Bill Clinton has always had a problem with time. There he was in April, standing in a grove of 3,000-year-old giant sequoias in central California, about to declare them a national monument as part of his green legacy. But the Secret Service told him he had only 10 minutes for a "hike in the woods." Clinton bounded off through the sequoias, fascinated by the 300-ft. skyscrapers that spring from a seed smaller than a rice grain. He returned, behind schedule, to make his designation speech before zipping off by helicopter to a fund raiser in southern California.
Nature operates on a...