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Nature’s unbridled rage

Some fifty years ago there was a famous poem that came out on the atomic experiments. It said: “To break the mighty atom all mankind was intent, but one, very soon, the atom may return the compliment.”

In much the same manner, this tinkering with the scientific balance and plundering of the natural resources are two activities that have combined inimically to create a violent and unforgiving force that we see today manifested in the natural crises that have increased exponentially.

There are those who say there is no such thing as global warning and this is a usual period in a cycle but for many of us the evidence seems strong enough to suggest otherwise. It is warm where it should be cold, it floods where the earth is largely parched. Hurricanes and cyclones and inundation have changed the global topography entirely. Rivers that were feeders are now torrents of rage, lakes overflow, mountains come sliding down, forests stay aflame for weeks and even the polar icecap splits into pieces, the last only two days ago being the largest splinter in living memory.

So, how can we be so blasé as to still believe that something unusual is not occurring, that earthquakes have not intensified, that pollution and the rape of the planet is not having a reciprocal effect that threatens life as we know it.

Even the natural migration of animals and birds and marine life has changed. Weather patterns have changed. Our lives have changed as the coastal areas live in suspense of the next tsunami.

What then, is the answer to this increasing catastrophe? If we do not wake up and realise that the globe is slipping away from underneath our feet and that floods and drought, disaster and devastation are no longer the bane of third world countries and that Nature is democratic is her reprisals things will only get worse. In one day we see Pakistan tottering under a major storm; the picturesque India city of Leh torn asunder by landslides and globs of mud, a 260-kilometre chunk of Greenland’s glacier ripped apart and more fury waiting in the wings we have no choice but to accept that the time for the payoff is upon us: time, as Merellus said, to run to our houses and fall upon our knees and pray.