As the Lord lives, whom I serve, during these three years, there shall be no dew or rain except at my word…With these words, Elijah the prophet of God foretold the three-year drought and famine that struck the land of Israel during the reign of king Ahab. The foretelling of the famine was the first in a series of struggles by Elijah to preserve the worship of the Lord God which was being threatened by the encroaching worship of Baal which had been introduced by Jezebel, the Tyrian wife of Ahab. As was expected, king Ahab did not pay any attention to Elijah and, as Elijah had foretold, famine and drought struck the land. But can the Lord God be so cruel to the extent of causing famine and drought, bringing harm to both the innocent and the guilty? We know Ahab was not a good king, but was there no other way that God could show Ahab the error of his ways than mete out catastrophe against the people? Surely this cannot be the image of the same God celebrated by the Psalmist: “ The Lord is the guardian of Israel, and with him standing at her right side, the sun shall not harm Israel, for the Lord is Israel’s shade” (Responsorial Psalm).
As a prophet of God, Elijah was commissioned at a time of great turmoil in the land. Israel had forgotten about her obligation to the Lord. From the king to the common man, Israel was soiling the covenant it had made with the Lord God. It so happened that a drought and famine broke out at this particular time, and Elijah could not let this opportunity pass un-utilized. To Elijah, it was no mere coincidence that such a calamity was taking place at time when the people had forgotten about God. To the prophet, God was certainly talking to the people, and the people had better listen. But as we know, they didn’t listen to what God was saying, and the calamity lasted the entire three years as the prophet had said. Could the calamity have been averted had the people turned their lives around? 
While drought and famine are natural catastrophes, it is also true that they are linked to human actions. Compared to Elijah and his contemporaries, we are at an advantaged position to better understand natural catastrophes. We would hesitate to attribute natural calamities to God punishing the people. However, we too at times tend to see a connection between some of the natural disasters and human action and/or inaction. Certainly, drought and famine can be occasioned by the failure of men and women to take care of the environment, when men and women fail to responsibly use the earth’s resources in a way that doesn’t deplete them. 
Elijah was right to link the calamity that was sweeping through their land to human sin: the sin of refusing to be good stewards of God’s creation. Even if the calamity could not have been averted by the people turning from their sinful ways at the warning of Elijah, at least its effects could have been lessened. While we might not agree with Elijah about God raining famine and drought as punishment on the people, at least we agree with him that the drought and famine were results of human sin.