Two hours among the giant sequoias of Yosemite, drinking in reams of information from a National Park ranger, will redefine anyone’s interpretation of “a walk in the woods.”
The great spotted lanternfly, a planthopper native to Southeast Asia, flies in people’s faces, lands on them, and dumps its sticky waste everywhere. Residents of Pennsylvania, where the species invades this time of year, are fighting back with vacuums, dish soap, sticky tape, and whatever else they can come up with. Lori Beatrice from Phoenixville, Pa., estimates she and her husband have killed thousands of the lanternflies swarming their yard. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “It’s like waking up in a nightmare.”
A neighbor, leaning over my fence while our dogs played, said: “The world as we know it could not exist without insects, but the world without humans? It would be better, infinitely better, than the world as we know it.”
He’s well read and well traveled, but in my heart I know he’s wrong. God pronounced creation “good,” that is, until He made man. On that day, he surveyed a world where men and women were fruitful and multiplying and having dominion over “every living thing”—and for the first time He pronounced the world “very good.”
Environment | Today’s greens follow an ancient religion that won’t save the world
