This posting is supposed to be outlining the past history of global change, in the flow continuing from the previous posting. But I changed my plan for an attempt to go into more detail on the issue of global change. This newly added part of the series will be put under the category of Thinking and Watching the Global Change as well.
A couple of days ago, I was watching evening news on TV showing the ever-growing damage from the earthquake in Nepal on April 26. Then it showed the continuing damage and anxiety of the Chilean people near Calbuco volcano which erupted on April 23. Then I expected some kind of analysis on these tectonic activity issues would be followed. But the TV news show ended there, after only giving reports of what happened.
Recent attitude of reporting on such natural disasters of Korean mass media- and of not the whole but a major part of mass media in the advanced countries including USA- shows exactly the same pattern in which modern West has responded to them. They either hawk their ‘conquest’ of the nature, or blame someone to have damaged the nature. Otherwise they just shut their mouth up after giving minimal reports on it.
But I don’t think this is the way to go. However tricky natural phenomenon may seem, the more we humans must make efforts to understand it fairly and fundamentally and to find out ways to live through it.
None of us, as humans living on this earth ever growing active, seems to be free of anxiety on the possible impact from the unexpected natural disasters. Even countries like Korea, located in hitherto relatively safe area from disasters caused by tectonic movement, begin to feel nervous of impending Baekdu volcano eruption and occasional earthquakes in the nearby marine areas. No need to say about the anxiety by people who have experienced large-scale event of such disasters, as can be seen in a Szechuan expert on the TV news show giving a very brief comment on the possible impact from the aftermath of Nepal earthquake.
Humans will fear more for something they don’t understand. I think it is time for all of us to pay more attention to this issue of growing frequency of natural disasters caused by tectonic movement. Also it has deep relation with the spirituality of our time, the original theme of this series of postings.
As can be seen in the graphs of the previous posting, the whole earth is in the phase of greatly accelerated changes. The earth crust, or the tectonic plate- the most basic structure of this earth biosphere under our feet, is no exception to this Great Acceleration. I would rather put it the other way round: accelerated change in the tectonic plate is causing all the other changes on earth ever accelerated.
Let’s have a look in the following graphs.
Left is a graph on large-scale earthquake occurrence showing the trend from 1974 to present and giving estimates towards 2047. Middle is showing the trend in volcano eruption of varying degrees from 1900 to 2000, the red lines showing the total. Right is on the trend of natural disaster occurrence from 1900 to 2004, red column showing the total including earthquake, tsunami, volcano eruption, etc., blue column showing the windstorms, including typhoon, hurricane, tornado, etc.
The green squares highlights the period from 1970s to present. Let’s compare it like the following.
We can understand that human society is moving almost exactly as the way tectonic plate is moving. And we can also understand, from the graph showing estimation towards 2047, that such trend of movements will keep going for quite a time being.
Why is this change?
What does it mean for us?
Changing Earth and People- Gina Lee's Archive on Global Change 