Let's get right to it > In pre-industrial times, the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million; the level has since reached 417 parts per million, the highest in 3 million years.>
". . .When you see a volcano, fire coming from the ground, you feel a connection to forces beyond your normal experience—the planet, the origin of life, the creation of everything, the recycling of materials and continents, the elements that make the planet what it is. You remember that we are standing on just a thin crust of life, a sweet spot between burning magma and a burning sun. You think of all the ancestors who feared these forces and all the folklore and religion that the eruptions inspired. You think of Prometheus and his gift of fire.
. . .Earth’s volcanoes—both on land and underwater—are estimated to release, on average, about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide a year; humanity releases almost 37 billion.
The fire we burn is almost 200 times greater than that produced by all the volcanic activity on Earth.
> Yet we go through our day without actually seeing fire or smoke.
> We see and perceive volcanoes, their ferociousness and their thundering din, but we don’t see that we are Earth’s largest volcano
The Gods Were Right
They punished Prometheus for stealing their fire. Now look what humans have done with it.
"In Iceland, where I live, we have an eruption now. For the first time in my memory, we here in Reykjavík can see the glow of a volcano from our windows, like a sunrise just across the bay. We are witness to Earth’s most powerful forces at work: the birth of a mountain. But to observe a volcanic eruption is not to see something far greater than ourselves. To visit a volcano is to look in a mirror and consider the force humans have become—the greatest eruption on Earth.
More It is all so well designed, so invisible.
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If the cars on our highways displayed their fires on the outside, the conflagration we kindle in order to get to work would be evident.
> If fire were to rise from the bodies of cars, we could see the mighty lava flow that this frenzy of traffic constitutes.
> We can see forest fires and burning high-rises.
> On the news, we see tankers burst into flames or oil reserves that have caught fire after an accident.
> We forget: That oil was meant to burn anyway, just not all in one place, all at one time.
We do not perceive our everyday life as a disaster. But the eruption is us—our lives, our daily existence.
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