We Need an Infrastructure Package for Nature

• News & Highlights

The long-term needs of ecosystems should come before our knee-jerk demands to get back to life.

We were driving through Long Island’s sprawling road system in a borrowed electric car when we heard the news about President Biden’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure package. All around us the bric-a-brac of a fast-vanishing age littered the landscape. Gas stations, dead malls, extra lanes now emptied of shoppers and commuters. And as we took in all this ugliness, we worried about an ugliness to come. One that might lay still another life-crushing steel and concrete layer over the green and blue natural systems we hold dear.

The thing is, nature has its own infrastructure. What nature needs is for us to get out of its way and let its systems function in the manner that billions of years of evolution enabled them to do. It would be more than a shame, therefore, if Mr. Biden’s infrastructure planning doesn’t make that connection and instead yields to the easy justification of making long-neglected repairs.