When I first started reading this chapter, I immediately thought, “finally humans- Europeans, Indians etc.- aren’t the ones to blame. It’s all natures fault!” Sure enough, McCully opened the debate as to whether these weather shifts are natural or a result global warming, which humans are in part responsible for. Change is an inevitable aspect of nature, however, human activity has been escalating the rate of change. It is not just human activity that is the problem, but our very existence that is throwing off nature. Now that we’ve come to this realization, where do we go from here? After all, “Unfortunately, a change in thinking [does] not [necessarily] translate into effective actions” (158). Just because we recognize there is a problem, and have identified ourselves as the source of the problem, it is not enough to stop there. Further action must be taken.
McCully suggests reflecting back on the past – what worked and more so what did not work. Even with all its changes, weather by “nature” (pun intended) has somewhat natural patterns for its “exceptions.” Although McCully criticizes humans’ attachment to technology, as some sort of god that can heal all, it is important to thoughtfully take advantage of technology and all the data it provides us with. With technology, we can efficiently project the past onto the future. For example, this book was published in 2007, five years prior to Hurricane Sandy. Yet at the time the book was written, McCully was able to predict such a storm would badly hit Long Island, based on calculations of the tidal surge and analysis of past storms.
However, one of the downfalls to technology is that when we depend too much on it is easy to overlook simple conclusions. This proved true, for example, in West Hampton Beach, where residents insisted on building homes and groins, even after they told it was bound to fail them. As expected, the Halloween northeaster 1991 and three northeasters of 1992-1993 destroyed their beaches and blew 32 million government dollars. Science or technology was not needed to avoid such chaos, just some common sense.
