As we repeatedly hear that present challenges are ‘unprecedented’ it’s important to understand that they are not. Human life has always been full of great risk, every day in every way. Hoping for the best, while always thinking, planning and protecting–as much as possible–for what can go wrong, is the rational course. In good times, the extent to which we set aside and preserve resources for future needs and emergencies is often the difference between catastrophe and resilience during the inevitable challenges that come. The pandemic of 2020 underlines these lessons, as do centuries of life on earth.
The most extraordinary geological event that few have ever heard about took place 205 years ago this spring, dramatically changing the earth’s climate and the course of human history forever. Read the incredible story of how the largest volcanic eruption in human history changed the 19th century as much as Napolean:
With the help of modern scientific instruments and old-fashioned archival detective work, the Tambora 1815 eruption can be conclusively placed among the greatest environmental disasters ever to befall mankind. The floods, droughts, starvation, and disease in the three years following the eruption stem from the volcano’s effects on weather systems, so Tambora stands today as a harrowing case study of what the human costs and global reach might be from runaway climate change.
…Now, in the 21st century, as we begin to appreciate more profoundly the interdependence of human and natural systems, the lesson of a 200-year-old climate emergency may finally be learned: a changing climate changes everything.
