A Frog and a Pail - A Timely Warning About Trees

Several years ago, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recalled an "old science class experiment where the teacher put a frog in a pail of water on the stove and gradually turns up the heat. The frog, which is very good at adapting, adjusts to each new level of heat. Eventually, though, the frog boils to death because it is so good at adapting it never thinks to jump out of the pail€." ("Japan, A Frog and a Pail," Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, OP-ED, May 21, 1995, page E15.)

Consider this:

Trees have been so much with us we don't miss them until their removal is so complete our landscapes are bare or corroded. On one hand, if we had kept the trees, and/or planted new ones, we might still have the Ivory-billed Woodpeckers - and others - perhaps a small thing, but we would also still enjoy the oxygen they produce, the water, the shelter, the habitat, the beauty, the food, the economic benefits, the essential good of something much greater than the short-sighted spoil of asphalt, concrete and sprawl.

If you consider yourself "hard-headed", by all means think only of that bottom line. We're the Frog. Take away our trees, and we're cooked, too.