Mother Nature is a Stone Cold Killer

By Andy Caldwell

Jul 13, 2025

Mother Nature is a Stone Cold Killer

I am heartbroken over the tragedy that hit the hill country in Texas. We vacationed in that exact spot last November just minutes away from the Guadalupe River. Whereas the river there had flooded before, the wall of water that swelled up within an hour’s time was unprecedented. As I have stated before, Mother Nature is a stone cold killer and until we learn to respect that fact, tragedy, heartbreak will be our lot in life.

Ultimately, the problem here has to do with something that is called our worldview. Too many people view nature as benign, or worse, holy. That is, they consider any changes that affect nature, such as building dams, as a travesty. But dams can serve many purposes including controlling flood waters and preserving water during drought cycles.

The bible, for instance, doesn’t consider nature benign. That is why God gave man the commandment and the moral high ground for man to “subdue the Earth.” Subduing the Earth doesn’t mean destroying it or abusing it. What it means is that we should use our brains to make sure the powers of nature don’t destroy or abuse us as much as that is possible. Unfortunately, our ability and the moral high ground to subdue the Earth, from fires and floods, for instance, has become obtuse.

For example, our approach to minimizing the damage from both fires and floods has to do with the fact that the habitats that affect both are now protected at our collective expense. Regarding fires, overgrown dead brush and trees should be managed lest they become the fuel source for conflagrations. Similarly, brush and trees growing in rivers, streams and creeks present a dual threat. Their presence diminishes the carrying capacity of these riparian corridors, and in a flood event, the habitat will get dislodged and serve to plug culverts and take out infrastructure downstream.

It Can and Has Happened Here

I have lived on the Central Coast for nearly 60 years. I have seen Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo flowing like a river from curb to curb. And before the horrible and catastrophic debris flow in Montecito – a community literally built on an ancient debris flow – we had multiple landslides in La Conchita going back over 100 years. We all certainly know it doesn’t take much for Santa Barbara to flood. Furthermore, Lompoc is going to have a tough time surviving another flood like the one in 1969, because the carrying capacity of the Santa Ynez River has been greatly diminished (the Lompoc sewer treatment plant dumps its own brand of miracle-grow effluent into the river making for some dense river-clogging brush and trees) and the town has been built up in areas that are now subject to inundation.

Yet, despite our history, on top of all that, what will surely make things worse has to do with the fact that most of our dams and reservoirs are silted up, meaning their holding capacity is severely diminished as well.

All in all, we are doing little to subdue the Earth these days from the practical reality of fires and floods, but we are spending an inordinate amount of money on the hypothetical risks associated with climate change. The climate, however, is beyond our means to control; it is a global phenomenon, and other nations are not cooperating. That is, of course, if you believe climate change is human caused. Nonetheless, we are guilty of malign neglect in controlling our environment with respect to fires and floods because it can be within our control to make a difference. The irony here – lost on the activists and decision-makers – is that wildfires are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in our state

Maybe we could get people to seriously think about our history of perennial fires and floods before the next disaster hits? It is foolish to ignore the inevitable.

Andy Caldwell, Executive Director, COLAB