Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide Between People and the Environment
When pressed on the issue, most will readily proclaim they are pro-environment and antipollution, although lately only scant gains have been made in counteracting rapidly escalating climate change and damage to ocean habitats. In this incisive analysis of modern society’s detrimental impact on global ecology, University of California environmental studies professor Worthy attributes this inconsistency between good intentions and dismal results to civilization’s built-in dissociation from nature. When the food we eat and clothes we wear are produced in remote farms and factories, our connection with the natural world from which they spring becomes just as remote and inevitably neglected. In eight sweeping chapters filled with sobering examples, Worthy traces the origins of this environmental disconnect to the industrial world’s idea of nature as a collection of separate parts requiring careful supervision. He then offers a variety of prescriptions, including growing food locally, for reestablishing awareness of the interconnectedness of nature and our utter dependence on it. Worthy’s book is a superbly written clarion call to reformat our lifestyles and embrace a deeper connection with the living world. --Carl Hays