Even now, me seeing the demons of Climate Change, seeing the fire— here in the west, especially — changing the landscape and hearing of a flood in the past reminds me of how small we are, of how tenuous our grip on this earth of how fragile our existence is.

Near the Southern Part of the Flood area.

Of course, all this brings up that easy Biblical reference and comparison I mentioned earlier — flood and fire and Noah’s sign. Biblical terms — like many terms from “holy” texts — are always deemed apocalyptic or at least up to the task of being able to describe such conditions.

God talking to humanity, or at least some wisdom greater than a single person talking to humanity.

And even if the millennia of experience some of these religions used to filter in some wisdom is apparent, they are, ultimately, provincial Bronze age accumulations of human experiences — the empires they dealt with, the desert and those environmental conditions they had to stew in, notwithstanding.

In other words they are not in fact up to the task of describing the worst-case scenarios that climate change and the Anthropocene predict. Nevermind what the middle of the road predictions are. Nevermind how destructive our weapons or lifestyles are.