David Holahan

The most compelling argument against environmental ennui and illiteracy is that spaceship earth is in trouble. If more of us don’t appreciate and understand it better, our planet will continue to decline at an alarming pace. We have long abused it to feather our own nests at the expense of other creatures we share the planet with. But our day is coming —if not our children’s, then our grandchildren’s— when our species, too, will be squarely in the crosshairs of a failing global ecosystem. We Americans have taken a giant step in the wrong direction by electing a president who loves fossil fuels, hates wind power and pollution regulations, and whose idea of a natural habitat is a golf course.

What, one wonders, would Mark Twain make of Donald Trump? Twain was not known for political punditry, but late in his life he acquired a visceral aversion to President Theodore Roosevelt, who was the showy egoist of his era. Indeed, the novelist labeled the Rough Rider “far and away the worst President we have ever had” and “the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War.”

The National Audubon Society, among others, has reported that some common bird populations are down by more than 50 to 80 percent from their numbers in the 1960s. It is hard to appreciate things we don’t see. Warblers can cope with a harsh winter, but one wonders if they will survive us.