These are excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers from around the world:

Those who build their houses on a beach?s shifting sands court a destruction that might not be swift, but is nevertheless certain. Eventually, the sand on which the houses rest is eroded by the sea, or shifted down the beach, or caused to subside by pumping that depletes the water table.

Seaside dwellers and those who live below sea level, as did many New Orleans residents perhaps face the greatest environmental risk. But recent experience shows no place is entirely free of natural hazard.

Most Americans live near the coast. Even if they live on high ground away from the water, they lie in reach of the increasingly frequent and strong hurricanes now spawned throughout much of the year. As Houstonians found out during Tropical Storm Allison, few residents can safely go without flood insurance. And those lucky enough to be spared rising water must fear tornados encouraged in Texas by a southward drifting jet stream.

Californians, always vulnerable to earthquakes, face a different threat with each passing season. Dry winds and the tiniest spark can create brush fires large enough to destroy forests and neighbourhoods. This week, continuous heavy rains are making rivers overflow their banks, while mudslides claim buildings and lives.

Nor are those in the heartland immune to nature?s excesses. In the plains areas of Texas and Oklahoma, a wet spring caused grass to grow, and then a drought dried the grass and made it the stuff of kindling. The inevitable fires have destroyed small towns, farms and square miles of fields and pasture.

High temperatures, wind and low humidity invite more conflagration. The first rain is not forecast until Friday the 13th, not a propitious date quite apart from superstition.

A forest ranger in Texas summed it up: ?It just seems like Mother Nature?s not cutting us any slack.?

It?s an old but good story. Former adversaries make peace, and maybe even forge an unexpected friendship.

Sometimes, though, the story holds a meaning that goes deeper than the mere discovery of an unlikely camaraderie, however uplifting that may be. Sometimes, it has redemptive power that radiates beyond two individuals, to the factions they represent.

It?s probably too much to expect that kind of benefit to flow from the friendship that has developed between former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, but it would be a fine thing if it did. The nation?s politics have become so vituperative and so unforgiving over the past quarter-century or so that it would do us all good to remember the fundamental truth behind one of the nation?s favourite aphorisms: more unites us than divides us.

The election of 1992 may not have been as ugly as last year?s unfortunate contest, but it was nasty enough, with then-President Bush dismissing his opponent as a ?bozo?, while then-Gov. Clinton insisted that the president who made a show of buying socks during a recession was out of touch. It featured all the usual bruised feelings that elections produce, especially when the incumbent winds up evicted.

But called to service this year by the current President Bush, the two former leaders not only responded ? raising money for tsunami victims in Asia, and hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast, among other duties ? but formed a friendship that observers say is real and respectful. The far left and the far right object, of course, and no wonder. Such a rapprochement threatens their emotionally satisfying and financially rewarding ability to demonise the other.

But that model of political discourse has hurt the country, discouraging the very compromise that democracy requires while driving down voter participation.

The new friendship between two former foes won?t change that on its own, but it highlights the artificiality of much of the posturing that passes for governance. And it suggests that if they want it, Americans can have a more respectful and effective government than they have lately been given.