How do we survive the daily catastrophes of our over-programmed, plugged-in lives?
The urgency demanded by disaster response operations also mirrors the urgency of responding to the conditions of daily disaster and chronic catastrophe that exist in these communities.
As he had told me, he knew how to handle "the daily grind of catastrophe" that can beset a film set (or, at least, his film sets).
In the absence of catastrophe, the daily witness of loss, death and impoverishment struggles to capture the wayward attention of the media.
Evidence of human-caused catastrophe mounts daily with grim reports from sea, sky and land: disappearing species, the collapse of fisheries, deforestation, the shrinking ozone layer, higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, oceanic dead zones, warming temperatures, extreme weather, rising sea levels, depleted aquifers, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost.
With the world's greenhouse gas emissions soaring, however, the odds of dodging a civilization-altering climate catastrophe are shrinking daily.
Leading the charge is, of course, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta who almost daily uses terminology like "doomsday," "catastrophe," and more recently "shooting ourselves in the head" to describe anything less than a defense budget perpetually growing from this year on out.
It's as if we're all watching the daily show of a developing catastrophe, one too gigantic for us to believe, and so we tune out, turn off and try to reason that it's perhaps media propaganda..
