“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion — until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them to forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a “who”, but an “it”, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying “it” makes a living land into “natural resources”. If a maple is an “it”, we can take up the chainsaw. If a