Nature is awesome, but so is science. Shame about the politics.

By Spanish Bill

It is difficult to imagine, let alone recall, a more destructive and extensive natural disaster than the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. But it’s not impossible.

The pre-Greek Minoan civilization of Crete was probably levelled by a combination of earthquakes, volcanic explosions, and tidal waves in around 1,500 BC.

And the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh -- which is suspiciously similar to the story of Noah’s Ark -- tells us there was a flood in around 3,000 BC that wiped out much of early human civilization.

More recently -- in 1970 -- floods whipped up by cyclones killed 300,000 in Bangladesh. Another 3.7 million people died from disease, starvation, or drowning when the Yangtze River burst its banks in 1931.

And the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and its resultant tsunami killed 100,000 and was felt as far north as Cornwall.

Then there are the diseases that have ravaged our planet in intermittent waves and which also kill millions on a regular basis:

From the Black Death imported from China in the 14^th Century, which killed 25 million Europeans in five years, to the measles and influenza epidemics that wiped out millions of native Americans after La Conquista in the 15^th and 16^th centuries and the AIDS pandemic now extinguishing life in southern Africa.

Human suffering on a vast scale is part and parcel of human history.

Ultimately, it can make us stronger because human beings are extraordinarily resourceful creatures and we learn from the experience.

By we, I mean the human race.

For some families and local communities, of course, things will never be the same.

And yet, the densely populated Indian Ocean rim devastated by recent events will bounce back, eventually, with the help of an international community tangibly moved by a sense of common humanity. Goodwill to all people – it doesn’t happen often.

How else, for example, do we explain the record amounts of money raised by British charities in recent days, which has outstripped government pledges of aid?   

Pity a spectacularly gruesome set of movies shot on hundreds of tourist camcorders was required to foster such outpourings of global brotherhood.

Six million of our fellow human beings -- a third of them young children -- die each year from malaria and AIDS-related infections each year.

That too could be prevented, with the right political will.

We can’t stop the earth’s tectonic plates from moving but we can defend ourselves from whatever nature throws at us.

I stick two fingers up to those who say this is all part of God’s plan, inshallah. Fuck such fatalism.

I, for one, am glad Eve persuaded Adam to eat an apple from the tree of knowledge.

Ignorance is not my idea of bliss. And if one day I’m ever lying on a beach and I notice the tide has suddenly disappeared, I’ll know what to do: run for the hills.

Is it any coincidence that the two big earthquakes which struck San Francisco in 1989 and Los Angeles in 1994 killed just 120 people in total?

5,000 were killed in 1995 when another earthquake struck another densely populated area around Kobe in Japan.

But even that is relatively small compared to the body count elsewhere.

30,000 people perished when a less violent earthquake razed the town of Bam in a more lightly populated area of Iran almost a year to the hour before the earthquake near Aceh.

It doesn’t take a Nobel prize winner to work out the reason behind the difference in numbers killed: inferior buildings (most of the victims were asleep in both the Bam and Kobe earthquakes).

It follows that science can tame nature to a significant life-saving degree. It just depends on what our priorities are and whether we’re switched on.

An early warning system, as is well documented, would have doubtless saved many lives – not just in southern India and Sri Lanka, where thousands died after the tsunami hit their shores 2-3 hours after the initial earthquake, but also in Thailand, which felt it after just over an hour.

It took 5-6 hours to hit east Africa, where more people perished.

An early warning system has been in place for the Pacific Ocean since a tidal wave washed over Hawaii in 1946 and has effectively handled the three biggest tsunami-generating earthquakes in recent times.

The system monitors hundreds of sea bottom sensors that detect earthquakes and swelling water and many more coastline gauges that measure the height and speed of waves.

Access to technology is a thorny issue, but people are crying out for effective and apolitical global leadership at a time when the world is dangerously divided.

At least I think they are.

But a simple phone call to Colombo, Delhi, et al, or a more tsunami-savvy international media could surely have also made a difference. Not everyone has access to CNN and the BBC, but hotels do and they surely could have raised more of an alarm. Many people died needlessly.

It is not only Washington that needs to pull its fingers out. The Indian Ocean Tsunami wasn't just an act of God, nature, whatever you want to call it, it was also a damning indictment of 21st century politics and society.