Editorial

It’s not the right question to ask whether Mother Nature is
showing her anger with us with the 9.0 Sendai earthquake and
Pacific tsunami, is it?
Yet, the series of historic natural disasters over the past year
might make us wonder. There was the Haiti earthquake that killed
over 150,000 people and set off a cholera epidemic. On the other
side of the world the continent of Australia was torched with
massive wildfires, followed by continent-wide flooding. Tens of
thousands of Pakistanis perished in mountain floods last August.
There also was a violent volcano eruption in Iceland, an 8.8
earthquake in Chile, two collapsed mining disasters and one
significant man-made disaster — the explosion of the Deepwater
Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
Only ancient religions and prehistoric people would put meaning
into these storms and fires as proof that the Earth is angry with
us. Modern science tells us differently, even as we foolishly
debate climate change, over population, disappearing species, acid
oceans full of plastic garbage and the impacts of over-consumption
of fossil fuels and carbon burning.
An advanced, technologically-savvy society knows better than to
be superstitious about why tsunamis, earthquakes and eruptions take
place. But an even more-advanced human race might better understand
that Mother Nature has every right to be angry with us. Like a
scolding mother, she could be telling us “after everything I’ve
done for you, this is how you treat me?”
Here, at home in Sonoma County, we did not build the PG&E
nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay. We are enlightened and are
national leaders in solar and renewable energy development, green
technology and sustainable practices. We will block any political
efforts to allow offshore oil drilling along our Pacific Coast and
we abhor the avoidable ecological tragedy of last year’s Gulf of
Mexico oil spill.
We are not the problem; we are some of Mother Nature’s favorite
children, correct? We have never stopped “thinking globally and
acting locally.” Yes, but if we were truly honest with ourselves we
would admit that’s not good enough.
Even as we congratulate ourselves for “reducing our carbon
footprint” we still represent the small percentage of the world’s
“advanced nations” population that consumes over 90 percent of the
earth’s mined energy and natural resources.
To some of us, a terrible disaster is $4 a gallon gasoline or
too noisy leafblowers. We wanted extra lanes on Highway 101 to
reduce our stress in our daily single-occupancy car commutes. We
support our local farmers’ markets, but we also want Chilean sea
bass and wintertime tangerines and other foreign delectables.
As with the 1989 Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill and the Santa
Barbara oil rig disaster in 1969, we are learning new lessons.
Hopefully, we are renewing our fidelity to our Mother Earth as we
witness the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant catastrophe.
More lessons also could be learned from other — much less
visible — environmental and global events and trends including our
thirst for oil that keeps us at war. We already have over-fished
our oceans. Today, one in five plant species is threatened with
extinction by climate change, deforestation and urban expansion.
The rapid depletion of our planet’s biodiversity is a far greater
threat to our own species’ survival than a failed nuclear power
plant or a terrorist attack.
When we become orphans of Mother Earth, what will be left, and
who will we blame? Let’s blame the Chinese for increasing their
energy consumption by almost 20 percent a year and building new
coal-fired power plants at a rate of one per month. Let’s blame the
anti-climate change fanatics, BP Oil or Mother Nature herself.
Or, we could blame human nature — or what it has become.
— Rollie Atkinson