I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of the most hysterical climate-change greenies are based in urban regions. A big city represents the heaviest human footprint there is, something that misleads people into believing that man can ride herd on nature. In fact, we humans are always scrabbling along, hanging by our fingernails and hoping for the best. Whether it’s earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, or just inexorable greenery (e.g., kudzu, every jungle), when nature gets a head of steam, we’re tossed about like ants after a careless human foot kicked their anthill. And surely the most stunning and destructive example of nature’s power is a volcano. That’s why volcanic activity in Antarctica is a bit unnerving.
As the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1982 demonstrated, a mid-sized eruption can rewrite the local environment. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it buried Pompeii and Herculaneum for almost 1,500 years and killed an estimated 2,000 people.
