Joseph, Noah, Jonah: Climate Change in Vignettes

Though I could be talking carbon taxes and rising global temperatures, my intention here actually is to reference a famous and fascinating passage in the Torah, namely the story of Joseph in Egypt. Joseph is the celebrated interpreter of dreams who convinces Pharaoh to undertake a dramatic food rationing effort during years of plenty so as to conserve grain in store cities for when it will be needed during the years of famine that are expected to follow. We tend not to think of Joseph as a climate scientist, yet, while I do think there is a case to be made for this view of him from the text, to some degree it is an irrelevant question. As readers of the Torah, we do not need to understand how Joseph makes his agronomical prediction in order to know (by reading further ahead) that the prediction turns out to be stunningly correct. So, let us focus on the following question that the text provokes us to examine: if a wise person or group of people foretells an avoidable natural calamity for a whole society, what is it appropriate to do in response?