SCB: Screen vs. green
I hesitate to write this next item, as it may well make you turn off your computer and put on your hiking boots. Patricia Zaradic of the University of Illinois has found an eerily tight correlation between a decline in attendance at US National Parks since 1987 and the rise of electronic entertainment: movie rentals, video games, and our friend the internet. Oil prices fit well too. So, although it is just a correlation, one can easily make up a story about a nation of people who can't afford to drive to parks, who are turning away from nature and towards screens.
Like many of the findings being presented here, this is pretty depressing news. Nature is being whittled away and no one cares much, because, well, we can always use computers to generate images of nature if we need them. The silver lining, I guess, is that if fewer people are going to National Parks, they are bound to be less crowded.