ABSTRACT
As tomorrow's adult citizens, children must be able to create and manage sustainable communities. In writing this book, I have often been daunted by the thought of the enormous barriers to moving society towards community sustainable development, but I have also learned that millions of people are already groping for new kinds of relationships to the environment. I have documented many examples of children working together in new ways, with a different vision of the environment. Beneath the headlong growth of consumerism, more and more people are feeling the need for a deeper meaning to life. They are showing a willingness to work and even make sacrifices for the sake of the environment. There is still no general public recognition, however, that the loss of the sense of community, which is growing in the industrialized world, is part of the same trend towards globalism, and that local environmental action can also be a way of reconnecting people with one another. In many countries, however, there is a growing disenchantment with the rationalism of science, technology, and environmental planning, and a turning towards the spiritual, the intuitive, and even the magical for insights to the meaning of life.
