An Angry Word from Mother Nature

Welcome back, Bush! I trust that you and yours had an excellent and peaceful Christmas down there in Crawford, and that you added fewer pounds than I around the waistline. It's back to work for you today, though, I expect, like me; and today, Monday, the day after Boxing Day, it's all about Mother Nature.

That earthquake in the Indian Ocean, and the tsunamis that struck out from its epicenter, in all directions! Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives… the thousands of lives lost--this morning they're saying more than twenty-two thousand--the hundreds of thousands of homes wrecked and people displaced. We are all humbled by this demonstration of nature's massive and capricious power, are we not, Bush? I'm planning to send a check to one of the relief agencies. I heard you were planning to send "appropriate" aid from the U.S. The tragedy does give us the opportunity to show our heart, doesn't it? Let's hope that when we show it, it's a big one, and that our wallet can be made to stretch proportionately. The world is convinced of our aggressiveness; it needs to see something more of our kindness and compassion.

I'm wondering, too, how your fundamentalist friends square this kind of disaster with their beliefs. If you believe in an omniscient and all-powerful God, how do you understand His hand in catastrophe? After 9/11--not a natural event, of course, but a man-made one--we heard voices interpreting the attack as divine retribution for our sinfulness, notably homosexuality and abortion. To which you could add, I'm sure, those dangerous liberal attitudes. Those voices were quickly hushed in the public media because they risked giving evangelical conservatism a bad name, but I'm sure they had been heard and approved amongst the faithful before the pro forma retractions. Still, that pesky, perennial philosophical question does inevitably pop up in such circumstances: if God is all-powerful, how can He allow--or cause--such things to happen in His world? Does it take so many lives and so much human anguish to remind us of our venality or mortality?

But Mother Nature also has her vulnerable side, and I've been meaning to bring this up with you again, Bush. I did mention it in passing the other day, but it calls for a wee bit more of our attention. Clearly, our planet is a vast and intricate system of complex interdependencies between species--flora and fauna and, of course, the most powerful of all, the human species. Given our privileged custodial position in relation to every other species, plant or animal, not to mention mineral resources, it behooves us to take our stewardship seriously. Yet just last week your people issued new National Forest regulations abdicating federal responsibility in favor of local and regional supervisors, in the full expectation that they will open the lands under their protection to development and exploitation.

"The price tag," writes the LA Times editorialist today, "may include the loss of endangered species and habitat, irreparable damage to wild land owned by all Americans and the silencing of public comments on logging and mining in remote areas, all in the name of 'efficiency.'"

Shame on you, Bush, and on your bureaucrats, for this abandonment of a sacred human duty. Shame on you, for sacrificing the future of the planet to base current contingencies. Shame on all of us, for allowing you the power to get away with it. Perhaps, I'm thinking, it's not your God, but Mother Nature herself, the ultimate Goddess, getting back at us! Perhaps, today, we human beings need to sit up and pay special attention to this awful demonstration of the revenge she can wreak on us, when she has a mind to.

Sometimes, Bush, we forget how much we depend on her. And how much she depends on us. This terrible catastrophe could serve as a timely reminder of our breach of trust.