the US infrastructure
author: ecotopian yeti
|
like the Soviets that ignored or suppresed information on the short comings of the Soviet infrastructure now the only surviving SuperPower of the Cold War is on that brink of collapse of its internal structure.
|
Recently the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released a report on the US infrastructure and specifically looked at dams. The ASCE gave the dams and infrustructure a D grade.
I have repeatdly posted warnings of a coming collapse of the US infrastructure (even without reaching maxium consumption of world petroleum reserves or realistic acccessable petroleum). Over the last decade the infrastructure has been relatively ignored. In many cases the infrastructure was not just ignored but actually the victim of budget cuts on local and national levels so as to appease over taxed voters. The blame could simply lay at politicians appealing to the short sighted voter, but actually some must put on corporate welfare and corporate piracy as well as the huge budget for the military industrial complex that was not actually spent on supplying or repairing the military, but instead went to high end contracts for corporations with over inflated estimates. Added to this is the fact (regardless of whether we have reached Peak Oil or not) the rising cost of oil will bring an already damaged infrastructure to a crashing collapse.
Now is the time to have already look at the local economy and sustainablity of one's community. The era of bioregionalism as at its begining as the petroleum sucking giant sways back and forth in the from the obesity of its own unkept body. Again this is no different from the Soviets who did not focus on the renewal of their own infrastructure.
Though peak oil might not directly effect the various electrical grids within the US. An unrestored infrastructure will eventually collapse the grid as resources are diverted from one crises to another ... be those events from global climatic change, massive geological events, political maneuvering or re-allocation of resources and engery to restore security.
Cascadia, Cascadianism (Cascadian bioregionalism) and Cascadians may (if we choose to become conscious and active) emerge out of the ashes of these events and the dying SuperPower along with the death of the other petroleum empires.
The following articles based on the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report or other comments about the impending infrastructure collapse:
Aging dams appear OK — for now
By DIANA MARRERO
Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The devastating levee failures that flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina have re-ignited a debate on the poor condition of the nation's aging network of dams.
"Dams are a very serious piece of infrastructure, and we need to pay attention to them," said Bill Marcuson, president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The group, which recently released a report card for America's infrastructure, gave the nation's dams a grade of D, citing concerns over lack of funding for dam safety maintenance and rehabilitation, and an increasing number of unsafe dams around the country.
Since 1998, the number of unsafe dams has risen by 33 percent to more than 3,500, according to the group. And the number of dams deemed unsafe is increasing at a faster pace than dams are being repaired.
About 85 percent of the nation's 75,000 dams will be at least 50 years old by 2020, according to the National Performance of Dams program.
Nationally, about $10.1 billion is needed over the next 12 years to refurbish all the non-federal dams that have the potential to kill people should they fail, according to the civil engineers society. In Montana, 11 dams regulated by the state were deemed deficient in 2004, following a pattern that holds true throughout much of the country: While most federally regulated dams are in good shape, those under the purview of states are more likely to be considered deficient. At Kim's Marina on Canyon Ferry, owner Maryann Axtman said she feels confident the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is properly maintaining the dam near her business. Federal officials are working to improve the dam so that it can withstand stronger earthquakes. A dam failure would devastate her marina, she said, which holds 175 boats: "I'd be out of business." Although the term deficient may not mean that there is anything structurally wrong with the dams, the category indicates that, at minimum, renovations are necessary to make the structures withstand stronger earthquakes or storms than they do. Montana is the fourth most seismically active state in the country, experiencing at least seven earthquakes measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale in the last century. State officials, however, say the condition of Montana's 2,874 state-regulated dams should not worry the residents who live near them. They say every single dam they deem deficient is safe enough to be operating, otherwise they would reduce the water levels in those dams. About half the dams considered deficient are undergoing work to repair or bring them up to today's standards, said Laurence Siroky, who oversees the water resource division of the state's Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. But a handful of other sub-par dams are still in planning stages for repairs, which could take