By Jane Bauer

“Human exceptionalism is at the root of the ecological crisis”
Christine Webb, author of The Arrogant Ape

November is my favorite month of the year. It’s when the landscape bursts with color. Morning glories line the roads, their vines growing over everything, creating a blanket of purple flowers. Marigolds appear—electric orange spots that fill the air with a scent that will always transport you back to Day of the Dead if you’ve been fortunate enough to celebrate it, even once. The ocotillo trees become laden with small white flowers that almost instantly begin to dry, making the treetops look as though they’re draped in French lace from the 1930s. The brilliant green of the rainy season softens into a muted shade that cloaks the hillsides, while bursts of pink blossoms poke through. It is easy to be in awe of nature when it’s right outside your door.

As I watched a hummingbird dig into a hearty breakfast from an elegant orange heliconia, I thought about how every animal, plant, mushroom, and mineral serves a purpose in the ecosystem. This is a community of living organisms interacting together, benefiting one another. Bees feeding on nectar help flowers with pollination. Butterflies drift between hibiscus and bougainvillea, carrying pollen as they drink. Beneath the soil, fungi form unseen partnerships with roots, trading nutrients for sugars. And through the decomposition of fallen leaves and creatures, the earth renews itself again and again.

As a species, we have long prided ourselves on human exceptionalism. Most of our myths tell us we are at the top of the chain: the most intelligent, the ones who tamed fire, we with our opposable thumbs and insatiable egos. As the world gathers for variations on “No Kings” marches, I wonder if this sentiment will ever stretch beyond our politics—if we might learn to organize ourselves with the same grace found in nature’s systems.

Compared to the rest of nature, we lack elegance; we are like a rowdy classroom of kindergartners diving at a piñata. We are the destroyer species. Through pollution, habitat destruction, overexploitation, and the introduction of invasive species, we have scoured the planet—each of us wearing our little crowns, believing the Earth to be our right or inheritance.

The Earth does not ask for much—only that we remember we are guests here, not rulers.
Welcome to the Green Issue.

See you in December,

Jane