THE ANTHROPOCENE IS A DROP IN THE BUCKET

In 2011, Japan and Virginia observed their worst earthquakes on record. Records get broken all the time. This should not be surprising because records are an account of what we have observed, which is a small part of what has actually occurred. Geologic processes have been occurring for billions of years.

There is no way we can anticipate the limits of severe natural hazards, let alone protect ourselves from them. We have been accurately recording natural events for only a few hundred years. We have not been observing earth processes long enough to know their real limits. We tend to expect that what we humans have experienced and recorded in the past few hundred years is the norm. But we know we can expect worse. We live with this uncertainty, but the general public may not understand this uncertainty.

This would not be a problem had we humans not changed the face of the earth. In a very short time we have transformed the natural world into a constructed world. In doing so, we have become an integral part of our environment to the point where our input is necessary for its sustainability.

We expect our infrastructures to continually provide for our needs and welfare. However, our constructed environment is not sustainable in the face of severe natural events. We do not have the funds to engineer for the extreme and uncertain events, but we rely on these infrastructures none-the-less. We create the risk. We cause the disasters.