If you've got a choice between two worst-case scenarios: a planet whose atmosphere is wrecked by giant volcanoes, and a planet whose atmosphere was wrecked by Exxon-Mobil, hey, there's no question that first one is vastly preferable. Natural disasters, as opposed to human-inflicted ones, can actually improve our morale.
I mean, look at the warm, snuggly, aren't-we-wonderful reaction to the mayhem that hit the shores of Tamil Nadu, compared to the who-us, no-way, talk-to-my-lawyer reaction that still surrounds Bhopal.
When a giant tidal wave hits Asia, Bush pulls his own dad out of mothballs, but when the Arctic melts from climate change, permafrost forests fall over drunkenly and Eskimo villages slide into the thawing muck, everybody in the Republican Party looks all pie--eyed, quotes the Bible and blames hurricanes on lesbians.
We're doing practically nothing useful about climate change and it's a steadily mounting disaster. I do think the next decades are going to see a whole lot of paramilitary Operations Other Than War in reaction to astonishingly bad weather. So, well, an event like the tsunami gives us the chance to refine our disaster-response chops. They could use the improvement.
