Mother Nature Still Calls the Shots

As humans we're at the top of the evolutionary tree. We have learnt to manipulate nature to serve our own purposes, whether it's drilling for oil in the middle of the ocean, mining coal from the depths of the earth, clearing forest to provide land for farming, over fishing the oceans to feed our expanding population or culling other species to control their numbers.

Let's face it humans have a pretty high opinion of ourselves and there are many that feel it's our "god given" right to extract what we want from nature without giving much consideration to what we should be putting back.

But the recent severe weather across parts of Australia, including the awful flooding in Queensland and Victoria, drought in WA and severe thunderstorms across the north of South Australia have proven that mother nature still has the upper hand.

Along with millions of other Australians, I held my breath as Tropical Cyclone Yassi ominously lingered off the North Queensland Coast.

My heart went out to the people of Queensland who have already suffered so much at the hand of the weather gods.

Seeing Yassi cross the coast, I felt a real sense of helplessness - in fact the whole country could do nothing but sit back and watch with a sickening fascination.

We have satellite imagery, radar and computer models which can now forecast storms and give people warning - which no doubt has saved countless lives.

But, despite our super technology, there's not a damned thing we can do about stopping Mother Nature's fury.

We are powerless to stop the devastating impacts of intense La Nina or El Nino weather patterns which cause flooding rain or devastating droughts.

We're not even two months into the year, and already one side of our country has been hit by record breaking floods while the other half is tinder dry, and struggling with severe bushfires.

Some would say it's climate change at work, while others would argue that these are weather patterns that may have been experienced at some other time in Earths history, but no-one was here to record it.

Either way, let's hope Mother Nature calms herself and gives everyone a chance to take a breath. Yes, we do know she still calls the shots and yes, we should respect her.