Man vs. Nature....Video Games Killing Environment?

Sitting on the couch and watching television with a beer or sitting at the computer updating my fantasy leagues are great. But spending time outdoors even in the winter is a must and I am not talking about shoveling the walks or hulling the trash threw the drifts.

I personally can't wait for summer to get here as it is cold where I am from. It hasn't stopped snowing in more than a week. But going sledding with the kids or hunting in the fall and winter with buddies is just too much to pass up. Fishing is a game of patience and Lord knows that I'm not the world foremost leader of the practice but I will be damned if those fish go unhooked. Even in the winter.

The summer brings much more opportunities to go outside and play. Long past, but surely missed, are the days when staying out until the street lights came on just wasn't enough. These days there's golfing, camping, boating and barbecuing till dusk and into the late night. I can't see how anyone would want to pass these things up.

But we must be. According to one study, people are spending more time indoors and it is impacting more than just our health. It is impacting the environment. The study points out that we due to our lack of interest in national parks and less nature-based recreation, we have much less interest in conservation. Here is some of the article by cnn.com

"By studying visits to national and state parks and the issuance of hunting and fishing licenses the researchers documented declines of between 18 percent and 25 percent in various types of outdoor recreation."

"The decline, found in both the United States and Japan, appears to have begun in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of rapid growth of video games, they said."

"For example, fishing peaked in 1981 and had declined 25 percent by 2005, the researchers found. Visits to national parks peaked in 1987 and dropped 23 percent by 2006, while hiking on the Appalachian Trial peaked in 2000 and was down 18 percent by 2005."

I see a weird difference in this study and one also published in 2005 by CSRwire on an article covering record breaking improvement by the Keep America Beautiful foundation.

"Across America, volunteers removed over 208 million pounds of litter and debris, an all-time record, and a 39 percent increase over 2004's total. Equally impressive is the dollar value of volunteer hours logged during the event. Great American Cleanup™ volunteers worked 7.85 million hours, which translates into a contribution of nearly $135 million in wages and significantly lessens the financial and organizational burden on local and state governments."

I don't know about cleaning up too much outside of my yard this summer, but I hope we figure out a way to keep the world a cleaner place. The last thing I want is to tee off through a pile of garbage. But that is beside the point. Get out and fire up that grill boys, even if it is covered in snow, and bring a friend!