Prophets of environmental doom? Nov. 16, 1985

  

The prophets of doom are at it again like a horde of vultures waiting for the people to die so they can feast, boasting of disaster after disaster with morbid glee.

They say the world is coming to an end with two great disasters occurring within months of each other I begin to believe them.

And there are smaller things happening in between for me.

There was something prophetic about the great Passaic fire as if some greater power, God or fate was opening up a view to the immediate future.

Within weeks Mexico tumbled, thousands of killed, a city in ruins, giving images on TV not that much different from those only blocks away from here in Passaic.

Then a whole series of quakes shook the world, shutters in the crust, two in South America, four in California, three more in Mexico, two in the South Pacific, three right here in New York

All this became intermingled with news portraying thousands of other human disasters that were caused by humans directly, and still thousands of other stories untold in the press.

All the wars and famines and changes of weather and now of volcano 400 years dormant spouted up in rage, sending a flood water of melted snow and mud down upon unsuspecting cities -- 20,000 feared dead, Red Cross whose trucks had part only 1/2 block away till a few weeks ago reported before this disaster themselves broke.

The worst year for disasters in history, they said

So, what's the meaning of this? Has the old earth gotten sick of its leach like occupants, warning us to behave or else?

Scientists recently declared again that California is in for one massive quake anytime.

Floods ravage the southern portion of the United States while blizzards cover the West.  Jimmy contributed much of the rising temperature in this Pacific Ocean to El Nino.

Then again one might ask what is causing that?

Are the fires deep in the earth’s core beginning to brew spilling up like they had in Mount Saint Helens and now Columbia?

Is the fabric of the earth simply reverting again part of some natural pattern to which humanity is only a smallest glimpse or is this a phase that will pass, leaving behind a wake of human suffering -- that has no logical answers, that is not part of any masterplan?

Perhaps we are simply here struggling in the midst of forces that care nothing about things as small as we are. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe we believe too much in our own importance, thinking that the universe circles around us when in reality we could vanish tomorrow with no small dent on the universe.

If some great geological event in process few are saying it openly. Yet how many more signs do we need before it becomes obvious?

How long before these prophets of doom or blame all the world's problems into a single religious theme and terrify us with revelations that they say will look forward to future disasters?

Maybe they will set up some philosophical science that they will use to explain it all away.

But 20,000 dead are that too many…

 

1985 Menu


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