What’s the soundtrack of human civilization’s time on Earth? If we were to put ten songs into a time capsule to help historians in the future piece together what the hell humankind was doing as the planet crumbled beneath our feet, the ten songs in this episode would tell half the story.

Today is World Environment Day. The United Nations established the day and informs us it’s the most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. It strikes me as odd the theme for this year’s World Environment Day is the illegal trade in wildlife. Themes like this are woefully inadequate in the face of today’s pressing crises, amounting to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Yes, our world’s biodiversity is critical, but illegal trade is a tiny fraction of even that problem. The real problem is the juggernaut of never-ending expansion in the scale of the human footprint. We are laying siege, not just to wildlife, but to the entirety of our “environment.” . . .