Striving for civility.

• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

Terry Tempest Williams's February column stresses the importance of cultivating greater civility in our personal, social, and political realms ("Dinner Party Diplomacy," February issue). It was a fine essay: comforting, warm, hopeful.

But with all due respect, now in my old age, I disagree. Life on Earth appears teetering on the brink. Our species, with all its good intentions and wondrous wisdom, is completely overrunning and overwhelming this planet and its biological systems.

I believe striving for civility is no longer effective in today's world. If anything, only...