Mother nature has provided only so much in areas like water, trees, flowers, forests, soils, rivers, oceans, wetlands, animals, birdlife and fish.

As humans we are putting ourselves and others in a dangerous position where we could destroy all life on Earth. At present globally we deforest around ten million hectares of forest every year. Since European settlement in Australia, approximately 80% of Koala habitats have been decimated.

The planet is overpopulated and as humans we dump huge amounts of waste, much of it going into waterways and oceans, the continuing use of fuel powered vehicles is polluting the environment. Rivers are also drying up due to over use of water and climate change.

The seemingly insatiable human tendency to consume is also changing the planet and the life on it - for the worse.

As humans, do we truly understand where nature has come from and will we ever truly show any respect for it? Can we better connect with mother nature and change our behaviour?

A few decades ago, a song about the destruction of
the countryside for super highways and urban sprawl
became a hit. It was titled, "Tar and Cement."

It does suggest that we should be careful of leaving
anything worthwhile before it is too late.

"The town I came from was quiet and small
we played in the meadows where the grass grew so tall
In summer the lilacs would grow everywhere
the laughter of children would float in the air

As grew older I had to roam
Far from my family, far from my home
Into the city, where lives can be spent
lost in the shadows of tar and cement

And every night I'd sit all alone and learn
what loneliness meant
up in my rented room above the world
of tar and cement

Each day I'd wake up and look at the sky
think of the meadows where I used to lie
then I'd remember all of that's gone
You're in the city, you'd better push on
get what you came for, before its too late
get what you came for, the meadows can wait

Many years later, tired at last
I headed for home to look for the past
I looked for the meadows, there wasn't a trace
Six lanes of highway had taken place
where were the lilacs and all that they meant
nothing but acres of tar and cement..."

Can humans better connect with mother nature?

Humans are having a hard time changing habits
and routines. It will take a devastating
large-scale incident to change the way humans treat
their planet. At present we have deforestation, we
have illegal trading of animals, poaching, polluted
rivers and oceans, the extinction of species, and
the list goes on. Some rivers are so polluted - they
catch fire.

Progress in curtailing our destruction of nature will
come about not by humans triumphing over nature but
through our collective realization that the survival
of our species depends on how effectively we keep
human nature in check and heed Mother Nature's
warnings.

COVID - 19 has forced cities to lockdown, industries to
halt, and families to shelter in place. This would be a
good time for us to think about what needs to be done
to try to save our planet and connect with nature instead
of taking part in the planet's destruction.

There's small acts like turning off lights we aren't using,
unplugging technology, taking shorter showers, and so on.
Every bit helps.

I wonder who started the idea that nature is female. The same person who decided to call ships 'she', possibly. Both are ITS.

Up until the ratbags and carpet-baggers started chuntering on about man made climate change, nature, the environment, was fine. There had never been a better time to be a human, either. A huge drop in poverty with increased prosperity - all because of cheap energy from fossil fuels. Just look at China.

Now though, it has all come to a grinding halt: because of this ridiculous obsession with 'nature', the poorest countries - e.g those on the African continent and parts of Asia - are going to miss out. Even in countries like Australia, the cost of living is soaring because of this 'nature' BS - particularly the BS that we can survive, even flourish, in a world driven by wind and sun beams.

That "80% of Koala habitats have been decimated" is simply wrong. There are now more koalas in Australia than there were at the time of white settlement. It took them 15 years to find one. (Vic Jurkis, "The Great Koala 'Extinction' That Never Happens").

These regular cries of 'Extinction'! are as crooked as man-made climate change scam, and the lies about the Great Barrier Reef (which has disappeared and returned 60 times in the last 3 million years). It's all about government grants.

As for global 'deforestation', well forests are cleared to grow food, and forests might not be the holy of holies some people prattle on about. The Amazon rainforest, for instance.

Amazon rainforests are 'The Lungs of the World' and a major source of the world’s oxygen supply plus a large carbon sink absorbing 25% of CO2 (actually 5% ) taken up by forests around the world every year it is claimed.

"Amazon plants consume about 60% of the oxygen they produce in respiration. Microbes, which break down the forest biomass, consume the other 40%. The net contribution of the Amazon ecosystem to the world's oxygen is effectively zero". (Ian Plimer, "Green Murder").

Don't worry Nathan in Australia we are converting that much open grazing land into rubbish scrub every year.

Nature has always required a break on it's rampaging, & we have let the brakes off. The Aborigines burned the place to somewhere suitable for human & animal habitation, but that is now going to pot. We can't put a fire through it as too many people have built among the gum trees. Many get burnt out by nature, & they complain if a graziers fire gets away & does the same.

Your type have managed to get the chemicals successful in taming nature a bit, banned, so now the garbage is taking over everywhere. Don't complain about the high cost of meat & veg, it is getting so expensive to produce the stuff only farm loving fools keep doing it.

The 10,000 acre paddock across the river from me used to be lovely open forest improved pasture. We loved training our eventers through it. It needed an aboriginal type fire through it every 4 years or so to keep it that way. The owners gave up, sick of the phone ringing off the hook with Johnny-come-lately tree changers complaining about the smoke. It is now useless scrub avoided by even the wallabys.

The quickest way to ruin any good country, let a greeny have any say in managing it.

Well Nathan, lots of assertions there with very few facts or support.

But its part of this whole Gaia worship movement that has overtaken so many these days. Effectively, as people lost their faith in the deity, any deity, they replaced it with faith in this anthropomorphised 'Mother Nature'.

Not only do they worship Gaia, they seek to remove man from Nature, even though man is the finest achievement of the forces of Nature.

As I said, Nathan is heavy on assertion but light on evidence. One such claim is...."we deforest around ten million hectares of forest every year".

This is simply wrong. Not even close. According to the 'Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN', in the last decade we have lost 470,000 ha of forest per year. And all of that is in South America and Africa. Forest area is increasing in Europe, Asia, the US and Australia.

This is the only testable claim is the post and its laughably wrong. Koalas aren't endangered. 'We' aren't polluting the rivers or ocean although some other nations are. Rivers aren't drying.