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I wrote last week that our social contract is fraying at the edges. I had in mind a spate of incidents, country-wide, where protesters increasingly flaunted the conviction that might makes right.

In 1937, Betty Lowman put in near Anacortes to row to Ketchikan in a 14-foot cedar dugout canoe. It took her 66 days to get there.

In at least one sphere of contemporary public life, the social contract has been torn up. And as Hobbes foresaw, the results are nasty and brutish, though regrettably, all too long.

There are a lot of things that this pandemic has forced us to find new ways of doing, but there is no virtual comparison to coming together as a community.

Let us be clear: Climate change — actually, human-induced climate heating resulting in climate instability and chaos — is a danger to health.