How do children reason about environmental problems? Are there universal features in children’s environmental conceptions and values? How important is it that children and young adults-like the Portuguese student above who remembers having seen a dolphin in the Rio Tejo experience natural wonders? Finally, what happens to children’s environmental commitments and sensibilities when they grow up in environmentally degraded conditions?
This chapter reports on the results of five studies that the author and various colleagues conducted. In these studies, children were interviewed in diverse locations about their environmental moral conceptions and values. The author also seeks to explicate two ideas that frame his theoretical approach to investigating children’s affiliations with nature–structure and development. Finally, the author builds on the structural-developmental framework and his research findings to articulate what may be one of the most pressing and unrecognized problems of the current age—the problem of environmental generational amnesia.