Part of what the natural world imparts is a sense of wonder, things that you couldn't have dreamt up, nor anyone you know. As I've gotten older, I've developed this hazy awareness of some world that was lost to me — things that I've read about that coincide with my experiences when I was very young that I haven't encountered since then.

It's like realizing this childhood world wasn't that way just because you have changed from a child to an adult, but because the world has changed.

I'm starting to become worried over what my daughter might experience in that regard. Things that were normal for me or that she might encounter that will be gone instead. Like, will fireflies still be around for her as an adult? What about walking around with piles of snow higher than you everywhere? Will she ever see a natural unlit clear night sky? It's difficult to convey what that many stars looks like, or seeing the milky way stretched across it.

More to the point of the article, I remember freshwater bivalves walking upstream across stream beds. They aren't mussels, but still — I haven't seen any in the last several years where I used to.

I deal with this anxiety by lobbying for electoral reform. There is a lot we can do, but we have to stop using first-past-the-post, to delegate power. It's like a software bug in our global decision making. Some countries have managed to debug their electoral systems. Canada has a long way to go. US, I don't even know.

I highly recommend The Once and Future World, by J B MacKinnon (http://jbmackinnon.com/books.html).

If you're outside Canada (North America?) it can be difficult to get an ebook version; I can help with that... ;-)

(Note: with the author's agreement!)

Yeah, it's a terrible feeling and it bodes poorly for our future.

Similarly I've long been saying that our generation is the first to have no real connection to the natural world. Our grandparents grew up with their grandparents who would have been firmly planted in Terra-cognito or at least been hearing stores of it. But our parents, once removed, had nothing "real" to pass on to us, just stories at best. The baby-boomers specificlly sought to cut ties to their "stiff" parental figures and mostly were successful in reshaping the world as individualistic, something that NEVER would have worked as a survival strategy for any previous generation.

My take, the baby-boomers consciously severed our ties to the past as their children we have now lost all connections to the natural world. We get what we deserve which is utter destruction of the climate and mental suffering and disease until the day we die.