NEW YORK (CBS)  -- LOSING TOUCH WITH NATURE.

One reason given for the growing child obesity problem in this country is that kids aren't running and playing outdoors as much as kids used to. They're too tempted by the lure of the great indoors: their TVs, their MySpace pages, and their Wii's.

Well, as it turns out, so are their parents. The online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that camping, fishing and visits to parks are all declining in a shift away from nature-based recreation.

The authors say this has profound implications, not only for us and our wellbeing --- physically, mentally and psychologically --- but also for the value we place on parks, conservation and the American wilderness.

By studying and counting visits to national and state parks and the number of hunting and fishing licenses, co-authors Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic documented a drop of as much as 25% in various types of outdoor recreation, both in the U.S. and in Japan.

What they call "videophilia" --- especially among children --- has far reaching personal consequences. They say it's been shown to cause obesity, attention disorders and poor academic performance. In addition, they say all the time spent indoors has crucial implications for conservation efforts.

Pergams and Zaradic write that this trend coincides with the rapid growth of video games. Fishing, for example, peaked in 1981 --- then declined 25% by 2005. National Park visits peaked in 1987 and dropped 23% by 2006.

The research was funded by the Nature Conservancy, which worries that people obsessed with video experiences will no longer be able to relate to actual mountains, lakes and trees.

Well, to each his own ... but while the rest of you get a pixel tan this summer, I plan to head to Glacier National Park for a week, because there are just some things even a high-def display can't quite capture.

LURING FISH INTO CATCHING THEMSELVES.

The Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov famously discovered that he could develop conditioned reflexes in dogs. He could make them salivate at the sound of a bell.

And now, at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, researchers are doing essentially the same thing with fish --- testing a plan to train sea bass to catch themselves by swimming into a net, on cue...

"It takes a concerted training effort of a few weeks with daily sound cues --- and then a reward by feeding --- to get fish trained to this acoustic training regime," said Scott Lindell, the project leader at Woods Hole.

"We are offering perhaps a new way to selectively harvest hatchery-raised fish that have been released to the wild environment. The principal benefits of that is that it would relieve pressure on wild stocks, while still offering opportunity to keep fishermen employed," Lindell added.

Hatchery fish trained to return to captivity on a sound cue --- it's a project at Woods Hole, underwritten by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Fish can be trained. The next question is: how long can they retain that memory?" said Andy Lazur, an aquaculture specialist with NOAA, who aims to find out.

"The sound of the mechanical device that they know is going to deliver feed --- they will, you know, migrate to that sound," Lazur added.

Fish hatcheries might be a little skeptical at first, until they understand the potential.

"After the fish were to be fed and reach market size, then they could be recaptured by this net," said Lazur.

That's right! Fish trained to swim into a net on cue!

Scott Lindell says it's a way to raise hatchery fish in open water, and still get them back.

"Fishermen cooperatives could jointly contract or raise hatchery fish themselves --- stock them in areas where fishing has depleted local stocks, where there's still plenty of natural food for the fish to forage on --- and make a living out of it," Lindell said.

Sometimes, I wonder if Pavlov had any idea what he was starting...

AL GORE'S MOONSHOT CHALLENGE ON ENERGY.

"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change," Al Gore had said.

Al Gore says the time has come for the nation that took up the challenge to land a man on the Moon to take up a new ten-year challenge.

"...To commit to producing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources within ten years," said Gore.

Al Gore's critics say to that replace the nation's entire electrical supply with 100% renewable electricity in ten years is impossible. He says it's not only possible, but it would be economically stupid not to do it.

"The way to bring gasoline prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of one dollar per gallon gasoline," he said.

Yes, solar cells are expensive now. But unlike oil, since sunshine is free, the economics are on our side...

"When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cell increases, the price often comes down," Gore said.

He says it would drop enough that solar energy alone could meet 100% of the demand for electricity --- but even if it can't, there's a Plan B.

"Enough wind power blows through the Midwest Corridor every day to also meet 100% of U.S. electricity demand," Gore said.

And so, he would spend up to three trillion dollars over ten years --- money raised from taxes on oil, gas and coal --- to make solar cells cheap, and to link thousands of wind turbines in the wide-open red states to utility poles in the urbanized blue states.

He's determined to make this bipartisan, but I also detected a hint of "with us or against us..."

"Those who, for whatever reason, to do their part in such times must either be persuaded to join the effort --- or be asked step aside," Gore said.

Hey, if that sounds a little scary to you, imagine how OPEC feels. In ten years, they'll have to take their oil and drizzle it on their waffles.

CATCHING OUR BREATH AS OIL PRICES EASE A BIT.

Oil under $130 a barrel? Who thought it could happen so quickly, and who thought the day would come when $130 a barrel would sound like a bargain?

For two days now, the stock market has spiked because of dropping oil prices. Why are oil prices dropping?

"People are reacting to the high price. They're just not using the gasoline," said Ray Carbone, oil trader.

Yep, oil trader Ray Carbone --- confirming what no one thought was possible: that Americans could get by on less gas.

"If it seeps into those emerging markets --- namely, China, India --- then we're going to see a collapse in demand," Carbone said.

And that would really scare any speculator who was betting that oil was headed to $200 a barrel. CBS News Business Correspondent Anthony Mason says demand for oil in the U.S. has declined for 12 weeks straight, and is now 5% below last year.

"We may see oil get near $120 bucks, if this momentum continues. But there are a lot of other questions out there --- and it could bounce back as well if we get a sign that suddenly, demand is growing somewhere," Mason said.

$120 bucks, unless there's a sign that demand is growing somewhere. And you know where that somewhere is likely to be: here. We're still the world's biggest economy, and so what we do will determine what happens next.

Gas could very possibly go back below $4, maybe down to $3.75. And that will feel like a bargain, even though a year ago you would have laughed at the idea of $3.75 gas being a bargain. But if everybody jumps back into their cars to drive two blocks for a donut, we're back where we started.

But we are not going to do that, are we? Because we are smart enough to realize that $3.75 is every bit the ripoff that $4.25 is. And if we do that --- why then, the price could stay very low indeed.

Just remember what your father used to tell you at Christmas: every time you save a gallon of gas, a speculator who bet on $200 oil eats peanut butter and jelly for lunch.