Rather than merely a momentary blinding flash that turned the midnight darkness into day, last week's explosion of a meteor and shower of its debris on northern Nevada should be a reminder to mortals of a truth often forgotten.
Nature can and does inflict far more terror on planet Earth than any manmade horrors of men acting out hatreds with bombs and kamikaze airplane attacks.
Imagine the havoc and mass death had the relatively small Nevada meteor come down over Las Vegas instead of a remote unpopulated area, showering debris on hotels, pedestrians, roadways and medical facilities. Worse, imagine a far larger rogue celestial chunk plummeting at more than 20,000 miles per hour and striking a major urban center such as New York City or Los Angeles or Boise.
The catastrophic destruction left by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans was evidence that nature, indeed, is environmental terrorism.
Yet, a shocking inaction continues to paralyze the world's major industrialized societies when confronted with the gradual, relentless effects of global warming. Indisputable evidence from every climate zone on earth continues to document a corrosive effect of manmade toxins on air and water and eventual catastrophic desertification of habitable land and rich forests into barren dust bowls.
Meanwhile, as pure political theater or more misplaced alarm, Washington politicians are close to panic with visions of dangers of holding trials in New York City for 9/11 terrorists. The trials, so say the nervous Nellies, will invite terrorist attacks of a magnitude beyond the capabilities of law enforcement to handle.
And what of threats to the planet by global warming? Congress yawns or, as a few members foolishly assert, it's a "hoax" unworthy of the concerns of the Greatest Power on Earth.
Therefore, when delegates of major nations convene next month in Copenhagen to discuss global action on climate change, the result is expected to be a decision to delay, again, significant action to combat erosion of the earth's environment.
To give local meaning to possible consequences, substantial climate change could virtually cripple the winter recreation industry in the Wood River Valley and throughout the Rockies, which depends totally on snow. Then what for tens of thousands of workers and businesses?
Climate change, now in motion, portends far more genuine calamities than the spooky fears of terrorist attacks on Americans because of criminal trials.
Talk about dithering. Every delay in measurable environmental reform results in more irreversible decline in the habitability of the planet.
