I was taking a jog around my university this morning and it was amazing that I couldn’t take a jog for more than 2 minutes before yet another monstrous vehicle sped beside me, spewing noxious, choking fumes into my face.

It was horrible, but as I already got out of bed early to take a run round school, I persisted.

It happened again and again – the cars sped by with drivers wearing glazed expressions on their sullen faces, heedlessly ignorant of the damage they’re causing.

Then it occurred to me.

The reason that my generation doesn’t care about our environment as much as we should is because we’ve always been in the car, and not the one jogging behind it.

I hate to admit it, but we’re a sheltered lot. We grew up in the safe confines of our air-conditioned homes, told to keep away from muddy playgrounds, told not to get grass stains on our white shirts and encouraged to run in comfortable indoor gyms.

We’re happily sitting inside the cabin of the car, inside the safety of our artificial environments, that we close our eyes to the threat we pose to our very own way of life.

Our Earth is of a finite size, a fixed volume, and there is only so much poisons, so much damage that she can take, so get to know her. Get to know what it feels like jogging on a beautiful morning and have the tranquility destroyed by yet another big, noisy bus. Get to know what it feels like swimming in a clear sea when an oil spill turns the waters sticky, smelly and black.

Our home.

Only my getting to appreciate our environment will be grow to become more environmentally conscious human beings. If we don’t see the beauty of what we are unwittingly destroying, all the Earth hours that we are going to have won’t change a thing.