Dear Editor,

We continue reading about the effects of human-caused climate change, yet our actions to address it are falling short, and some of us continue ignoring climate scientists.

As we humans dominated nature for centuries, we destroyed the basis for life for countless other species--plant and animal. We have gone so far in our effort to treat Earth as nothing but a resource that we threaten our own existence. 

In 1624 John Donne wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."

What Donne may not have known is that "the main" includes all life, not just humans. We do not exist apart from nature. We could not have risen to our current level of consciousness without all the other life we grew up with and depended upon. We must respect the needs of our fellow species, plants and animals, or our own species will not survive what we have done and are doing to Mother Nature.

John Hamilton

South Bend, Indiana