Human/Nature

Renowned biologist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author E. O. Wilson spoke before an audience in New York City on April 24 at an event sponsored by NRDC, "Exploring and Saving Earth's Biodiversity." Wilson has spent more than 40 years studying insects, a passion that began when he was a teen curious about red fire ants. At Town Hall in Manhattan, the entomologist was interviewed by New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert. Wilson had this to say about society's evolving relationship to nature:

"We have -- as industrialized countries, conspicuously in the United States -- we've just simply removed ourselves from nature. It's something 'out there' that we can visit once in a while. We'd love to see it retained, but it's really not part of us. We need to get over that and understand that, in fact, those natural systems are what sustain us. If you took away even a little piece of that -- for example, the bugs -- literally, most of the living world would collapse, at least on the land, within five or ten years. And humanity would scarcely be able to hold on as a species. It would be an absolute catastrophe. We need to get across our dependency on the natural world in accurate but vivid terms. But that's just a start. We need, I think, to improve science education in this country."