The most interesting adversary in a story is one to which the protagonist owes a debt. To whom or to what do we owe the greatest debt at this moment? To God or to Nature?
For some, there’s no distinction: God is nature and, therefore, the One that must be feared and revered is a natural god. Every life is sacred; those we know and understand and those we do not yet know and may never understand.
However, for others, there is a clear distinction between God and Nature. In many such orders, God is higher than man who is higher than animals. God is in the sky and nature is literally that which is below man: land. As land, nature can be bought and sold. Parcels, lots, rights.
If nature is a thing, a thing that can be privatized, it is a thing that can be destroyed, once and for all, if that is how the owner sees fit.
As a child I was very taken by the conceit of the cartoon The Transformers: “more than meets the eye.” They were everyday machines infused with a living spirit.
Everyday machines, especially large, powerful machines, infused with the spirit of nature, of a natural God, would be something to behold. A leviathan for the modern man.