Key bits: >>Relationships so complex as to connect everything to everything in a single network of the living. >>Playing with something whose working mechanis

Key bits: >>Relationships so complex as to connect everything to everything in a single network of the living. >>Playing with something whose working mechanisms are not well known is clearly dangerous. The consequences can be completely unpredictable. The strength of ecological communities is one of the engines of life on Earth. At every level, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, it is these communities, understood as relationships among the living, that allow life to persist. While climate change rightfully gets huge headlines, it is easier to understand than the ecosystem and food web, which is also being rapidly broken (in no small part by climate change). While some effects of climate change can be mitigated, a sufficiently broken food web is unlikely to be recoverable on a humanity-helpful time scale.