Well, it’s evidently more dangerous these days, but that’s because of us humans. This article from Live Science discusses how things that used to be just natural events have become disasters either because more humans are living in areas where they are vulnerable, or because we’ve changed the environment in a way that increases the harmful effects of “hydro-meteorological events” like floods or major storms. I read Jared Diamond’s Collapse this spring, and then I read a series on global warming in the New Yorker that was gloomy in the extreme (it was strange to try to come to grips with the idea that we might really be on the brink of irrevocable and disastrous climate change, maybe even the collapse of civilization, while reading this in the New Yorker amidst the ads for vodka, jewelry, and luxury travel). And after all the disasters so far this year, we have another hurricane on the loose that has already tied one record (for the most named storms in a year, 21) and set another (this was for a while the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded). It’s hard to know how to take all the news of actual and pending catastrophe; ignore it at your peril, but pay too much attention to it and you go crazy.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/051017_natural_disasters.html
So, what’s the difference between a “natural event” and a “disaster”? Like, if a storm happens in the
woods and no one’s there to have a tree fall on them, is it a disaster? I’m reminded of the difference
between “saving the planet” and “saving our environment” – the planet WILL be here (short of some major
technology that allows us to blow up a whole planet!) but the environment that supports US might not.
Perhaps the storms are worse, and perhaps people shouldn’t live in places below sea level, or on faults, or
in flood plains, or in tornado zones. “Harmful effects” is just another phrase for “disaster” – it’s
anthropocentric. Not wrong, just anthropocentric.
Granted, I don’t want to be here if things do collapse in a spectacular way, but I have to assume that,
like cockroaches, humans will probably be around even then. Maybe fewer of us, and probably dirtier, but
still around…