Editor,

As Steve Erickson perceptively notes (March 27 letter), do not panic about trees dying. Baby trees parasitize their parents.

Although I used to panic about eight billion homo sapiens being too many to cram on our island, the prescient book “Empty Planet” informs me that depopulation starting in 40 years means the entire population of our planet will fit on Whidbey with room to cast a fly into Goss Lake or from the Coupeville wharf.

As a grateful atheist, I will not exist.

Bored people in heaven will not be able to gloat at me writhing in hell on a fishhook.

Stephen Kahn

Freeland