When it Snows and Blows
Every once in a while Mother Nature likes to remind us that she really does have the upper hand. A drought here, a flood there, the occasional mud slide or earth quake. Sometimes she gets really serious and throws together a hurricane or two, or sends a tsunami on shore to keep us on our toes. I just heard the other day that all of Yellowstone park is sitting on top of a "super volcano" that is due to erupt anytime between this second and about 100 years from now, but they really have no way to know Mother Nature's schedule for sure.
We humans are starting to get slightly better are forecasting weather - at least that weather that will effect us in the next 24 hours or so, but we remain woefully ignorant and argumentative about what effect we may be playing on the weather. Are we getting warmer as a planet or is it just a cycle of sun spots? Are the polar ice caps just undergoing a natural ebb and tide, or are the Polar Bears just going to have to develop flippers due to all the pollution that we have thrown into our environment.
I do know one thing however, Mother Nature dealt us a wonderful blow this last week. There have been very few true blizzards in the last several years, but the one that roared through on Tuesday was impressive - ten to twenty four inches of snow and winds of up to 45 miles per hour. Listening to the roar outside my windows that night was enough to make me want to hide underground like so many other hibernating animals this time of year. Keeping warm in a 100 year old farm house when the wind blows hard can be a bit of a challenge but with enough wood for t
he wood burning furnace, we were all fairly snug. Unfortunately, it was all over too quickly. Personally, I could have had it go on for a while longer. I love the feeling of being snow bound (as long as I am snow bound at home, anyway).
Food typically isn't an issue because there are always meat and eggs to be had around here, and electricity may come and go, but as long as we have books to read and a supply of candles to light, we are good to go. We spent a rather nice three days without electricity a few years ago following an ice storm and I was almost sad to see the lights come back on. That ice storm, however, prompted the purchase of a generator for future emergencies such as the blizzard that ripped through here this week. Ironically, the very purchase of a generator has been good insurance against ever needing one again.
The weather has started to take some interesting turns in the last few years. It doesn't take a lot of expertise to look at weather trends and rainfall averages to notice that there are changes afoot. They may be nothing more than the natural cycle of things, but they are changes none the less. Here is the part that gets me though....we will spend any amount of money on research and argue tooth and nail to prove our hypothesis on the issue of global warming, but all of that, in my mind, is a moot point. We are essentially arguing about whether or not it is okay to pollute the environment. The answer to that question is simple, and should be simple to everyone without all the arguing.
Let's simplify this a little, bring it down to an understandable scale. Picture your house as the entire world, your kids are inhabitants of other countries unlike your own. Now answer me this....is it okay to continuously dump your garbage (no matter how "clean" it is) in their rooms and they dump theirs in yours? Personally living in a relatively small house with 6 other people ,this very idea sounds all too familiar and I assure you, it isn't pleasant.
This is what we do to the earth, our one and only home, but we pass it off as "not our problem" because the world is so big and beautiful and seemingly endless. As we pass 7 billion people living in this house of earth, we are only starting to realize how finite it really is. So, regardless of whether or not we are causing the temperature of the earth to change because of our pollution is irrelevant. Stop the pollution problem and we automatically resolve others as well. It just makes sense to reduce the amount that we pollute whether or not is does
anything to the environment.
It seems to me to make good sense to find other ways to produce en
ergy - ways that don't involve drilling deep under water for oil or fracturing the ground for natural gas, both of which lead to some serious pollution as we have already seen. Reading articles and listening to leaders of the country talk about different
incentives and
acts that may be put into place if only they can flog through the fog of partisan politics makes me completely crazy. There are times that I wish we could simply declare
war on energy and pollution - we seem to be able to declare war on everything else without due cause. The President can declare war without Congresses approval (at least for a time)......what's he waiting for? This is one war that would actually benefit everyone.
As a nation of war we have been know to mobilize all units to produce tanks and bullets, planes and guns at a moment's notice. It only took a few months to fully mobilize at the out break of WWII - car factories changed production almost overnight and the entire populace was fully on board to do what needed to be done. What happened to that spirit? Where is "Rosie the Recycler?" Now we are much more inclined to let the ridiculous politicians feebly attempt to pass some legislation that may or may not ever make it out of committee. I have complete confidence that if an actual "call to arms" were made to the American people to find a way to only use renewable resources for our energy within the next 5 years, we could do it. We simply choose not to. It is very depressing. Gas is still too cheap and easy to come by and the large fossil fuel companies still control too much of the government.
So what to do while the Leviathan still lives and breathes its toxic smoke into our atmosphere?
Good question. We have implemented a lot of small steps as I am sure most people have. Cloth grocery bags, recycling anything and everything that can be recycled, smaller car to increase fuel efficiency. At some point you think, "Am I really making any kind of difference, " but I have to believe that even if we don't have a zero carbon footprint, at least we are doing what we can to minimize it. I plant the seeds in my kids' heads of a day when all the energy may come from wind, solar and geothermal energy sources and their cars will run on electricity produced from these sources. I encourage them to think about the future that they would like to see even as I apologize that my own generation has been so terribly apathetic about making it a reality. Sometimes, you have to imagine something to be possible in order for it to happen.
We woke up on Wednesday morning after the wind had finally died
down, to a world that had been completely transformed. Snow drifts 6 feet high, snow sculpted into unusual shapes and folds, hills transformed into flat lands and flat lands transformed into hills of snow. It is amazing to me the changes that can be wrought with a little wind and I find myself perpetually on the side of Mother Nature. I know that no matter how much we humans screw up this world, one way or another she will be there to remind us that she, after all, is still in control. Blow on Mother Nature, blow.
Every once in a while Mother Nature likes to remind us that she really does have the upper hand. A drought here, a flood there, the occasional mud slide or earth quake. Sometimes she gets really serious and throws together a hurricane or two, or sends a tsunami on shore to keep us on our toes. I just heard the other day that all of Yellowstone park is sitting on top of a "super volcano" that is due to erupt anytime between this second and about 100 years from now, but they really have no way to know Mother Nature's schedule for sure. 
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