 1966: once common species such as willow tits, lesser spotted woodpeckers and turtle doves have all but collapsed; even house sparrows have fallen by two thirds. Ash dieback is just one of many terrifying plant diseases, mostly spread by trade. They now threaten our oaks, pines and chestnuts.

So where are the marches, the occupations, the urgent demands for change? While the surveys show that the great majority would like to see the living planet protected, few are prepared to take action. This, I think, reflects a second environmental crisis: the removal of children from the natural world. The young people we might have expected to lead the defence of nature have less and less to do with it.......

There are several reasons for this collapse: parents' irrational fear of strangers and rational fear of traffic, the destruction of the fortifying commons where previous generations played, the quality of indoor entertainment, the structuring of children's time, the criminalisation of natural play. The great indoors, as a result, has become a far more dangerous place than the diminished world beyond. The rise of obesity, rickets and asthma and the decline in cardio-respiratory fitness are well documented.