(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Burning in the heart of Paris the Notre Dame Cathedral is being laid to ashes. Today an incalculable treasure of religious and human history was gutted, ending future humans’ ability to witness large parts of its grandeur. The gravity of seeing the searing scars form on this 850-year old monument tugs at the heartstrings. I am one of the fortunate to have walked within this beautiful cathedral that could take the rest of my life to restore following this level of destruction.

It wasn’t even a year ago that fire destroyed Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, taking with it nearly 20 million artifacts stored in its neglected space. Then there were the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan that were intentionally destroyed, thus denying others from peering into our past through that lens.

Part of me says none of this should matter in light of the data that suggests human activity has destroyed 60% of the wildlife populations on earth. It is possible that thousands of species go extinct every year. It is a tragedy that few of us witness our collective assault on nature while the visceral destruction of the Twin Towers, the Buddha statues, and now Notre-Dame allow us to make an audible gasp, as in a few brief moments we can see something we love disappear. I can’t help but grieve for all that as our actions and inactions rob future generations of the opportunity to bask in the accomplishments of nature, of which we are but one small yet highly destructive element.