Just two years before I was born over 3,000 people died in the U.S. from polio. One of my mother’s close friends contracted polio when going through labor. She spent the next year in an iron lung.

My sister, who is four years older than me, came down with symptoms of polio not long after I was born. My terrified parents prayed she didn’t have the devastating disease. She didn’t.

I suspect my parents were not the only ones praying about polio. And in 1955, a year after I was born, prayers were answered when the first polio vaccine came into use.

For those who believe in God, I’d say God answered the prayers with science. He gave us the gifted scientists who were able to solve the problem. And if you think about it, if God is our parent, as many people of religion believe, does a good parent do everything for a child? Or does the parent give the child the tools and let him or her work out the problem?

Now we come to the last few weeks—record breaking hurricanes hitting our shores—changes in our weather that many believe are the result of drastic climate change.

Some may claim God is punishing us for an imagined crime. Yet, I wonder—perhaps God has already answered our prayers. Like with polio, he has given our scientists knowledge, and they are ready to help us alleviate some of the man-made stress we’ve put on our planet, before it’s too late.

I think it’s about time we start taking care of the magnificent gifts our creator has given us, and stop acting like spoiled children and abusing those gifts. As a parent, if my children trashed something I gave them, I certainly wouldn’t buy them another one. But, I would encourage them to fix it themselves.