I saw that interview too. It was dreadful. But for real, for once, not some cow in a 2005 SUV wailing about the gas prices.
Regarding the a-personality of nonhuman disaster, I too find it appealing in its nonhumanness, but I have a disquieting coda. If you've ever run into Bill McKibben's book *The End of Nature*, you'll have encountered the thesis that global climate change means that the weather is no longer just "the weather", that nonhuman thing from which everyone suffers and beneath which everyone is equal. He calls it "the end of nature" because he feels that climate was the last thing we hadn't affected, the last thing that was really "nature" and not "human" (if you buy that dichotomy), but that now we have. And, of course, a textbook symptom of global warming is more precipitation falling in violent weather events, more violent weather events overall, more tornadoes, more blizzards, more hurricanes, worse hurricanes. National news never points this out, for reasons which are probably obvious--always El Nino, always "worst hurricane season on record", never global climate change--but it's what the projection looks like, and, so far, what anecdotal evidence bears out.
So I'd like Katrina better if I could be sure we hadn't ourselves created or strengthened her. If I could be sure the man in the interview hadn't had his wife ripped out of his hands because of the neighbor's SUV, or my AC, or my institution's emissions. And I can't.
--Cat (different one. Lurker. Still liking the 'blog. Thanks for all of it.)
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branchandroot
More katrina
Date: 2005-08-30 02:50 pm (UTC)Regarding the a-personality of nonhuman disaster, I too find it appealing in its nonhumanness, but I have a disquieting coda. If you've ever run into Bill McKibben's book *The End of Nature*, you'll have encountered the thesis that global climate change means that the weather is no longer just "the weather", that nonhuman thing from which everyone suffers and beneath which everyone is equal. He calls it "the end of nature" because he feels that climate was the last thing we hadn't affected, the last thing that was really "nature" and not "human" (if you buy that dichotomy), but that now we have. And, of course, a textbook symptom of global warming is more precipitation falling in violent weather events, more violent weather events overall, more tornadoes, more blizzards, more hurricanes, worse hurricanes. National news never points this out, for reasons which are probably obvious--always El Nino, always "worst hurricane season on record", never global climate change--but it's what the projection looks like, and, so far, what anecdotal evidence bears out.
So I'd like Katrina better if I could be sure we hadn't ourselves created or strengthened her. If I could be sure the man in the interview hadn't had his wife ripped out of his hands because of the neighbor's SUV, or my AC, or my institution's emissions. And I can't.
--Cat (different one. Lurker. Still liking the 'blog. Thanks for all of it.)