Video | Earth Day is Every Day

We live in difficult times. There are so many reasons for me to feel fearful and overwhelmed every day. I feel depressed sometimes. But the thing that has helped me through it all is my relationship with nature. Trees are amazing! I like to think of trees as this terraforming machine that pulls energy from our favorite star, called the sun, and turns that energy into all kinds of things that we use.

Let’s start with soil! Trees and plants, they actually make soil. We use that soil to grow plants that we eat, and plants that we feed to other things that we eat. We can look to plants and trees as our food source.

Let’s think about fuel. Where does fuel come from? All the fossil fuels come from the remains of dead plants from the carboniferous period. We use fuel for electricity, for industry, for transportation. It’s what makes our economy go around. Thanks, trees.

Then we’ve got plastics. All plastic is made from petroleum. Ergo, plastic comes from trees. We also have building materials. We use wood to build; we also use concrete and asphalt to build. And those two products need fuel to be produced.

Then we have textiles. All of our textiles come from plants or things that eat plants, such as sheep. And then let’s not forget our very health relies on plants. Most of our medicines come directly or indirectly from plants. For example, Taxol, which is something we use for chemotherapy, comes from the bark of a tree.

So I want you to stop… I want you to look around. Look at each object. How many of those objects come from plants? I bet it’s more than you thought.

Every day is Earth Day for me. I find so much joy and peace and beauty being in nature. I am so grateful to experience life on this beautiful planet.