Losing It

I’ve visited about a dozen U.S. national parks over the years. If I had to pick one I considered to be the most memorable, it would be Sequoia National Park in California. I was sad to read an article yesterday by a park ranger, who reported that these majestic trees are dying; enchanting forests are withering: “‘Giant sequoias are so good at surviving that you almost never see a dead standing sequoia’, I used to tell visitors,” he wrote. “‘They keep living and growing for thousands of years, until they finally get too top-heavy for their shallow root systems to support. Then they topple over.’ I don’t say that anymore.”

I read that 2020 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. The Great Barrier Reef incurred terrible bleaching this year. We’re losing the natural world. It will take a revolution of human desires to save much of it.