Culture, Linguistics, and the Environment

I find it interesting how cultural diversity can also be helpful to the environment. The connection being that the more cultural diversity that there is the smaller carbon footprint you leave. Though I'm not exactly how that connection is made. Bower's talks about how important it is to have ecological intelligence, I don't know what they are saying when they talk about the lack of environmental intelligence in western culture. Many people seem to be pretty aware of their carbon footprint, but I guess as many people are aware of their carbon footprint, many are not. I'd like to discuss what exactly Environmental Intelligence means and how it is related to the western society. This article as a whole has left me relatively confused, and I hope that after some discussion it will become more clear to me what Bower actually means. I feel as if I understand this up to a point, but not enough to have a productive and eye opening conversation about it.