Humans used to be embedded in the natural world, but today many of us live sedentary screen-based lives indoors, treating nature as something distant – to be watched on television or reached by flying elsewhere. In Unwilded, Alastair Humphreys examines the consequences of this disconnection and how it shapes our wellbeing, childhood, education, diets, lifestyles and the liveability of towns. On a wider scale, it explains why the climate and ecological emergencies feel abstract and beyond our individual responsibility. At the heart of the book is shifting baseline syndrome: from the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree to the extinction of possibly the most abundant bird species in history, it is the quiet process by which each generation accepts a depleted world as normal. Unwilded argues that change need not begin with grand gestures. It can begin with spending just fifteen minutes outdoors, paying attention. From nothing comes understanding, care and responsibility – and the beginning of rewilding ourselves and the world.
