New problems demand new understandings. Nature has many meanings including environment, climate change, global warming, and ecology and so on. To simplify we could put all terms of reference under the heading of Nature to address the multitude of divisions. Many terms are needed to separate the issues, but too many terms lead to confusion. Having a central concept can clarify the issues, our understanding never stands still. For all we know there is always more to know. We overcome negative emotions that cause inaction or inappropriate behavior. Too many opinions exist among people and nations to build a true global effort.

The problem is finding ways that can inspire action. Yet are we being gripped by a knee jerk reaction - or doing something we love? At the end of the day we need to be assured of becoming the person we want to be surrounded by the kind of society we want to live in. Perhaps the environment urges us to change in ways from within and in ways admired by other people.

The concern is for cooperation within our limits, we know rapid changes take place in air, water, and weather patterns. Use the word of Nature covers many complex relationships. Perhaps surroundings we have now may seem like paradise in future times and as such is precious.  Our “human nature” needs to be in contact the “better nature” of others otherwise we get nowhere. If we only had better ways of loving the world what a wonderful world this would be. Public education so far has been a band aid solution; learning about the problems does not necessarily make us care more about them.

We need to understand more about the natural world but why should anyone celebrate a declining situation? As Shakespeare put it, “One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.” Having a “love of Nature” could unite yet has any unity been found in self-seeking Green groups? The ancient Greeks talked of Heiros Gamos, our marriage to Nature taken for better or for worse. They said we had the need to remain partners with our surroundings. Was this an ancient superstition or a valid expression of survival for all times? Sometimes the old approaches come back to haunt us and say “I told you so!”

If we don’t care for the environment then it rises up to kick us in the ass and every time. The “human nature” within is understood as the cause of all our relations with the world. Environmentalists have grasped some of this in their efforts to preserve the natural world for future generations but simply don’t go far enough. Those of the future will need to think and feel in better ways than we do. When we get too arrogant and disrupt too much then external forces rise up to bring us down.

Nature, as a term, goes across nearly fifty different languages with similar spellings for thousands of years. Perhaps this tells of a lost way of unity. We could use a capitol letter for Nature. Can the natural workings around us be so misunderstood that none dare respect the place of Nature in our affairs? This active term expresses many entirely different situations and is used in the sense of understanding the environment around us. To build respect for natural forces gives respect for the ties that bind us to the land. Our living by self invention for ourselves alone cannot put us outside the realms of Nature.

Nature could be called a ragbag, a collection of unrelated happenings, yet a balance and order takes place among the elements in the forming of life. Everything about growth can be seen to come under heading of Nature and the one term simplifies what is difficult to explain otherwise. Like in the similar term of “love” (from the same language group) a whole group of meanings becomes compressed into one term to show what goes on inside and around us.

To live in better ways is to put aside games that trick us into wanting more than what we can give back to the welfare of the world as a whole. Nature, as an entity, does not ask us to give away our successes only our excesses. We must never approach Nature as something to be ruled over and mastered. Here is a living partner that needs consultation (as in environmental impact statements.)

Three things are asked for in our deal with the world. To make better use of what we have, are less wasteful in our ways, and only take what we can use. Having less of Nature in our lives becomes ways found to have more. Our thinking needs to be reborn into the age of space, the age of science and above all the age of future environment where our senses and emotions respond to our natural surroundings in real time ways.