by Chuck Hall

If you grew up in a rural environment like I did, you probably remember the joys of playing in the woods. Building forts, taking hikes or collecting plants not only allows children an opportunity for fresh air, it also stimulates their imagination and curiosity. But as video games and television become more important in the lives of our children, they have less and less time to spend in nature.
Author Richard Louv thinks that our children are suffering from Nature Deficit Disorder. In Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (2005, Algonquin Books), he argues that kids are so plugged into television and video games that they've lost their connection to the natural world. Louv believes that the hunter/gatherer is still very much a part of our collective psyche, and that people need nature in order to develop fully as human beings.
While video games and television may have some educational purposes, they do not allow for full use of the senses. The sights, sounds, smells and textures of the woods allow children to experience the world in ways that video games cannot. There is a growing body of evidence that children with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), a disorder in which children misinterpret signals from their senses, may benefit from sensory integration training. SPD can lead to symptoms like lack of coordination, difficulty in concentrating, and behavioral problems. A growing body of evidence suggests that allowing children to experience nature stimulates all of the senses, and therefore facilitates sensory integration, decreasing symptoms of SPD.

Parents may be fearful of visiting state or national parks, due to perceived dangers of abduction or assault, but those fears are probably exaggerated and exacerbated by the media. John Winters supervises 350 safety officers for the Department of Natural Resources. These safety officers are the uniformed rangers who oversee 96 state parks and recreation areas and 600 boating access sites.  According to Ranger Winters, of about 1,000 incident reports that visitors filed with rangers last year, just 16 were technically classified as assaults. Compare that to the estimated 10,000 annual assaults that occur in homes, towns, and city streets, and you can easily see that the woods are a far safer place to be!
You don’t have to take the kids to Yosemite to reap the benefits of nature. Most cities and towns have parks. You can even find nature in your back yard. An Ecotherapy exercise I do with my children in therapy is called ‘A Closer Look.’ I mark out a six-foot in diameter circle on the ground, then have them sit in it with a notebook and record what they see inside that circle for fifteen minutes. Many tell stories of insects interacting. Others describe blades of grass or leaves in great detail. Some talk about the wind and the sun. In every case, they use their imagination to examine the world around them more closely.
The opportunities to help your children overcome ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ abound. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination, so teach your kids to put down the X-Box and explore the world around them!
Chuck Hall’s latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.

As the demand for alternative forms of energy continues to increase across the nation, American farmers are discovering a new ‘crop.’ All across America, farmers are now harvesting wind energy and reaping the rewards.
As of today, wind power is the fastest growing form of alternative energy in the world. Between 1998 and 2002, wind power grew at an average rate of 32%!  According to a study by the Department of Energy (DOE), since 1980 the cost of producing electricity using wind power has dropped as much as 90% as turbines have become more efficient and less expensive. If current trends continue, wind power will be less expensive than electricity from conventional power plants by the year 2010.
The ‘Wind Powering America’ initiative, sponsored by the DOE, hopes to produce 5% of America’s electricity with wind by 2020. To do this, the DOE will be providing $60 billion in investment capital to rural locations across America. Of this capital fund, $1.2 billion will go to farmers and other rural landowners to help establish wind farms across the United States.
There are three basic methods that a potential wind farmer may use to generate income from farming the wind. The first and easiest is to allow a developer to install a large wind turbine on the property. This requires no up-front costs to the wind farmer, and can generate royalties of up to $5000 per year, per turbine, depending on the size of the generator.
The second basic method is to connect your wind turbine to the grid. In this arrangement, you can either check with the local utility company to see if they’ll help you pay for the turbine, or you can finance the turbine yourself. Federal law then requires that the power company buy any surplus electricity from you.
The third method is to buy the turbine yourself, then sell the electricity generated to the highest bidder. The end user in this case doesn’t have to be a power company. You could sell your power to factories, to homes, or to rural subdivisions.

The best part about wind farming is that even large turbines have small footprints. This means that you may still use the bulk of your farmland for growing crops, while supplementing your income by harvesting energy from the wind!
If you would like to learn more about wind energy in general, visit the American Wind Energy Association at: http://www.awea.org. You may download a fact sheet about wind energy from the Union of Concerned Scientists at: http://www.uscusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/Agfs_wind_2003.pdf.
You may learn more about farming the wind at: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/farming-the-wind-wind-power-and-agriculture.html.

