Hurricane Sandy or “Karmageddon”?

Pat Robertson doesn't have the monopoly on consequences.

I’m from Jersey. So, strangely enough, are a lot of my best friends from college. So it stands to reason that my Facebook news feed and I have been seriously mourning the crisis wrought by Hurricane Sandy upon our homestate shores. But a story from one of my Jersey friends really got me thinking.

Basically, her mother’s house is fringed with tall stately pines, which the neighbors have a habit of unceremoniously shearing every time they feel the branches are encroaching on their property line. Cute, huh? Anyway, every time a storm hits, these beautiful yet precarious trees tend to keel over. Needless to say, one toppled on Sunday night—right across all three of the nasty neighbors’ precious cars. And yes, they have three cars, and no, I don’t know why.

But if that tree falling wasn’t just irony, I don’t know what is. Which brings me to my thesis statement: Hurricane Sandy was, at least in some small measure, a harbinger of the Karmageddon.

That’s right, I am about to go a little Pat Robertson on y’all. I mean, obviously not in terms of my beliefs or ideology or personal physique; not in terms of anything, really, except the small inkling of a belief I cherish in some kind of higher power that will hereafter be referred to as Karma. And Karma, my friends, is a well-documented, stone-cold bitch.

Consider the evidence: One week before a presidential election in which neither candidate has thus far deigned to mention the EXISTENCE of global climate change—let alone the steps we as a nation should be taking to combat its unequivocally terrifying effects—and BOOM! The biggest hurricamutant storm the Eastern Seaboard has seen in … well ever.

Add to this the fact that cars were floating down Wall Street—home to the beating heart of a financial system that has endangered the fiscal lives of millions of Americans for years now with its recklessness—throw in a dash of divine retribution for the myriad crimes against human dignity committed in the past few years by the cast of Jersey Shore; then season with the what-goes-around-comes-around spirit of my opening anecdote, and you’ve got a fresh helping of Karmageddonistic revenge (best served cold).

You scoff. Sure. But sometimes it takes a little absurd rhetoric to get us thinking about—and yes, hopefully, scared about—the consequences of our actions, the real and terrifying global warming truth bombs that are exploding with increasing frequency all around us.

I can only hope that next week, we act as a nation on the fact that at least ONE presidential candidate recognizes the urgency of the global warming conversation (even if he maddeningly can’t find the chutzpah to bring it up). I can only hope we find the strength to acknowledge the truth of our planet’s suffering, see and understand the wounds we have inflicted, and take the necessary steps to slow, lessen and somehow alleviate that suffering.

Trick or too-little-too-late-but-still-better-than-nothing-treat, America. The choice is ours.