Earth Day is a funny idea. It doesn’t take a national holiday to remind ourselves of the homes we live in or the roads we drive on. This is because in our modern world, many of these inventions have replaced the environment in our minds. For many reasons, we are more in touch with the padded walls of modern life than the earth it all sprouted from. U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-RI) originally created the holiday in response to the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969. It marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement and was meant to draw attention to the deteriorating impacts human activity has had on the planet.

Even with the negative consequences that come along with this disconnect, there are two sides to every coin. Without the advent of cheap energy, we would probably not have the Internet, globalization or many of the other widespread mechanisms for enlightenment and progress that have emerged in recent decades. Our species has molded a once harsh and unaccommodating world into a nurturing platform for global economies to thrive on. And we have become so good at dominating the natural world that the largest barriers standing between ourselves and the resources we desire are usually political. We have our supplies on tap.

In this way, the environment has really become an external idea. Whether its value to us is aesthetic or economic, it is always “out there.” And while the occasional natural disaster challenges this assumption, we have largely gotten away with pulling through such events.

But now, the same science that starts our engines and turns on the lights is telling a different story. When billions of individuals consume enough resources to pole-vault their entire species onto what seems to be a path to growth and progress, there is no longer any utility in a segregated view of the environment. At our rates of consumption, we have changed the ecology of the planet in fundamental ways.

With the current annual rate of species lost estimated to be at least 1,000 percent higher than it should be, many reputable scientists have acknowledged that we may be the cause of the sixth and latest mass extinction in the planet’s history. This is not bad just because the rainforests and coral reefs that are disappearing are “pretty” (which they are). Ultimately, it is bad news for us.

What the environmentalists forgot to add is that “environmentalism” is really about protecting humans. We are playing Jenga with the natural world. There is no telling which extinction will send entire ecosystems crashing down, but no amount of money will be able to build things back up once that does happen. With few exceptions, our economies would reach the same fate through this outcome. There is utility now in seeing the environment for what it really is: an interconnected system made up of millions of species, each with specialized roles that are crucial for the whole.

It would be a shame if our talent for such incredible progress was also our undoing. Fortunately, this argument has been made thousands of times before, and will likely continue to be heard. People are learning to look at the world differently, and a holiday like Earth Day is evidence of that. In the spirit of change, let’s do our best to carry its message with us beyond today.