The Parable of the Canyons

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, which is a greater threat, North Korean missiles or Canadian Tar Sands?”

Josh spoke thus:

Two geologists were enjoying a canyon view.

“One normally thinks of canyons in terms of millennia,” the first geologist said.

“One always things of canyons in terms of millennia,” the second geologist said, “Great movements of continents, rock layers shifting, ancient oceans lifting.  There are marine fossils at the tops of the Himalayas.”

“But there are sudden upheavals, as well,” the first geologist said, “Volcanoes rising from the sea to make islands, or exploding to annihilate them.  Great shelves of rock are collapsed by earth tremors or rainfall or expanding ice.  Meteors create great craters in the sea that become bays.  There are sweeping hills in Idaho that were shaped by a gigantic flood.  The Black Sea was drowned by a cataract that suddenly burst from the Mediterranean.  The Yellowstone valley is a gigantic caldera that someday will explode and permanently alter the North American landscape.

“Water carves for centuries,” the first geologist said, “It digs passageways, it erodes coastlines, it flattens mountains, and it drowns nations.

“Water takes eons,” the second geologist said, “Dynamite is instant.”

“Not instant,” the first geologist said.

“In geological terms, it’s instant,” the second geologist said, “The mountains of Appalachia eroded for millions of years, but were still mountains.  Now whole swaths are half the height they were, in less than a generation.”

“In search of carbon compressed into coal,” the first geologist said, “Hundreds of thousands of years it took to compress that coal.”

“And less than a human lifetime to extract it,” the second geologist said.

“The mountains would have been flattened anyway, with time,” the first geologist said, “Mountains are always flattened with time.  They rise over centuries, they are flattened over centuries.”

“That’s what makes these canyons so remarkable,” the second geologist said, “Less than a hundred years it took to raise these canyons.”

“Less than a second in geological time,” the first geologist said.

“Less than a nano second relative to the life of the planet,” the second geologist said.

“And it will take less than a minute of real time to raze them all,” the first geologist said.

The two geologists took their final look at the skyscrapers and the criss-crossing canyons of streets and avenues that separated them.

“Do you think the planet will notice when they’re gone?” the first geologist asked.

“How big is a nuclear crater?” the second geologist asked.

The first geologist replied, “It depends on how many missiles get through.”