Superstorm Sandy hit last week and sparked renewed discussion, energy and interest in climate change. What is it about storms that hit our cities that so mesmerises us? With so many more violent and destructive weather events over the last few years, what is it about this one that makes us stop and think?
“We are awed and humbled by nature’s destructive power” was the way Obama chose to frame superstorm Sandy in the lead up to today’s election.
Unfortunately, when we’re awed by something we tend to be a bit open-mouthed and flat-footed. Watching footage of the storm damage, I felt my mouth drop open as I recognised the street where I stayed in New York just last Christmas; the cars stacked on top of one another like they’d just crashed at the end of a Hot Wheels session; the water rising up to the windows; the trashcans and flowerpots drifting by along a ruined Sesame Street.
Haiti, utterly devastated by the storm, has barely registered — instead we watch scenes of the American East coast that seem already familiar. Captured footage of Sandy seems to reference films; we’ve seen these images before in great and terrible movies like 2012, A Perfect Storm and The Poseidon Adventure.
One of the reasons these images are so powerful and have sparked more climate change discussion than much bigger storms, is not simply because they show the destruction of places we know well and see as permanent features of our Western world. It’s also because the image of buildings being overwhelmed by water is psychologically powerful.
Think of the dreams you have where your house is partly underwater, where you find a huge body of water where there was once land, where water invades your car or sweeps you up off the ground.
While dreams have particular and personal meanings, these dreams are often a response to a life where the concrete and the material have become too important. They point to the part of life we often choose to ignore: the environmental and the spiritual. They remind us that our lives are fragile and that what we build can always be torn down. They remind us of what we don’t want to know is true. They ask us to connect our actions to their deeper consequences.
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