From pipelines to tar sands, green economics to global warming, crazy weather to melting ice caps, the environment has remained on everyone's mind despite global financial meltdowns and growing anti-science politics.
People care. They care about the future. And they care about the world their children - and their children's children - will live in.
The current generations are living with a huge responsibility.
Some aspects of our environment are teetering on the edge. That's where the complexity of environmental issues kicks in: on the edge of what?
And on which edge are we teetering? In the 1990s, the world recognized and addressed the breakdown of the planet's life-sustaining ozone layer.
The problem was clarified, and more importantly, direct and immediate solutions were identified.
The ozone layer isn't in the kind of shape we'd like it to be, but through a concerted effort of humanity - albeit a humanity that created the problem in the first place - it has survived.
General deterioration of the environment is a far more complex, perhaps even ambiguous, problem.
There are so many factors that may be involved in environmental changes that appear to be taking hold of the planet that even the vast majority of scientists who agree that humanity must be mobilized immediately for the sake of its own survival are having trouble identifying how best to tackle the problems, and which aspects of the possible solutions are most crucial.
It's easy to feel a sense of being overwhelmed at the enormity of it.
But the fact that thousands of B.C. residents cared enough to stage a protest Monday in Victoria against a pipeline many believe threatens our environment shows people care, and when people care, change can happen.
