“The pandemic has laid another layer of sadness on top of several on-going concerns: (1) the current crumbling of the U.S.A. (2) the impact of climate change – specifically sea-level rise – and (3) the imminent economic crisis.  In trying to imagine that there is a sound reason why all these things are happening, I come up with an analogy. That is:  the earth is treating its infestation of people in the same the way that I treat the infestation in my house of carpenter ants. I try poison, sprays, swatting, tenting in attempts to slow or stop the inevitable damage to a house I improve and maintain. The earth drowns with tsunamis and flooding, swats with hurricanes, confuses with unpredictable temperatures and rainfall, poisons with a pandemic in order to get people to stop polluting the beauty it has been creating and nurturing for millennia.

The pandemic may not be the result of pollution, but its continuing spread results from the same indifference to consequences as pollution. For both global problems ways to improve them exist; unified global will power does not. Once, again, I am back to doing what I can in my own sphere and urging those around me to follow suit.”