Nature encompasses everything in the universe except us. Are we on the wrong side?

United Fauna, an exhibition of contemporary surrealist works, juxtaposes animal imagery with bizarre, off-scale machinery and technology as animals attempt to save themselves from humans. While nature won’t retaliate in such a fantastical manner, the severe consequences of our inaction on climate change are genuine.

We aren’t blind to the signs; we stay perpetually distracted from them. Why fret over shrinking ice sheets when Flat Earthers insist the world is ringed by an Antarctic edge? We look up at the so-called toxic DNA-altering chemtrails but look away from the sun being blocked out by the smoke of relentless human-caused summer wildfires. We spend more time worrying about Bill Gates microchipping our vaccines than addressing the root causes of pandemics like COVID-19 and the Black Death. Why concern ourselves with the greatest threat to global security when there’s a cultural war against “the woke” to be fought?

By the two main measures—species decline and loss of biodiversity—we are in the Earth’s sixth mass extinction period. What kind of world are we leaving for our kids? Headlines focus more on the lasting effects of drag queen story hour on the next generation than on the inexorable force of nature that’s headed their way.

With no quarterly projections to make or congressional districts to win, nature doesn’t concern itself with anything, especially us. Why? After humans are gone, it has an eternity to recover.