Quotable: Starhawk on ecology
"Our culture is afflicted with a vast disconnection, an abyss of ignorance that becomes apparent whenever an issue invoking the natural world arises. As a society, we are daily making decisions and setting policies that have enormous repercussions on the natural world. And those policies are being set by officials and approved by a public who are functionally eco-illiterate.
"I was once giving a talk at a university about the need for earth-based spirituality, when I was stopped by a student with a question that stunned me.
"'Tell me,' the young man asked, 'why is the earth important?'
"I almost didn't know what to say. I bit back a snide retort--'What planet do you live on?'--and realized with horror that he was quite serious, that somehow all his years of higher education and graduate school had not taught him that we are utterly dependent on the earth for our lives."
--Starhawk, The Earth Path