The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained.

—Henry Beston

The just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam

—William Blake

The way I read him, C. S. Lewis was a tree-hugger. He was a don at Oxford and very dignified, so he probably skipped the tie-dye and the patchouli incense, but his Chronicles of Narnia, and especially Prince Caspian, suggest that he was as green as any modern day eco-freak. Prince Caspian can be seen as the fantasy equivalent of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: it shows us that we human beings can become more responsible citizens of the planet Earth, if only we face the facts about the effects we have on our environment and let ourselves get a little closer to Nature.

Like many people these days, I’m concerned about the impact humans are having on the planet. Every day brings some new warning about global warming or other effects of pollution caused by over-development. But my concern isn’t new. When I was nine, I was already on the lookout for litterbugs and was an avid consumer of Owl Magazine and National Geographic. My favorite TV shows were Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness and David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things. I was fascinated with the magnificent variety of life on earth, but was also aware of how many creatures were becoming extinct  …