years. Ackley Lake Dam, about 50 miles from Great Falls, has seepage problems that have not yet been fixed. Siroky says he must balance the funding he receives with the chances a dam could fail under certain conditions to come up with a set of priorities. But Marcuson, a former U.S. Army Corps of Engineer bureaucrat, and others say waiting for such repairs could be deadly. "Katrina was a 1-in-200-year storm but it happened," he said. The state's dam safety program also does not meet many of the criteria outlined by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. The state only requires inspections on the 101 dams officials consider to be "high hazard" or a dam with the potential to kill people if it failed. Other dams don't have to be inspected at all in Montana. While industry experts say the "high hazard" dams should be inspected yearly, Montana law requires inspections every five years. Montana has only five state regulators - not enough by industry standards. Some state officials say they need to review their safety standards and emergency procedures in light of the devastation in Louisiana. "I think it's time for everybody to look at what we're dealing with in the context of Katrina," said John Tubbs, who heads the resource development bureau at the Montana Department of Natural Resources. "This is not a time to think you've got it all figured out." Although the state regulates most dams, gaining a clear picture of the condition of all the dams in Montana is made difficult by the sheer number of agencies that regulate them and owners that operate them. But the major federal agencies that regulate dams in Montana say most of the structures are adequate. Todd Dixon, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations, said his agency regulates about 15 high and significant hazard dams in the state. Two - Canyon Ferry near Helena and Gibson Dam west of Great Falls - need upgrades so they can withstand a 7.0 earthquake. It will take several years before either can be refurbished. In 1964, Gibson became so full from heavy rains that water spilled over the top of the dam, killing 33 people caught in the floods. Although remote, the dam could overflow again. Another dam, regulated by the U.S. Forest Service, is in such poor shape the agency plans to remove it. The dam, along the Blackfoot River in western Montana, separates tons of toxic mine refuse from the river's headwaters. The five dams in the Great Falls area are all owned by the utility PPL Corp. and regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. None have outstanding deficiencies, said J. Mark Robinson, the commission's energy projects director.
Originally published September 19, 2005
 link to www.greatfallstribune.com
US News
U.S. infrastructure needs $1.6 trillion
Sep 12, 2005, 4:05 GMT
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Experts say levees in New Orleans are not alone in deteriorating for underfunding -- U.S. highways, dams, ports and bridges are also in disrepair.
The American Society of Civil Engineers says highways, dams, ports and bridges need $1.6 trillion over the next five years to prevent further deterioration. At the moment only $900 billion is earmarked for the work, reported the New York Times Sunday.
Spending on infrastructure peaked during the administration of President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Sine then -- and especially in the last 20 years -- spending has dropped while safety standards have increased.
In addition, more and more homes are being built in floodplains, so flooding and storm damage will cause more damage.
The ASCE also reports that although federally owned dams are in good condition, more than 3,500 dams maintained by state and local governments are 'unsafe.'
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Experts say levees in New Orleans are not alone in deteriorating for underfunding -- U.S. highways, dams, ports and bridges are also in disrepair.
The American Society of Civil Engineers says highways, dams, ports and bridges need $1.6 trillion over the next five years to prevent further deterioration. At the moment only $900 billion is earmarked for the work, reported the New York Times Sunday.
Spending on infrastructure peaked during the administration of President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Sine then -- and especially in the last 20 years -- spending has dropped while safety standards have increased.
In addition, more and more homes are being built in floodplains, so flooding and storm damage will cause more damage.
The ASCE also reports that although federally owned dams are in good condition, more than 3,500 dams maintained by state and local governments are 'unsafe.'
Copyright 2005 by United Press International
link to news.monstersandcritics.com
America The Helpless Giant: How Pitiful Can We Get?
Posted by Adam Ash on September 14, 2005 09:57 AM (See all posts by Adam Ash)
Watching our government screw up the challenge of Katrina engendered anger, but now I feel a new emotion creeping in.
Sadness. Pathos. Pity. Our wounded country squirms like a helpless giant, unable to deliver prompt aid to its drowning, starving, bedraggled citizens. The snarl of partisan bickering grates from every quarter as our vulnerabilities lie exposed like maggots engorged on near-death flesh.
The Gulliver of the world has been cut down to the size of the Lilliputian nations that surround it.
