The ecosystem that sheltered, fed, and equipped the human species for most of its existence — and whose systematic destruction over the past ten thousand years has been both the precondition for civilization and one of civilization's most consequential long-term costs.
For 95 percent of human history, our species lived inside forests. The forest was shelter, pharmacy, larder, workshop, and spiritual landscape. Then we started clearing it to make civilization — and we haven't stopped. What do we lose when the thing that made us possible disappears?