Solving for cancer, defending human rights, and resisting authoritarian violence are urgent human imperatives. They all sit downstream of biodiversity. Without living systems that grow food, regulate climate, clean water, and absorb shocks, moral victories do not endure. Rights, laws, and institutions depend on biological stability that rarely receives attention.
That urgency is easy to miss because attention is constantly being redirected. Each year brings a new existential panic. This year, it’s artificial intelligence. Last year was social media. The year before that, culture wars. Remember Y2K?