Sustainability

That was the theme of this year's geography camp, and the subject, in a round-about way, of an editorial in the NYT. Every Christmas for the past 107 years the Audubon Society has been counting birds around the country and world. The results of this survey, as well as other research, document the dramatic decline in bird numbers during the past 40 years.
From the editorial:

Environmentalists of every stripe argue that we must somehow begin to correlate our economic behavior — by which I mean every aspect of it: production, consumption, habitation — with the welfare of other species.

This is the premise of sustainability. But the very foundation of our economic interests is self-interest, and in the survival of other species we see way too little self to care.

In the Washington Post was a piece about kids not wanting to play outside any more, and I think that goes along with the decline in species, global warming, and all our other ills - we are way too removed from our roots, and nothing good can come from it.

My own theory is that ADD is caused by lack of sunlight and having no windows in classrooms. Every school I attended had large windows in the classrooms, and there was plenty of natural light. When it got boring in class you could stare out the window and daydream instead of poking the kid next to you.

I'm sure that's not really true, but still, I don't remember lots of kids with what we now call ADD. I do remember staring out the windows a lot.