The Musings of Jaime David

The Musings of Jaime David
The Musings of Jaime David
@jaimedavid.blog@jaimedavid.blog

The writings of some random dude on the internet

1,089 posts
1 follower

Tag: climate crisis

  • The Lorax Left When We Needed Him Most

    The Lorax Left When We Needed Him Most

    We’ve all been told that The Lorax is a story about environmentalism, corporate greed, and the consequences of unchecked exploitation of nature. And sure, that’s all in there. But let’s not ignore the uncomfortable truth: the Lorax, the self-declared guardian of the forest, leaves when things get bad. He doesn’t protest harder. He doesn’t organize. He doesn’t chain himself to the last Truffula tree or build a grassroots resistance. He just floats up into the sky and vanishes, leaving behind a cryptic stone with the word “UNLESS” on it. That’s it. That’s the end of his fight. The guy who “speaks for the trees” gives a vague hint and then peaces out.

    And what does that really mean? If you speak for the trees, shouldn’t that come with a little more responsibility? Speaking is great—important, even—but when the trees are being chopped down one by one and the air is thick with smog, maybe it’s time for more than words. Maybe it’s time to act. But the Lorax doesn’t organize a coalition of forest creatures. He doesn’t lobby the Once-ler. He doesn’t call a press conference or draft legislation. He just lectures a bit, gets ignored, and then bails. If he truly cared, wouldn’t he have stayed until the bitter end, standing in front of the last tree like it was the sacred line in the sand?

    The Lorax’s exit feels less like noble despair and more like strategic abandonment. Sure, the Once-ler didn’t listen. But people don’t always listen the first time—or the tenth. That’s the whole point of activism. You keep going. You show up. You resist. You make noise. But the Lorax essentially says, “Welp, I tried,” and disappears. Can you imagine if real-world climate activists behaved this way? Greta Thunberg just floating into the clouds after one bad press conference? The Sierra Club just closing shop the moment a single forest was paved over? That’s not activism. That’s quitting with extra flair.

    The message we should have gotten from The Lorax is that caring means sticking around, even when things look hopeless. Especially when they look hopeless. Instead, we get this mythical tree-hugger who delivers a warning, gets ignored, and then evaporates—leaving a child (and us) with the burden of fixing everything after the fact. And that’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid. Maybe instead of just leaving behind a stone with a single cryptic word, the Lorax could’ve left an instruction manual, a protest plan, or at the very least, a phone number.

    So yes, the Lorax speaks for the trees. But maybe what we needed was someone who fought for them. Someone who got arrested at a pipeline protest, who glued themselves to the Once-ler’s machinery, who built a Truffula Tree Sanctuary and refused to leave. Someone who stayed. Because at the end of the day, speaking only goes so far. Action—messy, relentless, inconvenient action—is what actually makes a difference. And when the trees were gone, the Lorax should have been the last one standing. Not the first one to vanish.

  • They Were Just There, Like They Belonged: NYC’s Shifting Wildlife and the Subtropical Future We Can’t Ignore

    They Were Just There, Like They Belonged: NYC’s Shifting Wildlife and the Subtropical Future We Can’t Ignore

    I never thought I’d be writing a follow-up to New York’s Subtropical Future just two weeks later. And I definitely never thought parrots—actual, living, green parrots—would be the thing to trigger it.

    But here we are.

    It was Sunday, July 27th. I was doing something as ordinary as getting groceries. The air was thick and humid, the sky heavy with clouds—the kind of gray that seems to sink into your skin. On my walk back home, I passed by a tree on the sidewalk. Not one of those ornamental city trees that seem more for show than shade, but a real fruit-bearing one. Apple or pear, maybe. I didn’t get that close because something else caught my attention first:

    Parrots.

    Not one. Not two. But five or six bright green parrots, perched on the branches, squawking and moving around like they owned the place.

    It felt like a glitch in the simulation. Like I’d stepped into a scene that didn’t belong to New York. I froze. Snapped a few pictures with my phone. Tried to act normal even though the moment was anything but. These weren’t escaped pets. They weren’t struggling. They were settled. Thriving. At ease. As if this stretch of sidewalk—this humid, gray, sweltering July day—was exactly where they were meant to be.

    And it hit me: this isn’t just a one-off. This is it. This is the shift.

    When I wrote about New York’s emerging subtropical classification, I was thinking about rain. About climate. About seasons that no longer made sense. But this—this was another layer. Biodiversity. Wildlife. Nature adapting in real time to the human-made chaos we’ve unleashed.

    In the past few years, I’ve heard seagulls far more frequently than I used to—and not just by the water, but deeper into neighborhoods where you wouldn’t expect them. But parrots? That’s different. That’s tropical. That’s a species that isn’t supposed to be here. Yet they are. Not migrating through, not lost—settling in. And maybe that’s what’s so jarring. They weren’t symbols of escape or anomaly. They were evidence.

    Evidence that New York City is no longer just transforming on paper or in temperature charts—it’s transforming in the trees. In the air. In what birds now call this concrete jungle home.

    Years ago, I would’ve written this off. A weird sighting. A story to tell. But now, it fits the pattern. The disrupted, dizzying pattern of a world out of balance. Where tropical birds find urban trees suitable nesting spots. Where familiar becomes foreign in the span of a few years. Where you walk back from a grocery run and find yourself grieving—again—for a city that keeps slipping further into a version of itself you never asked for.

    We’re watching ecological succession unfold in real time. A gradual invasion of the subtropics—not by storm, not by force, but by adaptation. The parrots are adapting. The plants are adapting. The question is: are we?

    This isn’t just about parrots. It’s about what comes after them. What other species might find our warming winters and humid summers ideal? What insects, what diseases, what disruptions? We don’t know yet. But we’re already behind.

    I don’t know what it means to live in a subtropical New York. I don’t know if it ever stops feeling like a stranger’s version of the city. But I do know this: if we don’t treat these moments as the wake-up calls they are, we’re going to lose more than just familiar weather patterns. We’re going to lose the very essence of what made this place livable, resilient, human.

    And if parrots can adjust to this new New York, the least we can do is pay attention.