While sign clutter is real, I love a colorful and informative interpretative sign.

This one, in Pope Park, explains the habitat around the pond. From what I’ve been told, unfortunately a bit of the plantings were rapidly destroyed by careless and/or uninformed DPW employees years back. I’ll assume that was before the sign was added. It doesn’t help that instead of expanding this habitat, the city recently went in the other direction, allowing more sports fields to be added nearby. Another result of that has been people deciding not only to drive next to the baseball diamond. Now, you can find people driving full across the park lawn next to other sports fields. This, in spite of the large paved parking lot within Pope Park, the ample free parking on nearby side streets, the convenience to multiple bus routes.

We could add more informational signs — perhaps multilingual — across Hartford, educating residents and visitors about how natural spaces do more than provide us with something nice to look at. But what else? How do we convey to every living generation that there are many reasons, from selfless to completely self-serving, to treat our habitat with more care?

Climate Possibilities is a new series about climate mitigation, along with resilience, resistance, and restoration. It’s about human habitat preservation. It’s about loving nature and planet Earth, and demanding the kind of change that gives future generations the opportunity for vibrant lives. Doomers will be eaten alive, figuratively. All photographs are taken in Hartford, Connecticut unless stated otherwise.