Something is dying. Some "infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing" struggles to survive.
Back in the 90s, our nation was happy, carefree, and somewhat wild and crazy. Those were the go-go years under our lovable rogue President Clinton, who gave us our own national soap opera to follow. A man whose flaws were as great as his strengths, but he did one excellent thing: he made us solvent.
And now?
Are we the once-glorious country that the world used to look up to? Are we that shining city on a hill ... still?
No. We seem wounded somewhere deep, and it occasions a lingering sadness. I want to reach out to my fellow citizens and ask for tears of sympathy -- cry, our beloved country, for the dead and poor in New Orleans ... for the families whose children have died in our Iraq war ... for the wounded soldiers returning home from that foreign land, their limbs severed and their faces blown off, as modern medicine restores them to walking simulacra of the living dead.
What happened?
Three events: 9/11. The Iraq War. Katrina.
Three challenges. How did we rise to them?
Challenges had never scared us before, nor ever brought us down. In 1929 our economy lay in tatters, shred by the greed of robber barons and speculation. Then came FDR to birth the New Deal, and we rose again.
In 1939 the fascist imperialism of Germany and Japan threatened the world. We tackled this challenge with our greatest generation, beating back the forces of evil. And in our finest hour, we reached out to our vanquished foes with the helping hand of the Marshall Plan. No other nation in the history of the world has ever done anything more noble - to lift up our enemies to join us in a new freedom.
Then another foe arose, the Russian empire. Reagan was right: it was evil. Yet we faced it down, again, until a wall crumbled and those who'd been oppressed suddenly breathed the fresh air of freedom inspired by our example.
America, the bastion of freedom: we reaped the rewards of having risen to these great challenges. In the 60s our wildest generation loosened the shackles of sexual repression. Men and women were free to enjoy the gift of their bodies. And those Americans who weren't yet sharing in our freedoms - African-Americans, women, gays - stood up for themselves and gained their place in the sun, to sit at the table of our bounty, and share the fruits of freedom.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, 9/11 happened: a symbol of our might, the World Trade Center, crumbled under the attack of a new foe.
It took our breath away, and we haven't gotten it back yet.
A new president led us into a foreign adventure - some say with the ignominy of lies, some say with the noble ideal of spreading freedom - and we got bogged down in a foreign land.
Then, in another bolt from the blue, nature attacked us, and swallowed one of our cities.
We are reeling. We are still strong, but we are stumbling in the dark. The world sees a helpless giant, its nose bloodied by Iraq, its reputation horribly scarred by Abu Ghraib, its competence laughably compromised by a belated response to a great tragedy, its Homeland Security unmasked as totally useless to deal with the threat of any future terrorist attack.
We are a nation rich in myths, and now those myths are in question. The rest of the world may still want to believe in them, but we're giving them less and less reason to do so.
Our country's soul has always been nourished by great American myths. And being the consummate bullshitters that we are - masters of hype, sultans of spin - we've sold these myths not only to ourselves, but to the whole wide world. Here they are:
1. The myth of the pursuit of happiness: we say it's good to feel good, to want it now, to enjoy comfort and convenience all our days. Heck, we even got round to conditioning the very air.
2. The myth of our can-do spirit: our Yankee ingenuity, our penchant for thinking big, our screw-tradition, what's-new vigor. We invent new things -- the light bulb, the phonograph, underarm deodorant, TV, rock 'n roll, the laptop, the Internet, the iPod. With new things we make the world new, fueled by an irrepressible optimism that we can always find a way to make the world work for us.
3. The myth of social mobility: we are a nation of immigrants pulling ourselves up from nothing by dint of ambition and diligence. Our land is the one place where hard work begets fabulous riches, where all of us can attain the American dream.
4. The myth of the individual: here you can be all you want to be, express yourself fully, re-invent yourself, make yourself over, start anew as a new person.
5. And our grandest myth of all, the myth that girds all others: freedom.
But where are our myths now? They're still hanging over us, but are we living up to them?
Where, for example, is our can-do spirit? Our fellow citizens sit stranded for days in New Orleans, mired in the stink of their own excrement, and we can't get water and food to them. Last week Japan evacuated more than 300,000 people from coastal areas to evade a typhoon. No incompetence, panic, or disorder there.
