The Overstory

by Richard Powers

the skinny starts already have their uses:

Uses

Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted.

law doesn’t stop with death. It reaches far beyond the grave, for years, entangling the survivors in bureaucratic hurdles that make the challenges of pre-death seem like a cakewalk.

But a human child can know it’s pointed wrong and still consider the direction well worth a try.

Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

The past always comes clearer, in the future.

But the senses never have much chance, against the power of doctrine.

You’re putting in babies so they can kill grandfathers. And when your seedlings grow out, they’ll be monocrop blights, man. Drive-through diners for happy insect

The wrong people have all the rights.”

But hope and truth do nothing for humans, without use.

It is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak, either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, or universities. Lawyers speak for them.

There are consolations that the strongest human love is powerless to give.

“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

“Yesterday’s political criminals are on today’s postage stamps!”

But confirmation bias will always beat out common sense. All

We’re cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling.

The law is simply human will, written down.

The law must let every acre of living Earth be turned into tarmac, if such is the desire of people. But the law lets all parties have their say.

What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer ….

That’s the scary thing about men: get a few together with some simple machines, and they’ll move the world.