To cleanse your palate after this heavy dose of nostalgic nature worship, try Timothy Morton's Ecology Without Nature or The Ecological Thought.
> College students are testing about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago.
That's terrifying, if true.
I'd have to see a proper source for this. If it is actually true, there could be all sorts of explanations, like college being more competitive, expensive and harder to get into.
Or a lot of things not connected to college at all.
The author might have been referring to this study: