Environmental writing and criticism have tended to stress the value of local knowledges and experience, which are often perceived as inherently resisting processes within modernity that separate human beings from direct, sensuous apprehension of their environment. More recently, however, writers such as Ursula Heise have begun to argue for a more ‘cosmopolitan’ form of consciousness in the modern world, thoughtfully engaged with modes of apprehending environmental connectivity (particularly within the new media) that have a global reach.