What better sign of the end of the world than fire? We saw burning skies in Francis Ford Coppola’s famous movie, and we read about them in the Revelation of John in the Bible. We couldn’t help but think of those references these past few weeks, as the sun has burned an angry red from the nearby fires.
What in life is more dependable than the rising of the sun every morning? Yes, we know the quip about “death and taxes,” but it has been disconcerting, indeed, to have no apparent sunrise. The growing orange glow over the valley in the mornings, changing the color of people and familiar things, has not been reassuring.
Let’s acknowledge that people won’t inhabit the earth forever. Eventually, the sun will consume enough of itself that it starts to fade. More dramatic, though, is the prospect that the earth will take another big hit from a meteor. Thought to have destroyed the dinosaurs some 60 million years ago, such a meteor hit today could wipe out most or all of mankind.
Astronomers like to watch for meteors, but apparently it’s more difficult to see those heading toward the earth than it is to monitor those headed in another direction. While the earth is bombarded constantly with small objects from space, reportedly adding up to some 250 tons of material every day, the odds of the ‘big’ one hitting are, admittedly, not high.
Let’s go back just 60 years – forget the millions. A ‘hot’ topic in the media at the time was the prospect of an impeding ice age. And don’t forget Thomas Malthus, writing in about 1800 that human population growth would outstrip food supplies, making mass starvation a reality; his theory enjoys renewed popularity periodically.
We may chuckle now at these “old” views, but we wonder what makes us so sure that we’re right today. There’s something sinfully proud in believing that the conditions right now – when we happen to be here to experience them – are the ideal conditions, that somehow it’s our being here that makes these conditions correct.
The earth has gone through enormous swings of climate, as erstwhile populist Al Gore showed nicely in his film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Maybe his apocalyptic warning is correct that right now, in our lifetimes, we’re breaking those cycles, but we don’t presume to know.
Is it worth observing that the proposed solution to these crises has been a more powerful, centralized government, telling everyone what they can or can’t do? We think it is, as it points again to the perhaps unconscious arrogance of such alarmists that they know best what everyone else should do to preserve the “correct” conditions.
And on that front, we’ve enjoyed the recent news out of Japan that the G8 (major industrial) nations have agreed that any climate preservation program must include participation by China and India, that it must depend on advances in technology and that economic cost-benefit analyses must be employed.
Of course, we, too, believe that we know what’s best for everyone else. It’s just that we don’t think we should impose those beliefs on them. Perhaps as our yellow sun and blue skies return, we’ll all feel better, and we can return to our less-cosmic concerns.
Good morning, everyone!
