Once every 600,000 years or so Yellowstone’s supervolcano erupts, making Mt. St. Helens, Pinatubo, and Krakatoa look like firecrackers. It blankets thousands of miles around it in lava and ash, casting a pall over the earth that lowers temperatures and hinders plant life for decades. Compared to Mother Nature we anthropogenic climate changers (if we are that) are pikers. Interestingly enough, that supervolcano is due for another eruption. Interestingly enough, so too is another supervolcano, one constructed entirely by humans. As to which erupts first, bet on the latter.
Newton’s Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Coercion and violence generate a reaction, a countervailing pressure. They are historical constants, so like Yellowstone’s volcano, the pressure has been building for centuries, although not 6,000 of them. Like Yellowstone’s geysers, pressure-reducing steam has occasionally been released; coercion has abated and freedom briefly flowered. We know those periods as the times when progress mostly happened: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution. However, the twentieth century marked a resurgence of pressure.
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