This year’s theme for World Environment Day is about reconnecting with Nature: go outside and enjoy Nature, value Nature, and learn about the importance of Nature in our lives and livelihoods.
We tend to take Nature, natural resources and nature’s services for granted. It can become easy to forget and under-appreciate the opportunities that Nature provides us as our lives become increasing enclosed in building and and encased in vehicles. Most of the time we do not think about processes that provide us with the fundamental components of life – clean air, food, and water. We lose sight of our interactions and interdependencies with the planet.
We forget that all business are reliant, in varying degrees, upon natural resources. Your computer, your phone, and other electronic devices all need copper, gold, petroleum, and other earth-sourced materials in their production. In reality, there is no economy without an ecology. So the only way to have a healthy long-term economy is to have it synchronized and balanced with the long-term ecological systems of the planet.
Another reason to reconnect with Nature is that
Earth Overshoot Day for 2017 is August 2nd.
That is the day on which our rate of harvesting the environment and the capacity of the environment to sequester our CO2 emissions surpass what the ecological systems and natural services of the planet can provide in 1(one) year without damaging the Earth’s capability to regenerate and maintain its life support systems.
Unfortunately there will still be 152 days left in the year. So we are going to have to borrow (really steal) 152 days worth of resources from our children’s and grandchildren’s future. In 2016, Earth Overshoot Day was August 8th. As such, we are continuing our habit of taking from future generations at an ever-increasing rate.
We now need 1.7 Earths to meet our annual demands on the ecosystems of our planet.
So yes, as the theme of World Environment Day implies and implores, we need, we must, reconnect with Nature, for that is the path to a future we would want and would want our heirs to inherit.
Tim