A Message from Katrina

I have nothing against environmentalists, and I certainly agree with them that humans have done some very stupid, self-serving and dangerous things to the planet.

But I have always chuckled at their suggestion that it was up to us to “save” the planet.

The Planet Earth certainly does not need the efforts of a few measly humans to “save” it. Earth can save itself any time it wants or needs to. It would make a great movie. Humans continually plunder Earth, sacking resources and creating crucially deprived environments, until one day the planet’s exquisitely sensitive and totally comprehensive nervous system says, “Enough.”

If that moment ever arrives in human history on the planet, Earth will simply just sneeze us off. I have no idea how it would happen – air, water, fire, wind – but Earth would set in motion a sequence creating an environment in which humans cannot survive. We could all die in a heartbeat, which I think would be cool, because we wouldn’t have time to figure out how Earth did it – or it could be a painful demise lasting weeks or months, plenty of time for us to figure where we went wrong.

Earth will then take a little while off – a million years? more? – spinning lazily under the sun, morning into evening healing herself, restoring blue waters, green forests, teeming wetlands, golden prairies, purple mountains, clean air. After that, maybe she will give humans a second chance. But she sure doesn’t need “us” to save herself. Who do we think we are?

Who did we think we were, channeling and diverting the Mississippi River totally to satisfy human needs for commercial land free of the threat of natural flooding? The result was a city sinking below sea level, high-maintenance and low-quality levees to keep river and lake water out of the city, and a coastal wetlands environment that acted like a buffer against hurricane forces before the river flood control deprived it of silt and left it flattened into a submerged parking lot.

There was plenty of warning. Many people knew a hurricane would come, and what it would do to the unnatural New Orleans environment. Now it has come, and swatted away New Orleans like a pesky fly.

Most of us didn’t know that flood control history. It is important that now we do. Who do we think we are? Katrina showed us who. She was the perfect last act in a sequence to show us who we are, and what Earth can do to us if we don’t watch out.