the hits keep on coming 5

If insurance company records are to be trusted, the cost of weather-related damages is increasing dramatically year by year. 

["On a collision course? We're heading in that direction"]

And based on figures related to global economic production of wealth in the late 1990s, there will likely come a day in many of our lifetimes when global wealth will not be able to pay for the cost of damages to our surroundings. (The chapter about the relationship between weather-related damages and global economic wealth in Dr. R. Nielsen's book, The Little Green Handbook, was very interesting in a "look at that wicked car-crash" sort-of-way). 

["the cost of damage is increasing rapidly"]

One day it will become apparent to us all that we cannot produce wealth fast enough to pay for the rapidly rising costs of extreme weather events related to climate instability, climate change or global warming. In other words, we'll learn we cannot out-muscle Mother Nature and discover that our unsustainable production of goods based upon the almost uncontrollable burning of fuels will not build a better future for all.

A few years ago I came across a true story that illustrated the inevitable cost of trying to out-muscle the natural environment. The story is 12 pages long and appears as part of the sixth chapter of a book entitled Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink (Adventures in America's South West) by Tom Miller. And as I read the story for the first, second and third time, a movie based upon its actual events played inside the theater of my mind.

If I turned the story into a dramatic production, it would go something like this -

Death by Misadventure: The Screenplay - Part 1

The movie begins with a black screen and the crisp, clear sounds of B. B. King singing some heart-rending blues number like “I’ve Up and Lost Everythin’ for the Tenth Time”, and as he sings a hand-drawn cartoon will slowly appear, a few pixels at a time (dramatic, eh?), and fully come into view just as B. B. belts out his last verse:

Oh, I can’t,
Oh, no I can’t 
I’m tellin’ you right now that I can’t
You hear what I’m sayin’ that I can't?
I can’t belieeeve that I been sooooooooo stupid.

[cartoon at tabtoon@telus.net]

More of Death by Misadventure to follow.

Photos by GH

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