Locations most popular in U.S prone to worst natural disaster damages.
Global warming is officially upon us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has accepted it, and released a 582-page report last Tuesday that basically says, “We’re screwed; get ready.” Well, it’s a little more helpful than that.
While it’s very nice that (some) countries are trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there’s little that can be done to subtract from or negate the carbon dioxide that is currently hovering above us. Since the advent of industrialism, gases have been flowing into the atmosphere. If you’re particularly green, I don’t mean to say you should stop composting scraps or that you should trade in your fixie for a Vespa, but you should realize that your contributions to the environment aren’t going to have the needed global effects for hundreds of years.
America has a reputation for helping countries struck by natural disasters, but last year U.S. losses from weather-related disasters alone hit $35 billion.
Some communities are sitting ducks in obviously susceptible places, such as islands, coasts or regions above tectonic boundaries. The IPCC suggests that building high-class resorts and expensive suburbs or cities near coastlines is a terrible idea, yet we all know how much Americans love living near the ocean. Some of the most difficult decisions need to be made concerning the migration of entire coastal communities, removing people from places they consider their “cultural foundations,” says Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Global Ecology, based at Stanford University in California.
His suggestion may be hard to hear, but it’s logical. We can build shelters and walls and plant trees that block some barrages of storms, but ultimately, science has come far enough to tell us where it’s too dangerous to live.
We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars building and investing in places that we know are likely to be ripped up by hurricanes or wiped out by massive tidal waves and earthquakes. Building away from and moving people out of these places seems restrictive, but ultimately is an investment in itself.
Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific, is actually suggesting moving its entire populace to Fiji, acknowledging that one severe storm could wipe out the entire archipelago. Inconvenient? Sure.
While there’s certainly a nice couple who just moved there, built a house and went on the longest IKEA spree ever, at least they won’t be living in a dirt-poor country in need of billions of dollars of foreign aid from the U.S. when the country gets blown off the map by a massive storm.
While it may be sad once a disaster hits, it’s time for the U.S. to take a less active role in shelling out billions of dollars in foreign relief and start supporting programs that proactively defend against domestic disasters.
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