Humans are Making Hurricanes Worse. Here's How.
Linked above is an article written by John Schwartz for the New York Times. In his article "Humans are Making Hurricane Worse. Here's How.," he discusses the relationship between climate change and natural disasters, which leads to him analyzing the overarching impact that humans have on natural disasters. Schwartz begins by discussing how humans have only continued to feed fossil fuels to the atmosphere, furthering the destruction of the ozone layer. This destruction leads to a larger chain of events which creates more catastrophic natural disasters he says, backing these claims up with research statistics. However, I believe the section that follows, discussing policy changes, is (especially currently) a more tangible argument by Schwartz. Schwartz explains that one of humans biggest flaw currently is our choices on policy changes and that it directly affects the impact that hurricanes have. He continues on to say that we, as humans, have made poor choices on planning for these events. We can witness Schwartz's point when we look towards Puerto Rico, and how little thought and planning was put in by the US to initiate the proper response. Schwartz ends his article by explaining the importance of recognizing that climate change exists.When reading this article, can you draw any similarities in the thought process of Schwartz that might be shared by Voltaire or Rousseau? Do you agree that humanity is at fault for natural disasters, given that they are "natural?"
This article reminds me of the ideas seen within Rousseau’s letter. Natural disasters would not be coined as disasters if it weren’t for their interaction with humans. The infrastructure of many cities and the dense populations of people in small areas leads to more extreme destruction from natural disasters, which Rousseau warned his readers about. I also think that this article parallels the idea of slow violence from Rob Nixon. Areas are not prepared for natural disasters because they do not prepare for them, they only know how to react to them. If policy changes took into effect the slow violence inflicted by climate change and its worsening of natural disasters, areas would be more prepared for these situations.
ReplyDeleteSchwartz’s article mentions how Gilbert F. White wrote that “floods are ‘acts of God,’ but flood losses are largely acts of man.” This quote recalls the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau. Though Voltaire questions God’s role in disaster and suffering, he does admit to a feeling of determinism, a point that White reflects in the sentiment that “floods are ‘acts of God,’” for they are out of mankind’s control and are inevitable. Meanwhile, Rousseau attributes much of disaster and suffering to man; he mentions how people in Lisbon built thousands of six/seven story high buildings, which allowed for more deaths during the earthquake, and how people chose to stay during the earthquake so they did not lose their material goods, thus resulting in more deaths. Ultimately, Rousseau’s culpability of man harkens back to the latter part of White’s statement— “flood losses are largely acts of man.” Overall, nature obviously plays a role in natural disasters; however, mankind is responsible for making the effects of these natural disasters worse—whether by not taking proper precautions, not ensuring proper relief efforts, or by worsening the physical disaster itself because of the man-induced global climate change.
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