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Nature

Earth in the Balance

Nature, we learn, seeks to establish and maintain equilibrium. According to a study published late last year in Nature, Earth did just that, though not by design. It just so happens that the year 2020 marked the point at which anthropogenic mass (the mass of manmade inanimate objects) equaled Earth’s total biomass (the total mass of all living taxa, including the mass of humans and our livestock).

Photo by Dan Schwartz

Ill Nature

March 2, 2020

When the glacier finally melted, the last of the green turned yellow and brown and the dry season came like an omen. Its white-blue ice had given water to all thirteen communities of Quispillaccta in Peru and, to women and men wise enough to receive them, messages: Plant here; plant that.

Southside

Bile-colored flutes survive along bog rock,
red-veined with a fine fuzz:
canebrake pitchers
hooded against the good rain.

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