How Can We Love Nature?

So, doomsday is upon us, right? I mean, raging wildfires that are destroying whole cities, torrential rains resulting in landslides that have destroyed major highways and the first tropical storm warnings for Southern California since 1939, lower water levels in major reservoirs that supply water to large cities, oppressive heat, and humidity ( I live in the South), and now——-the cousin of the Murder Hornet is invading our country, and let’s not overlook the “vibrio vulnificus” (google that one)!; what does this all bode for the fall and winter? I mean, how much, Oh Lord, how much?

Nature owns us, it cannot be denied. Over the years, we have seen nature changing so many aspects of human life. Who ever imagined COVID-19 and the changes it would wreak in our economy, our ways of life, our employment situations, and our church-going practices? You name it and that disease has changed all of us.

How can we love nature? How can we show nature how important she is to all of us no matter where we live? Several people think that “Laudato SI” was a nice document that exaggerated the conditions of our climate and all things natural. It was written long before nature’s destruction now occurred, so how prophetic! The changes in our climate may not have caused what we see happening, but it certainly has exacerbated things. Science keeps trying to tell us why the climate is changing but as soon as there is any indication that human errors are part of the cause……well, that just can’t be right!

I remember some hot summers when I studied at Notre Dame when we would try to bribe the library guards with brownies if they let us stay in the AC after closing time. I remember snow up to my waist back in the 70s and my hometown neighborhoods where floods were inevitable. All of this was documented, and shown to climate experts who wrote reports and sent to government agents for the environment, but who would have thought things could be worse?

The good news is that we have not given up. Yes, there are still the deniers, the doubters, those who continue to ignore the human actions that have contributed to what we see happening around us. Human nature is what it is, we must struggle with that. For most of us, it is hard to imagine being without anything that nature has always provided. Let your imaginations run wild and make sure that some things nature provides for us will continue to be there when we need them.

File drawers are full of them. Our country’s leaders seem to think America is stronger than nature and so consistently downplay the need for climate control in the face of its own EPA studies. So maybe when the end comes for real the last ones standing will be those same scientists who can say “Told ya’ so”!