I've been thinking about this a lot recently, wondering why the majority of people seem so ignorant of the way their lives are contributing to the destruction of our eco-system. Many city-dwellers are quite happy to drop litter everywhere and seemingly have no respect for the environment in which they live. Parents drive their children less than a mile to school, we over-consume and waste in almost every aspect of our lives.

And I believe that it is mostly down to being isolated from nature. Before the industrial revolution, huge numbers of the population were required to work the land, to produce the food we ate. People generally treated the land with respect, because why would you intentionally destroy your food supply?

Once the industrial revolution came along, we started poisoning the landscape and ourselves, but more importantly, fewer people lived and worked in the countryside. As we became more and more detached from the world that supports us, we became less and less respectful.

The second part of this is the rise of globalisation, supermarkets and mass-consumption. Before the supermarkets came along, you bought your food, fresh, from local shops. You still had some idea of where that food had come from and how it was produced. Now, everything is packaged and available 24-hours a day. It's frightening how many people have no idea that milk cows from cows, or how bread is made. As far as they are concerned, it comes from the supermarket, not from a farm. Sure, they may have a vague notion that farms exist, but they don't really understand how they work.

Society has also become more selfish. Communities no longer exist, it's every person for themself. If we don't even care about each other any more, why are we going to care about some wildlife?

As someone who grew up in a rural community in the 70s, I'm disgusted by the amount of littering, fly-tipping and pollution, in the city. We treat our streets like rubbish tips and no-one seems to give a fuck about it.