The sad story of the grylloblattid...

This brave, mobile, tough little insect has been on the planet almost as long as the cockroach. It's a survivor. But in its time on Earth, it has moved from sunny, glorious forests to emptier, colder places. Now, it's the only big insect that makes its living in perpetual snow. Most insects stop moving when it gets too cold. But not this guy. He lives on ice.

And even so, the grylloblattid (or ice crawler, as it's called) is running out of options because all over the world, the ice it lives on is melting. Another earthling with nowhere to go. And when the ice goes, it's not clear what happens next.

Not clear? How clear is this: More than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct.

What makes humans worse than the other species that have destroyed their environments and worlds is that we are aware of our self-destructive ways and yet still do nothing about it, still talking about economic growth as if it is the most important thing in the universe. If evil (a word I detest) is anything, it is this kind of inaction (knowingly doing nothing about a bad situation that has clear solutions).

This post owes everything to Nathaniel Elliot Tanner Rogers.