Irma is too good a crisis to waste: Focus on climate collapse

THE scale of the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma, following so quickly on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, is startling. 

Despite the carnage and tremendous human suffering, one aspect of the catastrophe deserves particular consideration, especially in a small, peripheral country where every city is built on an estuary.

The government-ordered evacuation of more than seven million people — more than the population of the island of Ireland — is a sobering reminder of humanity’s subsidiary place in the grand scheme of things. Irma’s threat was so great that an official warned that staying on the low-lying coral cay islands off Florida’s south coast, was “almost like suicide”. We may imagine ourselves the master species but we still play second fiddle to forces we cannot control but do influence, even if in a way we do not completely understand.