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Mother Earth, so the environmentalists love to remind us, would get along fine without Homo sapiens. Better than fine: She would thrive. Mankind is a blight, like Dutch elm disease on a global scale. “Nature is healing,” ran a popular meme of the COVID-19 pandemic whenever a wild animal was glimpsed playing boulevardier on a deserted city street. Few participants in this grim triumphalism seem to register the paradox. Neither “healing” nor “thriving” means anything of itself. These categories belong to human judgment. If nature is indifferent to the fate of humans, it is equally indifferent to the fate of polar bears or tree frogs. Indifference in this case is not an attitude but the absence of one. Nature cannot punish, heal, or thrive but only change.