Our connection with Nature

Stephen Miller, the webmaster of  Ecoversity.org just posted one of the Case Focus: this time on oceans. Like in so many other places --most of the news about our oceans is pretty dire: overfishing, acidification, coral and reef whitening die-off.  How come we humans take our environment so for granted ? Part of the answer is of course that our attention has been elsewhere: in many cases a virtual world has replaced the direct contact and observation  of the natural world. We are not bonding in the same way with our environment as our species used to: We have become very self-absorbed in the things that reflect who we think we are as humans.... a car, a tv, computers, but also our food, etc. --all of them providing technologically mediated environments that reflect our own needs and incredible minds but obscure the source of it all --nature. Nature itself has become commodified and in many ways alien.

How to re-establish our common bonds ? how to reconnect in such a way that we will change our habits ?