Far too frequently an issue comes along that reminds us of the immense impact we are having on the natural environment that supports us, and every living thing.
Far too many still mistakenly believe this plentiful world will always be here to sustain us no matter how we mistreat Mother Nature.
An issue being played out to the west of Newcastle vividly shows how our natural environment is facing a "death by a thousand cuts".
Most of Newcastle's urban development is now to the west, with the land between Wallsend to Minmi being progressively cleared for housing.
This outer urban growth has now reached the stage where only one site, just 26 hectares, remains in an Environmental Protection Zone. All the rest is developed, or being developed.
For 21 years, attempts to rezone this site have resulted in it being refused by four different elected councils, a state planning panel and the very state Planning Department that now wants it rezoned and developed.
In the same 21 years there has been a sustained parallel effort to protect this bushland site because it forms the last possible biodiversity connection between the state-owned regional park and the Hunter Estuary Wetlands Nation Park, which is part of the Stockton to Watagans Regional Biodiversity Corridor.
Over the years that this connecting wildlife corridor has been debated by Newcastle council it has become a bipartisan issue, with Labor, Liberal, Greens and Independent councillors supporting the corridor.
When presented with the facts, councillors have changed their mind and voted for the corridor.
One striking example is the councillor who moved the motion to rezone 505 Minmi Road, Fletcher, in 2012, but then changed his mind and voted against the rezoning in 2016.
Three years ago, Newcastle council made representation to the state government to have this important connection given National Parks protection, and there was a receptive response from the-then environment minister, but the developer would not sell.
The then-planning minister decided unilaterally to place this site in a "Housing Release Area" using the questionable decision of one state planning panel, which received only one-sided briefings from the "developer" and, at the time, pro-development council officers, with the public totally excluded.
A month later, the state government, without explanation, revoked the duly elected Newcastle council's powers to decide on this very controversial rezoning.
While these autocratic decisions were being made one and a half years ago, this pre-emptive rezoning had not even been put on public exhibition, this happened only last month.
But the decisions already made by the state government meant that the only option available for comment was the site's rezoning and development, with the long-fought-for wildlife corridor not even allowed to be considered.
What's more bizarre is that comment was allowed on the biodiversity values of any trees left among the houses.
Also, state planning laws can be used to restrict public access to the public submissions, and even the number of submissions received may be withheld.
This now suburbanised area is the water catchment for the southern end of Hexham Swamp (wetlands) but the terrain surrounding this particular site is such that, no matter how hard it rains, polluted urban stormwater cannot flow onto this site.
So, it would be the only site in the catchment that discharges natural rainwater into the wetlands - but this state government seems determined to destroy the lot.
In this time of a severe government-created housing shortage, a short-term political decision is set to lead to the sacrifice of the last bushland wildlife corridor on the altar of expediency.
But this corridor's development would not even scratch the surface of this problem because, believe it or not, there are only 110 houses involved.
Heaven spare us.
