Whenever we mess with nature, bad things happen
Last month when I took a trip to Colorado and New Mexico to hike to the top of those states’ respective highest points, the absolutely ferocious winds at the summit of each of them conveyed a vivid message to me without a single spoken word, but also in no uncertain terms: You’re not supposed to spend a lot of time here, so don’t.
And I didn’t. I took my obligatory photos and, less than a half hour later in each instance, began my descent.
Speaking of photos: Don’t let the one above fool you. Despite the deep-blue, cloudless sky, totally packed snow, and crystal-clear views of distant peaks, the gusts were enough to take anyone’s breath away. On my final few steps to the top, I encountered a gentleman from Houston, Texas, who said he couldn’t stick around there because despite being a big guy, he felt like he was going to blow off the mountain and that it had been a “humbling experience” for him.
Imagine tackling a peak that’s really high, like Denali. Or Everest. (For the record, I have no aspirations for either.)
It got me to thinking of how much humanity has always sought to tame and trivialize, for its own purposes, the wild and beautiful earth over which we’ve somehow been given dominion. Of course, I did these hikes purely for selfish reasons: I wanted to cure my cabin fever following a year of pandemic quarantine, I wanted to see some amazing views, I wanted to take some interesting pictures, and most of all, I wanted to prove to myself that I was still physically able.
Nothing altruistic about any of that. It was all about me and what I wanted, just as it so often is when we interact with nature.
I went quite early in the season, mind you—early June—because I had been operating under the assumption that much of the summer would be terrible for wildfires in those states and beyond. If you pay attention to current meteorological conditions across the country, you’ll know that most of the American West is currently besieged by drought. Here’s the current map, where the darkest shade of red denotes “exceptional drought”:
Squarely in the center of those parched landscapes are cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, both of which are huge, sprawling centers of human population, activity, and excessive consumption in natural environments that were never meant to accommodate any of those things. They just weren’t. And you don’t have to be a scientist to realize this.
Just go visit those places—I’ve been to both of them—and like the relentlessly assaulting winds made clear to me on the mountaintops, you’ll understand that places like those just aren’t suitable for large-scale human habitation. If you do go there, you’re meant to be a visitor—not a permanent resident.
For starters, they’re deserts. Even when there is no drought, there’s not nearly enough water to be sustainable long-term for a population of millions of people. Place either of them in a state of extreme or exceptional drought, and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that both of those cities could be ghost towns in our lifetimes, because life will no longer be supportable there.
Yet Phoenix, Las Vegas, and so many other places like them are symbolic of how the human race tries to bend nature to its own will. Indeed, in a perfectly unadulterated context, hardly any of Nevada or Arizona would have any population at all. Human inventions like air conditioning and the automobile have prompted those locales — and, let’s not kid ourselves, most of the American South in general — to swell with unsustainable growth in the modern era.
Seriously, try living in Atlanta, Nashville, or Houston in July or August without an air-conditioned home or car. I mean, if you’re poor, I suppose you have no choice. But the reason those are veritable hot spots—pardon the pun—is because we bulldoze the environment and then insulate ourselves from it for our own comfort and profit.
Speaking of which, air conditioning itself is an assault on the natural rhythm. As this recent Time article lays out quite well, the refrigerants used for artificial cooling contribute mightily to global warming even after the discontinuation of ozone-depleting Freon. Ironically, during extreme heat waves, air conditioning use can actually cause higher death rates, because it amplifies the urban island heat effect, threatening those who aren’t privileged enough to spend their days and nights in air-conditioned offices or homes. Also ironically, the prolific use of artificial indoor climate control in places like the American Southwest is probably contributing greatly to the excessive heat and drought conditions that afflict that region as we speak.
On a separate note, I’ve been reading extensively about the recent tragedy in Florida involving the sudden collapse of a condominium building near Miami Beach, in which possibly as many as 145 people were killed (or at least that’s how many are either confirmed dead or still missing as of the time of this writing). There have been many speculations as to the degree rising sea levels might have contributed to the deterioration of this oceanfront building, but one particular Washington Post column stood out to me: It reminds us that virtually the entire state of Florida is today yet another example of how human activity has transformed a place into something utterly removed and unrecognizable from what Mother Nature intended it to be:
Super-populated Florida is an invention of modern manufacture, an intricate machinery of canals, pumping stations, dredges, reclamations, pilings, piers, landfills and drains. Florida — especially South Florida — is built on former wetlands, former sandbars, former Everglades. And everywhere haunted by water.
…Original Florida asserts itself via mold and mildew, via snakes and insects, via seepage and weepage and outright floods. Rising sea levels are tipping the balance against the buildings, because now there is more water than ever to trap, pump, divert or drain.
This author makes a pretty compelling case—without ever saying it—that Florida might have been better off simply preserved as an enormous national park, as just one tiny corner of it currently is in the Everglades.
Look, the residents of this building and their loved ones have experienced a horrible, unspeakable loss—one that I can’t possibly imagine—and none of this is a critique of them in any way. It’s a much broader and more general admonition that humanity can’t simply continue to manipulate and abuse the natural environment and created order without inviting increasingly dire consequences.
Witness the recently brutal and historic heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, an entirely opposite corner of the continent from where the rubble of this Florida condominium now lies and a region that holds a special place in my heart because I used to live there. No one single person there is to blame for the climate tragedy we’re witnessing in real time, either, but all are and will be affected by it.
Temperatures in the Hoh Rainforest of Olympic National Park in Washington—one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States—climbed well above 100 degrees in a secluded spot on the edge of the Pacific Ocean that is supposed to be cool, damp, misty, and moss-draped year-round. The iconic glaciers of Tahoma (Mount Rainier) have been prematurely exposed to summer heat following the rapid melt of protective snowpack amid the record-breaking temperatures. A bit farther north, a tiny town in British Columbia set a new record for Canada’s highest-ever recorded temperature, shortly before it was obliterated by wildfire.
All of this is taking place in a corner of the continent that some thought would be a “refuge” from climate change. Nope.
And it all points to one inexorable conclusion: It doesn’t matter where you live or what role you play in this (or what role you believe you play in it, because we all have some culpability); all will ultimately be impacted by humanity’s inclination to harness the wild beauty of the planet for its own convenience, comfort, power, privilege, pleasure, and profit.
It doesn’t matter where you live or what role you play in this…all will ultimately be impacted by humanity’s inclination to harness the wild beauty of the planet for its own convenience, comfort, power, privilege, pleasure, and profit.
There is an overriding natural rhythm to the universe we inhabit. If we were to live in harmony with that rhythm — in connection with rather than opposition to the elements of the planet that is ours — we might begin to discover the wisdom behind this original design, and benefit from it.
Indeed, this planet is able to support life abundantly, but it can only do so sustainably when its ecosystems are in balance. They are not, and it’s because of human activity. Mother Nature has ways of warning us not to transgress that balance: If a landscape is bone-dry and scorching hot, or if it’s an impenetrable sea-level swamp, or if it’s a high altitude that’s constantly subject to punishing winds, it’s probably not a good spot to try to develop. But too often humanity doesn’t listen. We devise artificial solutions and deplete natural resources to make the earth be exactly what we want it to be.
The effects of our stubbornness as a species may manifest as killer heat waves, or floods, or wildfires that wipe out whole towns, or perhaps even a collapsed residential building on a sandbar that the ocean is trying to reclaim with escalating force as sea levels rise.
But one fact should be unmistakable: The more we disrupt the natural rhythm and balance of this planet, the more dire consequences we should prepare to face.