Where is our myth of social mobility? Most of us stay stuck in the class we were born in. We're working harder than ever before for less money. Those born in the ghetto have little chance of escape: they're fated to die there.
Where is our myth of the individual? We have herded ourselves into special interests - minorities, Christians, homosexuals, teenagers, the right, the left, the rich, the poor - and snipe at each other from the comfort of our herds. We'd rather be labels than individuals. We've become the talking points of our group agendas instead of straight-talkers from our hearts.
Where is our happiness? As a nation we bicker, we call each other names, we seem unable to solve our problems.
Where is our myth of freedom? That, thank God, despite the Patriot Act, despite the strictures of the Christian Radicals against gay marriage, abortion and evolution, is still alive. Without it we would not be Americans. It's the one reason I still smile in my sadness.
But overall, where are we now? We bestride the world stage like a blind elephant. We, who've always helped the world, today we cannot help ourselves. Mexico sends us food.
Instead of being solvent, we are in massive debt to the world. We are in massive debt to ourselves, too. Most of us live only a paycheck away from penury. Medical costs can wipe any of us out. And while the vast majority of us hang on by our fingernails, our rich are getting super-rich. CEO pay has sky-rocketed from 50 times the average hourly worker a generation ago to 500 times today, with no recognizable link between pay and performance (other countries don't suffer from CEO greed; it appears to be a peculiar American problem). Katrina ripped the façade off our competence and exposed the underbelly of the American dream: it thrust in our faces the hard fact that 37 million Americans live in poverty in the richest nation on earth. One in five U.S. children is poor during the first three years of life, the time when brain development is the most crucial. In its 2005 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers surveyed 15 infrastructure categories -- roads, bridges, drinking water, public schools, etc. -- and issued an overall grade of "D."
Cry indeed, our beloved country.
Who will lead us out of this? Whatever you may think of our president, and even if you love him with all your heart, which many Americans do, you have to face one truth about him: he's the evidence that the rich guys got their guy in for eight years. It takes a great politician to do that. Yet he's no great statesman. We haven't had one of those since FDR. Take your pick: George W. Bush is a good man in a tough time - or a small man in a big world -- or a hapless rich dude in a bubble of privilege doing the best he can. But his best will never be enough to transform us from a helpless giant into the shining city on the hill that we used to be. He's not the one to give us back our faith in our myths, because his is the raw face of capitalism gone wild, where the rich get tax cuts, and the poor sit foodless in a football stadium.
How can we make the world proud of us again? How can we make ourselves proud of us again?
The time calls for an FDR or a Martin Luther King, yet there is no such individual in sight. We will have to do the job ourselves, one day and one American at a time.
We will need to originate a new myth, because our old myths don't serve us any more. Besides, these days the rest of the world isn't much inclined to buy into them.
One of our fine myths, the myth of the individual, has a dark underside: if you're an individual, you're out on your own: the lone ranger, Gary Cooper standing alone at High Noon. Nobody's got your back. It's all up to you, buddy. Expect no help from anyone else, pardner.
In our glorification of the rugged individual lies the counter-myth of the darkness of the self, the lure of individual greed. Individual responsibility undercuts the idea of shared responsibility. This is the one myth we sorely lack: a myth of a generous and inclusive community.
The closest we come to it, is when we welcome a new neighbor by knocking on their door with a cake we baked ourselves. A sweet old-time myth of small-town America. A myth that died in the cut and thrust of our big-city anonymity.
We need to take that myth, the myth of small-town America, and apply it afresh to our entire nation again. We need to say to ourselves that we are the American family, small-town at heart -- and like a family, we stand together, and will not allow members of our family to suffer.
We need to look our economic system of capitalism in the face, that great engine of prosperity, and say it to it: we need you to have a human face.
Capitalism with a human face: the face of community, of shared responsibility, of taking care of our own, of family bonds embracing the whole nation. For too long each of us has been looking out for Number One, an attitude that's made all the Number Twos suffer.
