Disaster by Choice: How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes

Disasters are not natural causes, but the result of human choices and decisions. They arise from political processes, social circumstances, and the social preference to blame nature. This book explores stories of some of our worst disasters to show how we can and should act to stop people dying when nature unleashes its energies. The disaster lies in our inability to deal with the environment and with ourselves.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 24 February 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

An earthquake shakes Haiti, and a hurricane tears through Texas. We hear that nature runs amok, seeking to destroy us through these natural disasters. Science tells a different story, however: disasters are not the result of natural causes; they are the result of human choices and decisions. We put ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures that we know would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does. This can be both hard to accept and hard to unravel. A complex set of factors shape disasters. They arise from the political processes dictating where and what we build and from social circumstances that create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. They develop from the social preference to blame nature for the damage wrought, when in fact events such as earthquakes and storms are entirely commonplace environmental processes. We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be the wrath of outsiders. This attitude distracts us from the real causes of disasters: humanity's decisions, as societies and as individuals. It stops us from accepting the real solutions to disasters: making better decisions. This book explores stories of some of our worst disasters to show how we can and should act to stop people dying when nature unleashes its energies. The disaster is not the tornado, the volcanic eruption, or climate change, but the deaths and injuries, the loss of irreplaceable property, and the lack and even denial of support to affected people, so that a short-term interruption becomes a long-term recovery nightmare. But we can combat this, as Kelman shows, describing inspiring examples of effective human action that limits damage, such as managing floodwaters.

Weight: 176g
Dimension: 129 x 198 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198841357