Chuck Hall is a graduate student and author. His latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.

by Chuck Hall

When Polynesian settlers arrived at Easter Island, they found a tropical paradise waiting for them. Archaeological evidence shows that when the Polynesians landed on that island, it was covered with a thick forest of abundant flora and fauna. A new study suggests that these settlers didn’t arrive until about 1200 C.E. At the peak of their civilization, the island supported nearly 7,000 people. Yet by the time Dutch colonizers arrived in 1772, all they found was the eerie stone statues that dominate the island to this day, and a few dozen starving survivors from the original Polynesian colonists. In less than six centuries, the original settlers turned the island into a wasteland. Today, the island is nothing but a barren field covered with grasses and those enigmatic stone statues.

I wonder what happened that would lead these islanders to think that their rapid and massive deforestation was a good idea? Surely at some point in time they must have realized what was happening to the forests around them. There are no trees at all on the island today. Someone had to have been the one to cut down the last tree. I wonder what went through his mind as he put the axe to the last tree trunk on the island? Did he look upon his action with regret and remorse for what once was, or did he just look at it as a way to squeeze the last ounce of productivity out of the last resource on the island? Did the islanders realize that the destruction of the forest meant their own destruction, or did they just think that the cutting of the last tree was “business as usual” and that anyone who objected was needlessly being an alarmist?

The sad story of Easter Island is not unique in history. For decades, historians wondered what happened to the Mayan civilization. The Mayans had a sophisticated urban culture that in many ways rivaled our own, and in some ways (astronomy, for example) exceeded ours. Yet in 900 C.E. they all suddenly abandoned their cities for the jungle. For years the reason for this abandonment had been a mystery, but archaeologists today have reached a general consensus on what they think happened.

The largest of Mayan cities had a population of between 10,000 and 20,000. All of those people had to be fed. The preferred style of Mayan agriculture was to slash and burn the jungle to create arable fields for planting. By planting the same crops year after year, the nutrients in the soil were quickly depleted. After a few decades of this practice, the soil within walking distance of all the cities had been exhausted. The fields had to be moved so far away from the cities that it was easier simply to abandon the cities altogether. In other words, the cities were abandoned because of an ecological disaster caused by non-sustainable agricultural practices.

There is evidence that other great cities of the past, such as Rome and Alexandria, had an element of ecological disaster in their falls as well. Throughout history, when civilizations have failed to live in a sustainable manner, the inevitable result has been the collapse of those civilizations.

We stand on the brink of another potential ecological disaster that would make the collapse of an ancient city-state pale in significance. In the past, when civilizations fell, the refugees could always move elsewhere and start over. The problem now is that we are a global civilization. There is nowhere else to go.

Are we, as a species, staring at the last tree with an axe in our hands?

Chuck Hall is a graduate student and author. His latest book, Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave, is now available at the Culture Artist Web site at www.cultureartist.org. You may contact Chuck by email at: chuck@cultureartist.org.

Ecopsychology is a fairly recent concept in mental health. It is a philosophy combining elements of psychology and ecology. The theory behind Ecopsychology is that mental health is contingent upon the health of the environment. In other words, humankind and the environment are part of an interrelated system.
I became interested in environmental issues in the late 1970s, largely because I grew up playing in the woods. The forest was my retreat when things got too stressful at home. I could take a walk down by the creek for an hour or so, and suddenly everything fell back into perspective. So when I entered graduate school for Marriage and Family Therapy, it was only natural that I would research nature’s impact on mental health. When I first learned of Ecopsychology, it was natural that I would become involved in research in the field.
There is a wealth of research demonstrating that nature and wilderness experiences are beneficial to mental health. Just a few examples:

• Kaplan and Kaplan (1993): Study of over 1200 employees revealed that those who had a window overlooking a natural environment consistently performed better at work and gave higher overall job satisfaction ratings.
• Antonioli & Reveley (2005) found that swimming with dolphins was more effective for treating depression than traditional treatments.
• Therapy and educational activities conducted in outdoor settings reduces symptoms of ADD/ADHD (Kuo & Taylor, 2004).
• Nature and outdoor activities reduce stress and restore energy (Sponslee et al, 2004).
• Smith-Sebasto & Walker (2005) found that wilderness survival skills training gave adolescents increased self-esteem and self-confidence, skills necessary for a good education.
• Lazar et al (2005) demonstrated that meditative states stimulate neural growth in the cerebral cortex. Nature experiences have been demonstrated in several studies to produce meditative states (fascination, relaxation, mindfulness).
• Meyer (2001): A literature review of outdoor experiences as educational tools revealed that ‘outdoor classrooms’ enhanced many critical factors of the educational experience, including: enhanced retention, better focus, more attention to detail, less hyperactivity, more relaxation, increased confidence and self-esteem, and better cognitive functioning.