Disasters
Secretary Zinke Misleads the Public About Wildfires and Federal Public Land Management
Secretary of Interior’s Op-Ed Ignores Science and Land-Use Planning to Falsely Blame Wildfire Risk on “Radical Environmentalists”
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke published an op-ed today calling for “active management” of our federal public lands to reduce wildfire risk, and blaming “radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods” for the prevalance and lethality of wildfires in the American West. Zinke’s op-ed is disingenuous, …
CONTINUE READINGFlood Safety, Infrastructure, and the Feds
Standards for levees, seawalls, and other infrastructure urgently need attention.
The federal government is responsible for responding to major floods and runs the federal flood insurance program. It also has millions of dollars of its own infrastructure at risk from floods. Yet the government is failing to deal effectively with flood risks before the fact. Let’s begin with the levees that are the main defense …
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CONTINUE READINGMaladaptation
It’s not just that we’re slow in achieving resilience. It’s that often we’re moving in the opposite direction.
Some economic models of climate change come out with low damages because they assume smooth and effective adaptation efforts. That never made much sense. There’s a lot of inertia in social systems, and planning major projects can take a long time. Some of what we’re seeing lately is worse than that, however. We’re seeing cases …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Cliff Villa: Es FEMA El Problema? Hurricane Maria and the Slow Road to Recovery in Puerto Rico
Strolling west on Calle Loiza from the Ocean Park neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico, you could miss the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria last September. Here in early May 2018, runners and walkers lap the track at Parque Barbosa while middle-aged men try to keep pace with younger guys on the sheltered basketball court. …
CONTINUE READINGDisastrous Inequality
Puerto Rico was hit much harder than Houston. But help was much slower coming.
Texas and Puerto Rico both got hit very hard last year by major hurricanes. But the federal government moved a lot more quickly to get help to Texas. In a new paper, I document the difference and explore the reasons. Although I won’t go into all the details here, this is a situation people need …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Hurricane Outlook
The journalists are sure about the 2018 hurricane season. The scientists? Not so much.
I’m actually in Puerto Rico today for a conference on the situation here after Hurricane Maria. Since hurricanes are on my mind, I wondered what the forecast for this year looks like. As it turns out, the headlines give significantly different takes on what to expect. Here is a sample of news stories, all issued …
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CONTINUE READINGHurricane Recovery in Texas
It’s been eight months. What’s happened since the storm?
Hurricane Harvey made landfall in the U.S. on August 25, 2017. That probably seems like ancient history to many Americans who live outside the area. The storm has certainly dropped out of the national media. It’s not easy to find information about how storm recovery is proceeding. But here’s where I could find. Let’s start …
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CONTINUE READINGThe impacts of the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene will produce profound economic, social, and political effects on human societies
In my prior post, I explained how humans are increasingly altering or influencing natural systems at a planetary level, and not just through climate change. Now I want to explain a little about the impacts of those changes on human societies, and the implications of those impacts for how we will respond as societies to …
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CONTINUE READINGRick Perry, PJM, and the Polar Vortex
Michael Wara posted previously about Rick Perry’s proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear. In its current incarnation, the proposal is aimed purely at ISOs and RTOs that operate capacity markets, which largely means a single entity, PJM. Why the focus on PJM? Oh, I guess I had better explain. OK, to start with, what did …
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CONTINUE READINGDisaster Resilience: Inching Forward, Sliding Back
We’re slowing improving disaster resilience. But there have been some notable setbacks.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as the saying goes. The same is true for disasters. We are slowly getting better at mitigating disaster risks. These improvements don’t generally take the form of dramatic breakthroughs. Rather they involve incremental progress on a number of fronts. For instance, homes that were constructed …
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