Following the below comments on Attitudes to life, death and trees in western culture and ‘civilization’, I thank Anoldent, for his photograph and his account of the Fifteen Moai on Easter Island: ‘Moai were status symbols. The more you had and the bigger they were, the greater your village’s status. Unfortunately, moving them around the island required many trees, and when the last trees were cut on the once heavily forested island, the topsoil blew away, the islanders could no longer build fishing boats, or even escape the ensuing famine. Wars erupted and the culture collapsed. An environmental cautionary tale. The island is still largely treeless.’ On a larger scale, too many humans think this way: ‘the more you have the better you are’: more rooms, more people, more buildings, more cars, more economic growth. But for humans who inhabit an island or a planet, aiming for more may result in less. Let’s call it ‘the Easter Island Path to Perdition’, and let’s be sufficiently optimistic to believe that the ‘civilization’ of cities will be replaced by a sophisticated landscape urbanism.