Maurice Strong, the Canadian
multimillionaire who founded the United Nations Environment Program
and is co-chair of the Commission on Global Governance, the blueprint
for world government says, "It is quite clear to me after
several years in the environmental movement that all physical
problems of man's impact on the environment - pollution of the
air and waters, the desecration of the land, the contamination
of the food chain - all start within the environment of man's
mind."
Mr. Strong echo's the assertion of Vice President Albert Gore
that we are dysfunctional socially and environmentally because
we are cut off and isolated
from the world of nature and the natural.
Pulitzer Prize recipient, E.
O. Wilson, of Harvard, agrees with Strong and Gore, noting that
nature's absence erodes many essential parts of our lives. Similarly,
Nobel prize recipients Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer
insist that for better tomorrows we must embrace nature.
Today, medical research by
Dr. Howard Frumkin and many others indicates that exposure to
nature can be restorative.*
What is most significant, however,
is that the conclusions of these distinguished leaders have had
little effect in improving how our society operates. Most people
are helpless to implement these important discoveries. We are
stuck in the nature-disconnected rut of our daily lives and scientists
say we are deepening that rut. The way we learn to think not
only prevents us from solving personal and social troubles, it
causes the global warming that is giving our living planet a
fever.