I remember reading that the giant sequoia tree that you could drive through had toppled in a storm, and I was so sad--I had wanted to visit that tree since seeing it in a picture book as a very small child, and I never got to.

Similar feelings of mourning about the Great Barrier Reef.....Why? How?

But really, I like to think that the Earth herself has a broader timeline than inidividual trees or even forests or coral reefs. The things we mourn are on the one hand, so precious and scarce and SO worth fighting for....but on the other hand, we are all just cosmic ephemera.

So maybe the best we can really do is work on our feelings of attachment, and recognize that things are only as painful as we allow them to be.

We can either fixate on the pain and fear, or use those feelings as fuel to motivate us to do something, anything....

Even if our entire life's work is scarcely a drop in the bucket compared to what's necessary to "save the Earth"--that doesn't mean our actions are worthless.