单项选择题
| One year ago we stared aghast at images
of the Southeast Asian tsunami. Video cameras taken on vacation to record the
everyday pleasures of the beach were suddenly turned to quivering utility as
they documented the panic and mayhem of a natural disaster. Who can forget the
disbelief in the recorded voices This can’t be happening to us. Human beings
are never prepared for natural disasters. There is a kind of optimism built into
our species that seems to prefer to live in the comfortable present rather than
confront the possibility of destruction, It may happen, we seem to believe, but
not now, and not to us. Mount Vesuvius has been erupting since historical
records began. The eruption of A. D. 79 both destroyed Pompeii and preserved it
for posterity. Pliny the Younger starkly recorded the details in prose that can
still be read as a scientific ac-count. Yet houses are still being erected today
at vulnerable sites around Vesuvius, in the face of the geological inevitability
of further eruptions. Disasters are described as "acts of God". Whenever a natural catastrophe occurs, old questions resurface. How can we reconcile tragedy with the idea of a beneficent God And with that question, the notion of punishment is never far behind. If classical religions were wont to attribute disasters to the wrath of the gods, even in this scientific age the old explanations still have their attractions. And who might not sneakily still wish to believe that a saint could intercede on our behalf But there is another kind of disaster. Many scientists think that the Gulf Coast hurricanes may be a symptom of climate change. Carbon emissions have been accelerating more rapidly within a generation or two: this is not the result of some creeping plate indifferent to the fate of humans; this is our responsibility. However, there is still the same, almost willful blindness to the dangers of climate change; after all, the sun still rises, the crops still ripen--why worry Geology tells us that there have been "green-house worlds" in the distant past. These have been times when seas flooded over continents. Even modest sea-level rises would spell the end of densely populated areas of the world like Bangladesh. In such a case, invoking the God to look after us for the best is just pie in the sky. These are not "acts of God" but acts of man. We should be ashamed of the consequences of our own willing blindness. |