There they lie, like tumbled columns, cutdown urban trees from Vienna, in a green sitting bay amid an otherwise sealed urban area. Shapes are milled cut into the trunks: development curves that illustrate our warped relationship with nature. Growth rings are the natural chronicle of a tree’s life. The robot-milled curves, however, illustrate human interference in nature: statistical data on the rising milk production of Austrian cows, for example, or the spreading use of snow-cannon systems, or the increasing sealing of soils. These developments are closely related. They are based on regional, global, political and individual decisions. They are both causes and symptoms of a crisis that is slow in the making but sure to come. The trees lying there on Kramreiterweg once were life-bearers, air purifiers, and climate regulators. They had to give way to the urban sprawl. Displaced by concrete and asphalt. Sickened by nutrient depletion and fungal infestation. Nature is made to conform to humans for short-term profit and comfort. This alignment has uncomfortable consequences in the long term. Also for us. Can we still turn around?