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Richard Louv, author of the book "Last Child in the Woods" argues that the alienation from the natural world leads to a plethora of problems like attention deficit, obesity, hyperactiviity, depression, slowed cognitive development, and reduced creativity. Louv summarized them under the umbrella term nature deficit disorder (or short NDD).

Louv also argues that the effects of the nature deficit disorder on our children will be an even bigger problem in the future: An increasing pace in the last three decades, approximately, of a rapid disengagement between children and direct experiences in nature…has profound implications, not only for the health of future generations but for the health of the Earth itself.

In order to save the planet, we need to venture outdoors as much as possible to seek the direct encounter with nature. If we want to save our children, we need to connect them to nature; and the more we connect to nature the more likely it is that we clean up the mess we have created so far. That’s most likely what Victorian poet Mary Anne Evans aka George Eliot anticipated when she wrote in the 19th century: We could never have learned to love the earth so well, if we had had no childhood in it.