C
Soil & land
We invented agriculture, which is genuinely impressive, then spent the next ten thousand years eroding the topsoil that feeds us. The Dust Bowl was a self-inflicted wound, and we are still doing it — just slower, and with better PR.
Planet Earth
Humanity’s report card
We know what we’re doing. We just don’t act like it.
D
Water
We treat rivers like sewers and aquifers like ATMs. The Aral Sea is gone. The Colorado barely reaches the ocean. We figured out how to desalinate centuries ago and still dump raw sewage into the stuff we drink.
C-
Forests
We cleared half the world’s forests, mostly for farmland and timber, then discovered we needed them for climate and air. Reforestation is real but slow — you cannot regrow a thousand-year-old forest in a decade.
F
Wildlife
We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, and this one is ours. We are not just killing species, we are erasing entire ecosystems. The passenger pigeon went from billions to zero in a century. The slender-billed curlew followed, quietly, in 2025. That is not stewardship. That is vandalism.
This is the subject this app exists to sit with. Not the number. The names.
D
Atmosphere
We figured out fire, then coal, then oil, and only started caring about the consequences when they started costing money. The Montreal Protocol on ozone was a genuine win — proof we can fix things when we try. Climate change is the big one, and we are still arguing about whether it is real while the ice melts.
Overall
D+
Passing, but barely, and only because the curve is generous. The point of the card is not the letter. It is that we already know the material.
The honest read: we are clever enough to understand the problem and rich enough to solve it, but not wise enough to act before the bill comes due. The grade is low not because we are stupid, but because we are short-sighted — and short-sightedness is the one trait we have not evolved out of yet.
Wildlife, in numbers we can actually cite
- 49,505 species threatened (CR + EN + VU)
- 175,909 assessed · ~8% of described life
- Amphibians: 41% threatened
- Mammals: 26% · Birds: 11.5%
Source: IUCN Red List version 2026-1. The grade is not the work. The names are.