Will we ever be able to add the myth of community to all our other great myths? We may have prospered long without it, but it's the myth we need most now. After all, if we can invent the myth of Santa, which we did in 1880 -- a myth our children still believe in -- we can invent the idea of an American community, of an American family, right now. All we have to do, is demand from our government that it stop running a welfare state for big business (our business-as-usual government of fat cats, by fat cats and for fat cats) and run a people government instead. A government that represents the better angels of our nature, and elevates the poor, the sick, and the uneducated among us in a domestic Marshall Plan, which will give us back an America in which all Americans prosper. (A more provocative way to say the same thing is that we should bite back our masculine impulses, which have made us the military top dog, as well as the biggest exporter of arms that feed the world's wars, and instead feminize our society, i.e. unleash our nurturing impulses.)
Who knows, if we start now, we will have a new America to believe in soon. If we don't, we'll just have to get used to a great sadness tugging at the heart of the helpless giant we've become.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/14/095741.php
Government is bad, isn't it?
Reza Dibadj
Thursday, September 8, 2005
The gut-wrenching pictures from the Gulf Coast showing our fellow citizens without food, water and shelter prompt the inevitable question: How could this happen in America? The answer will require debates on global warming, energy policy, coastal development and, perhaps most important, class and poverty.
To these meta-issues, I add an important contributing factor: Our public infrastructure is compromised, making it more vulnerable to disaster. The spectacular failure of the levee system in New Orleans is only the most dramatic example. Recent events have shown how little safety margin, or redundancy, exists in our systems. Think, for example, of the communications problems first responders faced in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the blackout of 2003 in the Northeast, or the vaccine shortage of 2004. In each case, the causes are different and complex, but an overarching theme emerges: We either did not invest enough in public infrastructure, or naively relied on the private sector to provide a public good.
The problem, of course, runs much deeper than isolated crises. Consider that in its 2005 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers surveyed 15 infrastructure categories -- including roads, bridges, drinking water and public schools -- and issued an overall grade of "D." The report notes that "congested highways, overflowing sewers and corroding bridges are constant reminders of the looming crisis that jeopardizes our nation's prosperity and our quality of life." Not to mention crises in public hospitals and housing.
Contrast this assessment with America's stunning historical record of achievement. Recall President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's huge public-works projects emerging from the New Deal or President Dwight Eisenhower's creation of the interstate highway system. When Americans travel throughout much of the world, we lament the lack of clean water and modern transportation and telecommunications infrastructure that we have traditionally enjoyed at home. It would be belaboring the obvious to point out that infrastructure has been an important contributor to America's global leadership.
Of course, pundits who typically clamor for smaller government -- uncharacteristically quiet, at least for a few days -- will no doubt bristle at this suggestion as immediate dangers pass. They will point to the fact that infrastructure decisions come down to a cost-benefit analysis. But cost-benefit analysis, at least as practiced today, typically suffers from three fundamental flaws. First, cost is much easier to measure than benefit; as a consequence, new research is showing that benefits are undervalued, leading to underinvestment. (How to value accurately a human life, clean air or clean water?) Second, despite a veneer of certainty, such analyses are typically done by politicians and economists, who too often bring ideological bias. They are best left to scientists and engineers. It is no coincidence, for instance, that technical experts have been issuing warnings regarding the levee system in New Orleans for years. Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, cost-benefit analysis should only be one input into public policy.
Beneath the veneer of seemingly elegant cost-benefit analysis, the usual trump card employed by those opposed to upgrading infrastructure is that it is simply too expensive. To this, the response should be a purposeful "compared to what?" If we need to pay to be secure, so be it. After all, we are not a nation that cowers from challenges. Resources have been mustered for every problem America has faced in its history, and revamping public infrastructure should be no exception.
Intellectuals are not immune: Many want to "outsource government" and believe democratic discourse can simply be mediated via private-market transactions. Such laissez-faire theories stumble when they face public goods such as infrastructure. In economic jargon, these goods have "positive externalities": Because everyone benefits, no one individually has an incentive to pay for them. Think parks, national defense, roads, highways and, yes, levees. Private markets do not have incentives to produce these goods. Without government's coercive powers, everyone wants a free ride.
