COMMUNITY
FROM OUR READERS
IN “SINKING INTO THE ARCTIC” (Summer 2020), Barbara Hurd weaves hope, ecology, and climate together. As I first began reading this essay, it felt untimely given the trajectory our society has followed this summer. When cops are killing Black people at a rate 2.8 times higher than white people, when 140,000 Americans have died from a preventable pandemic, the loss of permafrost feels far removed. But then Hurd’s essay swerves: “Maybe all this collapse today is what’s necessary in the face of tomorrow’s crucial realignment.”
The Trump administration recently put public lands near my home in southern Utah up for lease. The highest bidder drills for oil. Meanwhile, the pandemic is decimating tribes whose land
