First I would like to say I am a big enviromentalist/conservationist and actually I just spent the last four days hiking in my local mountains exploring recently closed trails (due to budget cuts).

I think the fact we are being removed from "nature"- that is to say trees n' stuff- is only part of the problem. I think in general we are far too removed from everything in our society. I can state with absolute certainty, that the way we live our lives is not sustainable and we risk destroying ourselves and our environment if we do not change. The reasons why are almost endless.

The means of production in this country seems to be removed from every day routine and we take for granted many of the harder things in life. I don't know if any of you have tried to start a fire without matches, lighters or a flint, but it's really f'ing hard. So the more "progress" we might be making to give us have simple lives will most likely result in pushing us further away from nature.

I don't want to go too much into it, but I think we are just postponing the inevitable collapse (which is a long ways away) of our way of life by focusing on the more minor issues that neglect the big picture (aka Global Warming Issue). So the way we are pushing nature away from us and indulging in this neo-capitalist consumer society isn't making us more happy, it is simply fulfilling our desires. Nature isn't the solution to happiness, but it is probably one of the major reasons people feel so atomized, isolated and depressed in the mechanics of a modern-day society. Until we change the current course of social development throughout the world, this pattern will continue and "nature" itself will be minimized to small pockets of observation so far removed from our present day lives that the only way to experience it is on the tele.

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