Needless to say, however, that investing in public goods is decidedly out of vogue in an era that exults the private. Why should we worry about mundane things such as public roads and sewers when our culture tells us to aspire to personal makeovers, SUVs and gated mansions? After all, according to the conventional wisdom, we need to get government off our backs so we can get on with our lives.
The stunning irony in all of this is that government is considered bad, except when we need it. Tragedies such as the Hurricane Katrina aftermath at least offer us a precious opportunity to re-examine our assumptions. Of course, improving our infrastructure is not a panacea. But it would be a good place to start.
Reza Dibadj is an associate professor of law at the University of San Francisco.
link to www.sfgate.com
U.S. must learn to think the unthinkable
Storm damage shouldn't have been a surprise
Eamonn Kelly
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, we remain haunted by the images of hungry, homeless and ill Americans in scenes of abandonment and helplessness. The word that still comes to mind is "unbelievable."
Yet, both the magnitude of the damage caused by the catastrophe and the extent to which it came as a surprise are entirely predictable. The real failure is that we still have not learned first to think the unthinkable and then believe it.
The catchphrase "thinking about the unthinkable" isn't new. It originated in 1962 with a book by that title from the pioneering futurist Herman Kahn. Kahn broke new intellectual ground when he argued that the United States needed to systematically imagine a future after the unthinkable -- nuclear war -- and then prepare for survival.
Just as we learned to think the unthinkable about nuclear war, especially after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we now need to face up to the new realities of today's challenges -- whether they're natural disasters like Katrina and the Asian tsunami or terrorist attacks like Sept. 11 and the London bombings.
But as we've learned again and again, it is painfully difficult for human beings to think this way. Cognitive bias distorts our ability to prepare for and respond to events of the magnitude that struck New Orleans. For instance, President Bush said three days after the hurricane hit, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," when planners, academics, government officials and journalists had been predicting that exact scenario for about four decades.
As everyone now knows, countless hours were spent developing scenarios, writing articles and creating disaster-response plans about what might happen in New Orleans, but it seems that not enough people in government were able to believe the unthinkable enough to take sufficient action to prepare.
Of course, there are always tradeoffs to manage, and it's easy to be wise about events in hindsight, but we need to move beyond such blind spots. This is especially critical because three mutually reinforcing factors are significantly raising the stakes of our continuing inability to believe the unthinkable.
Infrastructure: The nation's infrastructure has reached the breaking point, most vividly demonstrated by the breakdown of New Orleans' 350-mile-long network of levees, canals and pumps. New Orleans represents, in fact, an infrastructural tipping point.
All over the country, highways, airports, schools, railroads, ports and hospitals are suffering from growing usage, inadequate investment and natural aging. One-third of all bridges in the United States are dilapidated or too weak to bear traffic. As the 2003 blackout on the East Coast demonstrated, the nation's electric grid is outdated and vulnerable.
This year, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's infrastructure a grade of D and estimated that $1.6 trillion needs to be spent over the next five years to fix the most serious problems.
Our failure to invest in adequate infrastructure is symptomatic of our inability to believe the unthinkable about the aftermath of a major infrastructure collapse. The levee breaches could have been prevented with $18 billion in repairs to the New Orleans system before the hurricane, according to Army Corps of Engineers. It will now cost an estimated $100 billion to rebuild a shattered region.
Historically, Americans are much better at creating infrastructure than maintaining it. We hate to pay higher taxes to cover maintenance even if they are the best way to share the burden of such beneficial public goods.
And we're finding it increasingly disruptive and expensive to fix systems that are in use. For instance, rebuilding the eastern span of the Bay Bridge is now $5 billion over initial estimates and four years behind schedule.
It's critical that we be realistic about the need for adequate funding for investments in infrastructure and maintenance -- an essential and appropriate role for government to play -- while also moving beyond pork-barrel politics in distributing these scarce resources. We don't need more roads to nowhere in Alaska. We do need public investments that will save our lives and defend our lifestyles.
