LOOK around. Chances are, wherever you are, nature surrounds you. Even if you are shut up indoors reading this on a tiny screen, nature has crept into the room. It is the air you breathe, the water you drink.
There are few things as vital as the environment.
Yet there are few things as neglected as our country's ecosystem.
Today the world observes the UN's International Mother Earth Day. There is little to celebrate and much to cause alarm.
The goal of limiting climate heating to 1.5 degrees C, set by world leaders in Paris in 2015, is in tatters. Harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 were the highest in human history. High-emitting governments and corporations are turning a blind eye and adding fuel to the fire. According to UN Secretary General António Guterres, we are on a fast track to disaster.
'This is not fiction or exaggeration,' Mr Guterres said earlier this month. 'It is what science tells us.'
This country is positioned as a small-island state with much to lose from climate catastrophe, particularly given our position within the economic ecology of Caricom.
And yet our hands are not clean. We have benefitted, over decades, from a situation in which multinational corporations have harvested significant petrochemical revenues thanks to practices directly tied to the current situation.
Instead of making recompense for this by diverting Treasury funds into meaningful ventures that could have aided sustainability, better regulation and management of land use, and shifting consumer habits, we have seemingly floundered from project to project, soundbite to soundbite, press release to press release.
And now we turn to the polluters to help kick-start the green agenda.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Management Authority (EMA)'s work is not respected, but rendered merely bureaucratic.
The recent Easter holidays underlined how vital the EMA's functions are or should be. Thousands enjoyed camping, hiking, beach-going and the outdoors.
Planning Minister Pennelope Beckles (who years ago held the post of Minister of the Environment, back when that portfolio still existed as a separate entity), urged citizens to be unselfish when it comes to our natural resources.
'Future generations have the right to enjoy and partake in the benefits of a healthy environment,' she said.
But it's not just individual habits that matter. Governments must stop paying mere lip service to the green agenda.
The recent landfill fires that endangered so many were like a symbolic cry for help from Mother Earth herself.
We've been good at gestures, some temporary, such as banning straws, abolishing plastic grocery bags and making plans for electric cars. Yet we are literally choking on fumes, our land management is in tatters.
Ironically, our lower emissions goals might inadvertently be aided by recent gas-price increases.
But that is hardly a drop in the stormy oceans rising because of global warming.
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