On the tail end of the hottest week of the hottest recorded Summer in history, the Verdugo Hills, a few miles West, are burning (La Tuna Fire).  A few thousand miles away, Harvey, soon to be followed by Irma–what’s with this habit of humanizing hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, floods–have dumped, or will dump, ‘unprecedented’, ‘catastrophic’, I even heard someone say ‘biblical’ amounts of water on the land. Are we being punished? Have the gods finally had enough of our stupidity and decided to teach us a lesson? Afraid not. Too easy.

Humanity right now is like the hiker who finishes a bottle of water and a protein bar and tosses the wrapper and bottle into the bushes next to the trail. They might hesitate, even feel an inkling of remorse, but ultimately they’re thinking “one bottle and one wrapper can’t possibly destroy the environment.” They look over their shoulders to make sure no one saw them loiter and hastily walk away, thinking they got away with it, one more time. But did they?

Think of it this way: one theory is that the recent presidential election was decided by confident voters who opted NOT to vote, because there was no way…, it was inconceivable…, all the polls showed…Did they get away with it?

 

 

Walking Project 032_late summer blooms – altadena crest from chris worland on Vimeo.