Have you noticed the needles of the white pine trees turning yellow? This is occurring everywhere in Northeast Michigan. Have you noticed the dark green color of the white cedar trees have been replaced with a yellow green and the foliage is dying? Cedar swales are dying as well. Have you noticed the spruce and fir trees dying? This is not a natural phase, this is climate change and the natural world is reacting. We are at the southern fringe of the boreal forest and it is changing due to the earth’s temperature warming faster than usual.

A large shelf of ice just cracked off from its glacier in Antarctica recently. At about 450 square miles across, the iceberg is now bobbing in the ocean. Should we be alarmed? You bet. We are on the cusp of ecological collapse. The earth has been warming very slowly since the last ice age, but temperatures have been rising rapidly in the last 150 years. The ice caps in the north and south poles are depleting, oceans are warming further toward these poles, and this is causing the meltdown. What kind of planet are we leaving to the future generations? “Nero fiddles as Rome burns.”

ROBERT WEINKAUF,

Alpena