Anyone who’s a fan of the U.S. National Park Service knows that it’s been a rough few years, what with the chronic underfunding, and the occasional bear-mauling, and now the looming likelihood of a 9 percent budget hit if Congress’ super-committee can’t figure out a rational way to take care of its business and instead allows unthinking, promiscuous across-the-board cuts.

(In the case of the NPS, the cuts will equal around $230 million, which sounds like a lot if you are anyone other than the federal government or a director at Goldman Sachs. But because this is the federal government, it isn’t much. It isn’t enough to make a dent, anyway, and there seems to be some feeling that money spent on the parks generates more than the investment. So this would be penny wise and pound foolish, which means the smart money is on it happening.)

But there is good news. The federal government that can’t afford to maintain its greatest treasures did find the funds to pay for reportage from NASA that assures us there will be no supervolcano eruption this year.

This matters because Yellowstone, which is one of the more extraordinary gems in the bejeweled park system, is essentially one big supervolcano.

Actually, the article isn’t even that assuring: “Scientists have no way of predicting with perfect accuracy whether a supervolcano will occur in a given century, decade, or year – and that includes 2012. But they do keep close tabs on volcanically active areas around the world, and so far there’s absolutely no sign of a supereruption looming anytime soon.” That’s faint consolation. What they’ve spent time and money publishing is this: so far as we can tell using our pretty much useless tools, we’re not going to see Old Faithful blown into the stratosphere within the next 13 months.

This doesn’t matter because even if you knew it was going to happen, there is not much you could do about it. You can’t stop it, and you can’t run from it. As the people in Bozeman say, We’ll be instantly vaporized, which is far preferable to the slow starvation and wasting away that everyone else on the planet will face.

Given all that, we wish some of that NASA money might be shifted to the NPS. Selfish of us. But in difficult times—speaking economically and existentially—our hearts align with Big Nature, not Big Science.

Photo of Stromboli Volcano erupting incandescent molten lava fragments by B. Chouet via U.S. Geological Survey