-In everything from pop culture to advertising to environmentalist slogans, we often hear that we need to save the environment -or save the planet.

-Save the planet.

-Save the planet.

-Save the planet.

-Save our planet.

-We got to save this planet.

We're being stupid.

-This idea portrays the natural world as.. separate from the human world, as if the environment is everything on the planet that isn't human and that humans don't make.

Here's the problem.

All too often, this way of thinking prevents us from seeing how we live inside of environments.

It allows us to distance ourselves from our responsibility to the places where people live.

If we really want to save the planet, then we need to rethink how we're part of it.

Take a look at California's Six Rivers National Forest.

For much of the 20th century, mainstream Americans defined this land as a pristine wilderness that people could visit to commune with the natural world.

-We live in a truly beautiful land, which we must preserve for those who come after us.

-However, this forest didn't grow to look like this all ..

It's a product of thousands of years of tending and cultural burning by the indigenous peoples who inhabit it.

-Fires family.

Fire warms our homes.

It cooks our food.

It protects our land.

It restores our environment.

-These burnings open up space in the canopy and allow floor vegetation to grow for basket weaving and food.

The people who live here change and manage their environments to eat, build, shelter, and move around, but humans aren't the only living things that change their environments.

-Hearing a lot about next year is the wolf in the West.

That's the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.

-In 1995, after decades of absence due to overhunting, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, and they had a huge effect on the landscape.

-Canis Lupus is making a new debut.

-They called the populations of deer, shifting the behavior of large grazers.

This allowed forests to regrow and biodiversity to flourish.

-Aspen and cottonwood trees are again growing tall.

Small beaver dams have reappeared, and the ponds behind them allow trout to flourish.

-Soil erosion decreased, rivers, channels, and pools changed flow and form completely reshaping the geography and microclimate of the park.

This isn't unique to Yellowstone and its wolves or the indigenous peoples of Six Rivers National Forest.

This happens on every inch of the planet.

Every living thing in our world changes environments to eat, drink, and live.

The question isn't whether we should change environments.

It's how we change them.

Humans are experts at manipulating their environments, channeling rivers to build irrigation systems, mining mountainsides to power and build our homes, phones, and cars.

Look around you, and everything you see is a product of changing environments.

Here in this studio in Los Angeles, California, the power that turns on our lights comes from transforming river flows, fossil fuels, and the sun's rays into energy.

The light and cameras and walls are all made out of metals and materials dug out of the ground that were processed at a factory, all products of vast environmental changes.

It begs the question then, why do so many people fail to see the environment in our studio or our offices or clothes, or cars, or kitchens?

The separation between the human world and the natural world is a long-standing tradition in Western culture.

Many of us are taught to see nature as a more authentic world out there and escape from the chaos of modern life.

Meanwhile, we ignore how we change our environments in here.

For example, in the first decades of the modern environmentalist .. much of the work focused on saving a pristine untouched wilderness instead of addressing pollution in urban areas.

All this was done without the consideration that for millennia people had managed, changed, and lived in these lands, including our national parks.

How do we change environments now with ongoing deforestation, fossil fuel burning, industrial agriculture, and the increasing impacts of climate change?

We are not changing environments well.

-Their research shows rich countries are doing far more to destroy the planet than p.. and greenhouse gas emissions, they are increasing as well.

The report warns that going beyond certain irreversible climate tipping points could lead to large areas in which people won't be able to live.

-To produce the goods we use to live in a modern world, industries use the cheapest methods of production to pursue the highest profits.

Cheap labor and highly toxic processes make everything in our lives.

These industries dump their waste and emissions in marginalized communities.

-US government data show air pollution and rates of cancer are well above the national average, despite claims to the contrary from the state of Louisiana.

-From the urban sprawl of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to a level the federal government considers unacceptable.

-Meanwhile, in places like the Six Rivers National Forest, people fail to see this landscape as the product of humans changing environments sustainably to provide their needs and wants, so they designated it as an untouchable protective wilderness which has had negative environmental consequences.

-When we started to suppress fire, those fuels that had been kept low by frequent fire started to build up.

-The forests in many national preserves like this one, once maintained in a healthy and cyclical state of change through cultural burning, became too dense.

This makes them more susceptible to frequent and uncontrollable forest fires.

-This July was the hottest ever recorded -in California's history.

-There are dozens of fires burning -all across northern California.

-Blanketing in the Bay A.. -with unhealthy air.

-California's wildfires -are record-breaking and relentless.

-All of them starting at once during the recent lightning storm.

-Earth observation program Copernicus said 2023 was the hottest year record.. -Now in Six Rivers, tribes work with the Forest Service to bring fire back.

-Protect all of these people who've come here from all over the country to help us burn and to restore our land.

We're going to pass it on to our indigenous brothers and sisters so that they may lay fire on the land also.

-The idea of the environment as a world apart from humans still holds a lot of power.

It shapes what we do and don't do about climate change, pollution, and everyone who's affected.

If we want to truly save the planet, we have to understand that our lives are foundationally environmental.

We have to think about how we change our environments and how to do it better, more equitably, more sustainably in here for the benefit and well-being of us all.

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