I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.
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Paul G. Hawken is an environmentalist, educator, journalist, and author of six books, including The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins) and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little, Brown). He lives in Sausalito, California.
When I was able to open my eyes, I saw lying next to me a young man, nineteen, maybe twenty at the oldest. He was in shock, twitching and shivering uncontrollably from being tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed at close range. His burned eyes were tightly closed, and he was panting irregularly. Then he passed out. The sidewalk was wet from the water that a medic had poured over him to flush his eyes.