As one would expect, the paradox is resolved at a level higher than that of the individual who suffers the loss as a result of nature's vagaries, higher even than that of single populations of plants or animals that are equally the victims of the event; it makes sense only at the level of the ecological system. Viewed from this perspective, the word disaster loses its pejorative connotation and becomes a neutral term, shorn of the emotional baggage with which people have burdened it. Indeed, natural disasters are helpful, even necessary, for the promotion of biodiversity, which in turn, is the best insurance policy for a healthy environment and the future of the world, including mankind.

Professor Reice rejects the traditional "equilibrium perspective" which saw changes in the "community" of organisms within a habitat as an orderly, sequential process leading to a climax community, a Platonic ideal community for that environment. This model can work only if the environment is constant which it never is. The earlier assumption that the most important factors determining the structure of communities are interactions among the organisms is being replaced by the recognition that the environment, which is in constant flux, plays an important role in determining the composition of the community. The environment may change because of small, scarcely noticed, every day events like the fall of a tree or major cataclysmic ones like the Yellowstone National Park fire of 1998, or Hurricane Fran in North Carolina in 1996, or the Great Mid-western Flood of 1993, the most devastating in the recorded history of North America.

When natural disturbances on such a massive scale occur, people react to them with horror as they have been taught to. Thus, 'Smokey Bear, the emblematic cartoon spokesman for the US Forest Service, [has the clear message] "If you love forests, you must save them from fires. Fires destroy forests."' On the contrary, argues Professor Pierce, fires rejuvenate forests. For one thing the destruction is patchy, it clears the area of hazardous tinder, opens up space for migration and colonization by species, plant and animal, and thus promotes biodiversity. Fires are natural for forests and some species are dependent on them because their seeds will open and germinate only in the heat generated by the fires or in the ground fertilized and prepared by them. Similarly the prevention of floods through construction of dams and levies is likely to cause more damage than to do good.

The longer an area goes without natural disturbances, the more likely it is that when they ultimately come, as come they will, they will be more disastrous than they would have been if nature had been allowed to take its course.

People's reaction to nature's shuffling of the biological pack is probably based on the desire for ensuring permanence for what they know and have got used to. Nature, on the other hand, is not concerned with the particular, operates on a much larger scale, and is totally without a romantic view of things. The nature of Nature is change. We humans, it appears, are still not convinced that Nature cannot be tamed and are forever getting in its way. Our dams change the ecology of river plains, resulting in loss of species and impoverishment of the environment. Our profligacy in the use of water has done enormous damage to the wetlands ecosystems and ultimately to our own future.

Slash and burn methods of agriculture lead to uncontrollable fires with devastating effects far beyond the borders of a single country as happened recently in the Borneo fires of 1997. The cutting down of age-old rain forests is changing the whole world's climate. Professor Pierce shows that if we do not heed the warnings and continue to build our homes on flood plains, in the fire prone Chaparral, on the beaches in the path of hurricanes, our homes will be destroyed.

It has happened many a time and will happen again. He wonders why the United States government should subsidize the home insurance of the rich who build where disaster is bound to strike and who have had their homes destroyed so many times in the past. He advocates zoning laws or prohibitive insurance premiums to force people to heed the dangers. For those who lose their homes or suffer other losses, the natural disturbances are, indeed, disasters. That is why they are called tragedies by the popular press.

But "tragedy" must be properly comprehended. It is a tragedy in Aristotelian terms caused by a fatal, human flaw in the character of the victim, it is the consequence of an act that should have been avoided, of a decision that could only result in sorrow. It may be that the flaw is simple ignorance but that is no less a serious shortcoming in character than, say, pride. After all, Oedipus was guilty of no more than ignorance when he killed his father and for that he had to endure his fate. To build in a place of great vulnerability without being aware of the risks one ran would be a tragic act. But it would be even worse if one did not even have ignorance for an excuse and one allowed oneself to be lulled into a false sense of security because one was covered by insurance. Hence, Professor Pierce's message: Get out of Nature's way.