Two momentous events recently passed each other in the news as if there were no relevance between one and the other.

The first event we found on the back of the front section of most daily newspapers July 13. It called attention to the massive iceberg, the largest on record, that broke loose from the Larsen C Ice Shelf.

To say it was massive is an understatement since it was roughly the size of the state of Delaware and weighed 1 trillion tons. It broke loose sometime around July 12.

The other event occurred at the United Nations on July 7, in Conference Room 1, when 122 nations, bucking the intimidation of the nuclear-armed superpowers, voted “yes” to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The one vote against the treaty was the Netherlands. This treaty is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination.

Each of these events plays its own part in what is coming to be called the two most existential threats to life on Earth.

As we humans have the whole world in our hands, we surely must open our eyes each morning knowing that it is possible we could be facing an end to life on this beautiful planet that we so nonchalantly call Earth.

Sally A. Breen

Windham