Christmas Eve

Tis the night before Christmas and all through the house...well, basically, not our house and people are boozing and playing pool. Same as most I guess.
We have the threat of more storms tonight and with that the worry of power cuts. From the news, both ours and the Seattle area stations, the trick is not to bring your propane BBQ into the house to cook on, there have been any number of people killed from carbon monoxide poisoning from doing just that. One Seattle family whose parents had succumbed in this way said that it was quite a normal thing to do in their native Afghanistan where apparently more houses are draughty.

Our Planet Earth watching had arrived at the desert. The desert apparently covers one third of the land on the planet. I can see the beauty in the desert and I totally get that many species have evolved there and that is their environment. But if I were boss of the planet I'd be greening it. Actually, even if I were boss of the US I'd be greening it. We have the technology, we could make it habitable for more people.
But then sometimes, when someone I really respect says something like,
'The desert is my favourite landscape, I love it,' I stop and think. It's a tough one, the needs of the people versus the integrity of the land.

The writer Kim Stanley Robinson who wrote a very thorough 'future history' account of the settlement of Mars, explored this very question. His characters set out with the intention of terraforming the planet only to find that a faction of the original settlers love the planet in its original form so much that they opposed any intervention.

Nonetheless, the segment on the desert was beautiful and interesting. Awe and wonder. Very appropriate.