The Future’s Best Hope in ‘The Overstory’

The seed bank

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

Patricia has spent her career trying to make people aware of what is at stake when we believe the earth will continue to supply us with limitless resources no matter how much damage we do to it.

She knows we are not only losing the trees we already know have medicinal and healing value — we are losing resources whose uses have not even been discovered yet. That at the current pace of destruction,

“Things are going lost that have not yet been found.” (Richard Powers)

“Like burning down the library, art museum, pharmacy, and hall of records, all at once.” (Richard Powers)

Close to despair that humanity will wake up in time, she envisions a way to preserve these still-unknown resources and deliver them to a future humanity who will never know of their existence otherwise.

The seed bank is born.