A Beneficial Disaster?

I have believed that a "moderate" ecological disaster would be good, it would push people toward a more sustainable way of life, help us to put brakes to our wasteful consumerism. But reading about developments in the Indonesian Atjeh (Aceh) province, I am beginning to doubt whether such a disaster would really help us. Atjeh that lost more than two hundred thousand people killed by the huge tsunami has now adopted a very rigid form of fundamentalist Islam, favoured by the idea that the tsunami was sent by Allah as punishment for people's sins. Such ideas can easily gain ground in the USA as the rhetoric of some influential evangelical preachers after the catastrophic flood in New Orleans has shown. Thus, an ecological disaster can be followed by an ideological disaster that can make things worse not better. Instead of fighting against big cars and big houses preachers will fight against homo-marriages and sex education...