By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Across the country, debate is raging on a wide number of increasingly political issues: health care reform, immigration, foreign policy, nuclear deterrence, the role of social media in politics, energy policy, public lands, climate change, and endlessly on and on. The stakes in these arguments only rise by the minute and by the tweet.
While these issues heat up, California is on fire, Houston (remember Houston?) still recovering from a flood, Florida coming back online after its hurricane, and Puerto Rico, well, Puerto Rico is a hellish nightmare of too many people having too little access to basics like water and electricity. Puerto Rico looks to be a public health powder keg set to explode.
One thing is clear: we need nature. Now more than ever.
All of us need nature. In these overstressed times, nature heals. Literally. Every day, new studies show that time spent in a forest walking, or even just even sitting, elevates our mood, calms our heart rate and breathing, and relaxes us. Simply seeing green is restorative, but even better, trees release chemicals into the air that our brain is hardwired to respond to: a
Japanese researcher sprayed pine aerosols into a hospital nursery, and the blood pressure of newborn infants lowered immediately. They’ve never even been in a forest before, and their bodies responded to pine scent.
What is equally clear is that not all people have access to greenspaces like the Schuylkill Center. Studies also show that parks are a public–health benefit to the neighborhoods near them—an entire neighborhood is healthier when a park is close by. No park nearby, and the community suffers. Continue reading