Dear reader - I didn't have the energy to go back and edit this at all. Please try to see through the rambling and incohesiveness to my point, which is buried somewhere in here.

I had a boyfriend who once asked me if it was possible that AIDS was God's way of punishing homosexuals. I have to admit, I hadn't considered that before he asked me. So I considered it. (No, seriously, I did! Never let it be said I'm not open to considering stuff - no matter how stupid it is on the face of it; I do it all the time.) After careful (yet expedious) consideration, I decided that his thesis was rubbish. Yes, at the time I was already happily Atheist (please don't even ask why I was dating a Mormon; there is no good answer for that), but that's not the reason I discounted the notion. I discounted it because if there is a God (which there isn't, but I suspended disbelief for this mental exercise), I simply can't believe He would create something (AIDS) to punish bad behavior, but not tailor it to only punish the appropriate bad people. AIDS, even when it first came on the scene, was never confined only to drug users and gays. Assuming God wants to punish that behavior, why also punish innocent kids getting blood tranfusions, or hospital workers getting pricked by needles, or (my favorite) faithful wives who don't know their husband's on the down low?

I bring that up because I've been thinking long and hard about the connection between human behavior and the crazy-ass (dare I say "biblical"?) weather we've been having. I'm not alone in thinking there's a causal link. We all remember when Pat Robertson said, "The flooding of New Orleans is a sign that God is tired of seeing his creation mocked by the Mardi Gras and its perverted display of debauchery and exposed breasts." Ah, Pat Robertson, good times. Like the question my boyfriend posed to me all those years ago, I decided to consider Pat's position. I came to the exact same conclusion that Pat did (scary!), which is that the increase in both number and intensity of hurricanes and other "extreme" weather is caused by immoral behavior by human beings. Hands down, no question.

Where I break with Mr. Robertson (c'mon, we knew that wasn't going to last long), is that I think the immoral behavior that's feeding into this isn't girls showing their tits in exchange for beads or homosexuality. (Guilty of both right here!) I just don't see the causal link between those acts and the global warming's that making our weather patterns go nuts. I'm much more inclined to believe the report just released that shows that humans' ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels that lead to mass amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing the "greenhouse effect" is the real culprit. Immoral behavior? I think so. I know there are lots of people that disagree, like Ann Coulter who once said, "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet--it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view."

I suppose it comes down to the basic definition of "immorality". I think it's far less moral to destroy the planet so that future generations won't be able to live comfortably than to flash some flesh. I think letting two people who love each other have all the benefits of family and marriage regardless of gender or orientation is more moral than invading a country and trying to cow them by force into believing that they should abandon their system of government in favor of ours. I'm just saying - those are my opinions.

I realize I'm rambling, and being neither cogent or even very interesting in what I'm writing right now. I don't have the energy to go back and edit, so please bear with me. Here's my point. I started this blog meaning to explore the thesis that God is subjecting us (the human population) to catastrophic weather conditions as punishment for our trashing the planet. Much the way he did with the flood in Genesis, he could be wanting to wipe us out for our own hubris.

Then I meant to go on and say that we're doing such a good job at screwing up the planet that we don't need "god" to create the consequences - we're doing that ourselves. We've observed the cause and effect of our immoral, anti-environmental behavior. I don't believe in "karma" any more than I believe in dieties, but how rad is that that the Earth is fighting back? We go and trash it, and because of our short-sightedness and unwillingness to stop trashing it, global warming's increasing, causing crazy-ass weather, which will continue to destroy the very places we live. (Seriously, go read the report. Or at least watch Al Gore's movie for a brief overview.)

To wrap up this completely incoherent blog, my point at the end of the day is that we control our own destiny. Obviously, people have lived for millions of years with floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, pesitlence and plague. But we can see how we're directly causing it to get worse. Why do we keep doing? Please, I implore people, let's step back and look at the big picture, viewed through the lens of common sense. I know it won't matter to any of us because we'll all be dead within the next fifty to seventy years, but let's do something nice for the kids. Think of the children!