God Save Us!

They’re calling it a five-hundred year flood but it’s the second one in a mere fifteen years. And this flood comes on the heels of a hundred-year drought. Last year, crops burned; this year they’re drowning. Up and down the Mississippi river, new high water marks are being etched on what few trees remain in the floodplains that once gave the river a place to go when it carried more water than its normal banks would hold. Those floodplains, once filled with potholes and flood water-absorbing vegetation, have since been levied off and drained for crop production and riverfront communities. The largest and mightiest river in the continent has been channelized, dammed, and forced between earthen embankments so we can grow more and more corn and beans. Land that once sequestered and buffered flood water now lies barren and laden with chemicals.

When levies broke and land flooded during the first five-hundred year flood, our answer was to build taller levies. The river responded by reaching new heights and blowing out taller levies. And yet we act surprised and pity the poor river communities built in the flood plains. “How can this be happening again?” we ask. Surely it has nothing to do with our propensity for attempting to beat the earth into submission so we can feed the world and, now, fuel our cars which, in turn, pour more pollutants into the atmosphere. Yet we refuse to accept that our actions cause detrimental reactions from nature. Wake up people!

I’ve heard people blame God (or whatever deity they choose to believe in) for the natural disasters we keep experiencing. Maybe God is mad at us but if that’s the case, how can you hold that against him (or her, or them...)? How would you react if a group of hoodlums vandalized a church? Say they took livestock manure and poured it all over the floors, burned the pews, relieved themselves in the holy water, and took all the money from that morning’s offering. Say they did this in broad daylight, in front of the youth choir, and then when they were apprehended they couldn’t understand why they were being punished. Imagine the outrage from the local community! Imagine your own outrage. It would almost be inconceivable how those kids could defile a holy place such as that, right?

But the fact is that the church those kids defiled was simply a building built by man. Those kids could have burned that church to the ground (imagine the outrage then!) and it could have been rebuilt in a short amount of time. Yet here we are in the conservative, God-fearing Midwest, pouring inordinate amounts of chemicals – manure included – to land we’ve stripped of native vegetation, levied off, drained, overcropped or overgrazed for decades, paved and developed. We crop every inch of land we can get our plow dipped into and pay no mind to the New Jersey-sized dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that has developed as a result of all the chemical and sediment the Midwest is sending downstream every year. Every day, we’re defiling that which was built by God. Is it no wonder that we’re being punished for it? Why are crop-destroying natural disasters such a surprise? Do you see the parallel here? When are we going to wake up and realize that we can only beat the earth into submission without repercussions for so long?

A couple record setting floods and a hundred-year drought all in fifteen years should be indication enough that its time to start respecting the earth that we rely upon to supply us the necessities of life. If even half of what the science community says is true about climate change, we’re poised to witness weather catastrophes unlike any we’ve ever seen before. Be skeptical all you want on the subject but the proof that things are in bad shape is right before our eyes: The west is experiencing more wildfires with greater intensity than ever before; This winter, major tornadoes touched down in the south while the north recorded record snowfalls; the Midwest fried for the last two years and has record-breaking floods this year; Hurricanes and tropical storms are pummeling the coasts more than ever (the first hurricane this year - Bertha - was the longest-lasting on record). Both northern and southern Ice caps are melting so much that there is a 50/50 chance the north pole will be ice-free this summer.

The time to act is now. We must put the earth’s health at the forefront of our minds and act as stewards of this planet rather than conquerors of it. We can’t take and take from this earth and not give anything back and expect it to keep providing. It is ignorant to think that it will. Look at it this way: If climate change isn’t occurring and this generation steps up and develops an ecologically sustainable society, we will have done nothing worse than leave our children with a better life. But if we do nothing and find out that climate change is real, then we’ll leave our children with nothing more than famine, floods, droughts, fires, social disorder, war, and a planet on its way to being uninhabitable by humans. The choice seems obvious. If you want to serve a God - and keep him happy - let’s stop defiling that which he built us and start respecting the earth.