The environment: Nature is extraordinarily powerful and volatile, and despite our technological advances, is still largely unpredictable. But we know with great certainty that there will always be natural disasters. If people build their houses on a 100-year flood plain, eventually their houses will be flooded. If we live in earthquake country, eventually the big one will hit. We know these risks, yet we still can't seem to prepare adequately.
We also know that natural disasters will most likely grow worse because of humans' impact on the Earth's environment and climate. The evidence suggests we need to temper our hubris. The planet does not belong to us; we belong to it.
Demography: Over the last century, the world's population has nearly quadrupled to 6.5 billion people. By 2050, the number will reach about 9 billion. More than 80 percent of Americans and more than 50 percent of the world's population now live in cities. Many of these cities are in coastal areas, further increasing the risk of destruction from natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis and flooding.
We know that the dangers are increasing, simply because of where the world's growing population is settling, but still we fail to believe the unthinkable about the consequences of our choices.
Over the centuries in New Orleans, residents increasingly settled in historic flood-plains below sea level, which the original settlers of the city avoided. Tragically but predictably these residents included the very poorest, who were least able to escape when the time came.
Because the levee system protecting these low-lying areas was built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, planners had repeatedly called for strengthening it to withstand even worse catastrophes. But over the course of several decades, insufficient investment was made to prevent a breach when the inevitable worst case occurred.
Then when disaster struck, emergency planning appears to have been woefully inadequate. Local emergency officials and police battled looting and managed disaster relief for days without significant federal assistance.
There seems to have been an inability to believe in and prepare for an unthinkable scenario in which a heavily populated coastal city must be entirely evacuated, its residents not able to return for months because of widespread flood damage.
We are now all aware of the need to do better. However, we must resist the obvious temptation to centralize responsibility, for example, by appointing a czar of natural disaster. Certainly, we need shared plans, good communication and real co-ordination, but we desperately need the capability to make strong, decentralized decisions. San Francisco learned this lesson after the 1989 earthquake when it instituted a decentralized response system for national disasters that will be coordinated by neighborhood.
When we don't invest in believing the unthinkable, even when these unthinkable events are inevitable, we're bound to be surprised by the consequences. The likelihood of a large terrorist attack from al Qaeda on established targets like the World Trade Center was well understood, yet the Sept. 11 attack took most Americans by surprise. The only real surprises are that it did not come earlier and that it has not been followed up with a meaningful second strike inside the United States.
We do not need to be as creative as sci-fi writer Michael Crichton or films like "The Day After Tomorrow" to imagine the future's disasters and do what is necessary to prepare for the inevitable.
We can learn to think the unthinkable. It requires a systematic suspension of disbelief about what's possible and a thorough examination of worst-case scenarios. It demands we acknowledge we have cognitive biases that tell us "it won't happen here," or that history is a reasonable guide to the future. And it requires us to think imaginatively about new ways to mitigate the risks we identify.
We already know that our ability to believe the unthinkable can produce results. Low-lying Maldives built an entirely new island to save its other islands from rising sea levels due to global warming. The new island largely escaped damage during last year's tsunami.
What is the next unthinkable event we should be imagining?
Scientists know that the world is overdue for a major event like the 1918 flu pandemic, which probably killed as many as 50 million people. We know that it is just a matter of time before today's widening avian flu outbreak becomes a full-blown global epidemic that could kill as many as 50 million people, according to the World Health Organization.
But governments, businesses and individuals are not prepared. They are not ready for the day when all air travel comes to a halt, when cities are quarantined, when life as we know it ceases. What strategies should governments develop now, what contingencies should businesses put in place and how will we all manage with our lives? Not doing something now about the coming avian flu epidemic is simply irresponsible.
After Hurricane Katrina, it's too easy to play the blame game and point fingers at missed opportunities and failed policies. What's hard is correcting the failure of imagination that led to these outcomes.
Perhaps this latest disaster will serve as a wake-up call for Americans to once again learn to think the unthinkable, and then to plan for that day. It could very well be our climactic Sept. 11.
Eamonn Kelly is CEO of Global Business Network (www.gbn.com), a consulting firm in Emeryville. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World." Contact us at  insight@sfchronicle.com.
link to www.sfgate.com
|
add a comment on this article
|
