Reflections On Earth Day, 2021

This week, as we celebrate Earth Day on April 22, Jenner & Block's Environmental and Workplace Health and Safety Law Practice will be focusing, each day, on a different aspect of the environment and how this year will affect our planet. I thought I would begin our week-long focus on Earth Day with a more personal reflection.

This past pandemic year on Earth gave me a chance to spend more time reading and lots more time thinking about our society and how we communicate with each other. Purely by coincidence, I had a chance to read two pieces of fiction that focus on both the environment and communication. In Richard Powers's Pulitzer Prize winning, "The Overstory," we learn about trees' ability to communicate with each other as part of their survival network. The female scientist who makes this discovery in "The Overstory" calls to mind the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard, a professor of in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British