Connect the dots

With deadly hurricanes slamming Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, tragic earthquakes in Mexico and hundreds of western wildfires now lowering air quality in our own region, it’s hard to know what more can be said to convince skeptics that the earth really is in violent revolt against human abuse of the environment.

Hurricane Maria has already left Puerto Rico without electricity, maybe for months. How much damage can a society absorb or afford?

It may seem as if we in the heartland occupy a sweet spot away from the multiplying natural disasters surrounding us. Of course one “once-in-athousand-years” storm, becoming more and more frequent these days, could change that fast. And it may not be long before we, with our Midwestern love of uncrowdedness and relative weather safety, become host to thousands of climate refugees from the Southern and Coastal states.

Psychologists have noticed that deep anxieties are seeping into those of us safely inland who have been viewing the continual media coverage of these catastrophic events. On a subconscious level we know that — the relative stability of our particular region notwithstanding — our fates really are entangled in this new age of disaster.

There’s no exact cause-and-effect relationship between the new hurricanes and climate change, but it’s an established fact that warmer ocean temperatures contribute to the formation of these monster storms. How many lives lost and homes and neighborhoods destroyed will it take for us to connect the dots? And aren’t those in power who willfully and irresponsibly ignore the increasing climate chaos guilty of criminal negligence, or worse?

Thomas R. Smith River Falls