These days, in much of the West at least, everything is increasingly politicised. It is a shame, because it leads people to support things they wouldn’t naturally be in favour of, simply because of their unshakeable tribal affiliations to one political group or another. In terms of divisiveness and polarisation, politics seems to have snatched up the baton upon which religion has been losing its grip in an increasingly secular society.

On the political spectrum, concern for the state of the natural world has often been considered more of a hippy lefty-ish activity: the desire to “save” the planet a naive past-time, given that human progress is both inevitable and essential. Why human progress necessitates the wreaking of havoc on the natural environment, is not something that is ever satisfactorily justified – destruction is simply more cost-effective than preservation. Some have attempted to persuade us that the green movement is a conspiracy to enrich the enemies of capitalism, and to curtail our “rights”. Others have insisted that it is selfish to demand change, because it prevents developing nations from reaching the levels of wealth enjoyed in the West (at presumably the same levels of destruction): once the entire human race is wealthy “enough” everyone will be able to turn their attention from simple survival, to concern for the environment.

Given the greed of many humans, I suspect that in the unlikely event we reach such a point, there will be nothing much left to care about.

What they might say, if people like that ever had a mind to be honest, is that they actively choose turning a blind eye to the advancing ruination of their very own ecosystem: tomorrow has little meaning to those who are living it up today, be it in the grips of a political power trip, or drunk on the fumes of cold, hard cash.

As the voices of a concerned public have grown louder and more urgent, some reluctant progress has certainly been made.  But still we are all too frequently told by those who would have us believe that they are the grown-ups in this story, that we just don’t understand how the world works, that if the human machine is not permitted to continue along its path of wealth accumulation and infinite growth, the end result will somehow be far worse than an uninhabitable planet.

I would say that they have been rumbled. Too many have reached the conclusion that this discourse is nothing but a load of self-serving bollocks: the human impact is now unavoidably visible to the naked eye for anyone who cares to look further than their navel.

It has been calculated that only 23% of the world’s land mass can now be considered wilderness, with only a tiny 5% completely untouched by human interference. I don’t know about you, but I find that an utterly mind-boggling statistic given that we are only one species, out of billions.

In England, approximately 14.5% of our landmass is calculated still to be natural, compared to the 72.9% used for farming. Now of course some aspects of farming are compatible with wildlife, but other agricultural practices most certainly are not: crop spraying can be detrimental to insect life. Sheep are destructive grazers, especially when let loose on hillsides. The modern habit of replacing thinning hedges with fences deprives birds of vital habitat. Even cutting hedgerows (instead of laying them which makes them thicker, offering excellent cover) is often done too early, thereby destroying flowers and berries that would have otherwise provided much needed sustenance to birds and insects. Many farmers are actively working to make farming practices “greener” but the fact remains that on far too many levels, it is made impossible for them to turn a profit whilst being 100% supportive of our native wildlife.

Yet farmland still offers vastly much more to our beleaguered flora and fauna than the oozing urban sprawl and roadways various, stealthily chomping their way through our countryside. I am 43 years old, and the swathes of land I have seen disappear forever under tarmac and concrete, within only a 20ish-mile radius of my childhood home, is eye-opening.

Naturally people need homes, and an increasing number of people means an increasing number of homes. An increasing number of people also means an increasing number of vehicles, increasing infrastructure, increasing consumption… The crisis of human overpopulation is undoubtedly the biggest challenge we face, but should we ever be able to overcome the taboos and the denial in order to encourage small families as the norm, many other humanitarian and ecological issues could also be resolved.

In the meantime, I think there is a plethora of ways in which we, as individuals, as families and as communities, can work towards lessening our impact. It involves a change in consciousness that moves the need to be “green” from the periphery of our daily life, to the centre of it. It may sound onerous at first, but it also brings with it a sense of simplification, and liberation from some of the excesses of modern life.

It goes without saying that turning the clock back several hundred years is neither feasible nor desirable, but we can certainly begin our “re-wilding” by sitting down for a thorough and honest look at our lifestyle.

One of the first hurdles that needs to be overcome is convenience. So many aspects of modern life have been designed with convenience in mind, and yet so much that may be convenient to us, transpires to be the epitome of inconvenience to the ecosystem: from the inanity of individual plastic-wrapped slices of cheese, to yoghurt in pouches and shrink-wrapped cucumbers, fruit and veg shipped halfway across the world in defiance of the seasons, coffee pods, supermarkets, cheap flights, disposable everything, plastics, cheap electronics, artificial grass… the list grows longer the more you think about it.

And while it may not be possible to change all our choices and habits, a first step could simply be giving them a bit more thought: reminding ourselves that when it comes to convenience, just because we can, it doesn’t always mean we should.

I will leave you with two very pertinent quotes that are hanging in my local ecovillage:

“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste (or sustainable living) perfectly, we need a million people doing it imperfectly!”

and

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead