Its not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on a region that has experienced years of environmental abuse.  The Gulf Coast evolved over millennia as the terrain and ecology that welcomed the renewal that came with the tropical storms, recovery was rapid, and drainage was natural.  For tens of thousands of years people lived in harmony with the cycles of nature, with the storms, with hot summers, and warm winters.  But the ecology has been violently impacted since the European conquest of the area.  The Europeans came to this place with a practice of systematic misuse of the land and waterways.  Cities are built where cities will be destroyed, and the land is so paved over it floods, destroying habit for plants and wildlife.  The destruction is not the result of human impact, it is the result of the impact of humans with a destructive worldview, people whose real religion involved manipulation and violence against "Mother Nature."

There is an awakening to what we have done, and more and more people seek a new relation with the earth.  Meanwhile, the Bush administration is working overtime to embarrass our people in the international arena.  The latest bit of stupidity involves an upcoming draft statement of principles to be agreed to by 175 heads of state and government attending a Sept. 12 United Nations summit, devoted to poverty and U.N. reorganization.  The draft contains a statement of "core values" which contains the following language "respect for human rights, freedom, equality, tolerance, multilateralism and respect for nature."  The United States wants the delete "nature" from the list of things to respect.

Ric Grenell of the U.S. mission to the United Nations said the phrase is "too broad a subject, and if we had to define the multiple ways the U.S. government respects nature, the document would be too long and way of its original intent."  Other delegates to the U.N. were puzzled by this explanation,  Yuri Fedotov, a Russian diplomat said "Nature is something which needs a lot of respect."  One would think that the Russian would not have to say that, but given the U.S. delegation he gets the prize for prophetic utterance.