Q&A: Visiting professor John Francis says humanity is the environment

An oil spill off the shore of San Francisco in 1971 sent John Francis on a journey that led him, four decades later, to the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is leading graduate students in rethinking what the environmental movement is all about. On the way, he lived without speaking for 17 years, walked across America, and came to view the environment in a holistic way that he says is the future of the movement — and the planet.