This is a shortened version of an essay I finished in early 2024. I am penning a new version for 2026, but this piece does accurately capture my thinking a few years back.
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There he was, my then-six-year-old son, laying naked on his tummy in our bathtub while I scooped warm, soapy water into a whale-shaped bath rinser. It was the summer of 2023.
As I rinsed the soap off my son’s back, he played with his toy orca and giant squid. While the deep-sea creature wrapped two of its enormous tentacles around the orca, it dawned on me that my son was playing with toys of oceanic animals that may become extinct within our lifetime.
That is, depending on how long we manage to live.
