Mother Nature as terrorist

by Sandra Albers, columnist Kimberley Daily Bulletin
Dec. 31, 2004
And so, as the year 2004 draws to a close, it turns out the real weapon of mass destruction was Mother Nature.
Before I proceed, I have to credit that first line to my wise teenage daughter, who made the comment as we watched the TV broadcasts and listened to the radio reports, about the devastating earthquake/tsunami in Southeast Asia. It seemed every time we turned on the television or radio, the number of estimated deaths had risen yet again.
Wednesday’s Kimberley Daily Bulletin and Cranbrook Daily Townsman were reporting a death toll of more than 60,000. As I write this column, later Wednesday night, CBC Radio is estimating that more than 83,000 are dead. By the time you read this column, the number will have changed again, and may well top 100,000 before the counting is done.
There is, however, one crucial difference when comparing Mother Nature to a weapon of mass destruction. Destructive, man-made weapons, to lesser and greater degrees, are generally aimed at specific targets – Jews or Christians, godless infidels or religious fundamentalists, gypsies or homosexuals, Irish Catholics or Irish Protestants, cowboys or Indians. . .the list, sadly, goes on and on.
Mother Nature, by contrast, does not discriminate.
When the quake, followed by massive tidal waves rolling across the Indian Ocean, began to decimate the populations of a dozen countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, Mother Nature showed how cruel, but non-discriminatory, she can be.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were babes in arms, or elderly folk entering their twilight years.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were male or female.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were heterosexual, homosexual, or some grey area in between.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were tourists or long-time inhabitants of the affected countries.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were rich or poor.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were geniuses or of sub-normal intelligence.
Mother Nature didn’t care if the victims were disabled or in the pink of health.
And Mother Nature didn’t care a whit about the colour of the victims’ skins.
And so, as we approach the year 2005, I wonder if there is a lesson to be learned from the seemingly senseless death of tens of thousands of human beings. It’s a depressing way to end the old year, and it’s also distressing to think of Mother Nature in terms of vengeful destruction rather than in terms of a benevolent source of bounty that sustains life.
There may be some obvious lessons to be learned, such as implementing better early warning systems and the like so that future natural disasters don’t take quite such a high toll. But I’m wondering if there isn’t a more far-reaching lesson we can take from all this horror.
Mother Nature doesn’t discriminate, but human beings do, too many times and in too many ways. Mother Nature doesn’t, of course, hate human beings, and Mother Nature isn’t, of course, deliberately vengeful. Nature is just nature, after all. Things happen, and sometimes human beings get in the way.
The lesson may be that life is fragile.
The lesson may be that life is to be cherished, for whatever time is allotted.
The lesson may be that human nature should take a cue from Mother Nature and learn that we’re all the same when we’re born and we’re all the same when we die. It’s the in-between times that we need to work on.
Hurricanes and tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis, will always be part of the price of living on planet Earth. And they surely kill enough people.
Mother Nature doesn’t need our help in killing more.
Perhaps, in the end, the lesson is simple human kindness. We need it now, and we will need it more than ever in 2005.
To think that the loss of so many lives in one fell swoop doesn’t have to be entirely in vain may seem like a silly dream.
But I dream it anyway.
Happy New Year.
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