You can be easily feel disconnected from nature – especially if, like more than half of the World’s population, you live in a city.

In a city food may seem to appear magically in grocery stores and fresh water comes out of a tap.

It is important to remember that without intact natural areas elsewhere, cities could not exist.

Forests help counterbalance the air pollution of cities, absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

Rivers and lakes provide the water that urban residents use every day.

Our food comes from farmland that must maintain healthy soils so it can continue to support a growing population.

Some people live on this Earth as if they have another planet set up somewhere in the universe that they plan to move to once this one gets too filled with litter.

Some people live on this Earth carrying on their lives believing that plants and animals are theirs for the taking.

And some people live on this Earth believing it is their mission in life to live in harmony with all living creatures and to leave the planet a little bit of a better place than it was when they got here.

Start to identify yourself with the last grouping, living each day like it’s Earth Day and treating all creatures around us with due respect and care.

More than ever this mindset is necessary to protect the planet from the many destructive practices humans have developed.