It is not easy to find good news in reports about climate change. A news story in the August 17, 2018, Chicago Tribune offered one small encouraging note in an otherwise distressing description of the impacts of climate change on the Chicago region. “The birches in the corner of your kid’s favorite park, the towering spruce in your suburban backyard, that graceful linden on your block — all are likely to disappear from Chicago’s landscape over the next few decades,” reported Cindy Dampier, “casualties of a climate that is suddenly ill-suited to their needs.”
A notable exception, according to the entomologist and climate scientist consulted, is the Wooded Island in Jackson Park, created as part of fairgrounds for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. “Jackson Park’s Wooded Island … has a collection of trees that are almost ideally suited to climate change survival.”
“Bird’s Eye View of the Wooded Island” from Picturesque World’s Fair. An Elaborate Collection of Colored Views. W. B. Conkey, 1894.