The New York Times ran New Laws Crack Down on Urban Paul Bunyans, a piece on the progressive movement in cities enacting laws to protect trees and greenery. The article opens with a story about the loss of three Monterey cypresses on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The trees were prime perching for our wild parrot population, and the emotional objections to their removal included brave stands in front of buzzing chainsaws. In response to the public outcry, San Francisco has amended city ordinance to allow trees, even on private property, to become protected landmarks.

This isn't just a story about "bleeding heart" liberals protecting urban bird habitat. This is human empathy with creatures losing their environment to steady, capitalist development in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Consider this, from the Times:

"Once a cause for genteel women's clubs bent on beautification, the new get-tough stance on trees is largely a result of real estate. A study of three dozen cities using satellite imagery by the nonprofit group American Forests, completed two years ago, found that over the past 25 years, cities have lost up to 30 percent of their tree canopy to development.

San Francisco's tree canopy hovers at a slim 11.9 percent of the city's surface area, compared with New York's 21 percent and Washington's 28.6."

The cities are a microcosm of the planet as a whole. We empathize because, emotionally, we know the habitat being eaten day by day belongs to us, as well.

I'm convinced we're seeing the upswell of what will become a tidal wave of green awareness and support here in the United States. There may always be factions for which money and hierarchy are the primary motivators... witness the "conservative" minority currently on a stolen throne in the United States. The ability of these people to grasp and hold power is coming to an end. All one has to do is watch George Bush's popularity polls to see how easily he tumbles in sync with the monetary fortunes of voters. Throw in another inevitable catastrophe or two, like hurricane Katrina, and his ratings will dive to rock bottom.

Now imagine what happens as we round the next corner in environmental destruction and the damage done to the system really begins to show: scarcity of fish, meat unsafe to eat, water pollution causing human birth defects as it already does in other animals, changing weather patterns creating wastelands of once hospitable regions, masses of people displaced and miserable.

Our coming adversity will expose the corporate monsters who created this situation with our quiet complicity. Necessity being the mother of invention, we're going to invent, swiftly, new ways of living. As a race, we'll learn a valuable lesson about individual responsibility. Rusting Hummers will provide shelter for small animals. If it isn't recyclable, it won't be manufactured. Consumerism will give way to stewardship.

The Bushes of the world... empty, hollow faces fitted loosely over multi-national corporations, will all come tumbling down.

I see a future where human environments are designed to work with nature, as nature. I see buildings merged with trees, strict laws on zero pollution and wide public discourse on the ecological impacts of new technology.

I see renewed ability in humans to understand ourselves as just another animal, and a recognition all creatures in the biological framework of the globe share equal rights with us.

I see a new green and blue world, lovingly tended because we almost lost it.

I see the politics of fear and separation, the lynchpins of unrestrained capitalism, overtaken and scoured away by common sense.

I see a future where a living, breathing ecosystem is the soul of every city.