FORWARD TO NATURE: The New Nature Movement Isn’t About Going
Back to Nature, but Forward to a Nature-Rich Civilization This
column is adapted from an essay that originally appeared in the
book, “Thirty-Year Plan: Thirty Writers on What We Need to Build
a Better Future,” published by The Orion Society, 2012, in which
writers imagine the future. These ideas are explored in greater
detail in Richard Louv’s 2011 book,” The Nature Principle.” For
many people, thinking about the future conjures up images from
movies like Blade Runner, Mad Max, The Road: a post-apocalyptic
dystopia stripped of nature and human kindness. We seem drawn to
that flame, but it’s a dangerous fixation. There are many
reasons for the attraction – global threats to the environment,
economic hard times, decades of disconnection between children
and nature – but there’s a fundamental problem with it too.
Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that any movement — any culture
— will fail if it cannot paint a picture of a world that people
will want to