Comment: Thanks for this very interesting TED-talk

You write: "Nature will teach us all we need to know to return to a sustainable path of existence on this planet... if we would just accept our role as an ardent student."

I will say to these words: AMEN!

These words of yours express in a nutshell the method of my philosophical thinking in my PhD, if you just change the word 'nature' to 'breathing'.

By the way are you familiar of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's book: "Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France"? In this book Merleau-Ponty (my favorite philosopher) opens his philosophy of Nature. In this book one of my favorite lines says: "perception teaches us an ontology that it alone can reveal to us." In a certain way this Merleau-Ponty's phrase states your statement in its own philosophical language as for Merleau-Ponty 'perception' is the nature within us and without us. Perception is not a thing in the nature, it is the very opening of the Nature itself.