As someone who appreciates both narrative journalism and robust data analysis, fivethirtyeight.com has always been right up my alley. I could post lots of their articles here, or simply tout their praises, but a particular exchange in their recent discussion of hurricanes (which is a worthwhile start-to-finish read) stood out:
anna: The [building] codes should really somehow account for uncertainty, but … do not.
cwick: Anna, what would it look like if a building code did?
anna: It would be malleable and allow cities to change requirements over time. BUT ALSO it would require greater setbacks from the ocean, higher elevation standards, things like that.
maggiekb: One thing that I think is especially important here is that, under our current system of building codes and federal incentives, a big storm like this actually INCREASES the damage risk for the next storm that comes along. This is something that Chad McGuire, a professor of environmental policy at UMass Dartmouth, pointed out to me when I spoke to him. There have been studies that show a pattern where you have a big storm hit, TONS of money pours in for redevelopment, and that ramping up creates a higher pace of development long term than existed before. So by the time the next storm comes along, there’s more stuff in the way than there would have been if the first storm never hit.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
First, the idea that building codes should account for uncertainty is sneaky-complex. A key function of “codes” is that they simplify, regiment, and order what would otherwise be a mish-mash of competing ideas and efforts. Writing building codes that account for uncertainty means more than getting the details right; it means balancing two competing ways of understanding their underlying purpose.
Second, the reasons to account for uncertainty go unstated here. There’s the long-term uncertainty Anna Marie Barry-Jester alludes to, an awareness that changes in the global climate–and by extension, in sea levels, storm patterns, etc.–are broadly understood, but that specific effects of those changes remain somewhat unpredictable. At the same time, however, a more immediate uncertainty remains present in individual storms, tides, and weather events. Even as our collective ability to model the physical conditions of our world has improved dramatically, those models remain constrained by their inputs and their design–they are models, not prophecies.
Furthermore, forecasts are all about likelihoods and tendencies, not exactitudes. Think about the “percentage chance” of precipitation on your local news, or about the myriad potential storm tracks Al Roker puts up on his big green screen when a Harvey, Maria, or Florence get close. It may be theoretically possible to generate perfect predictions with enough data and enough computing power, but at least for now, (and I would love someone to correct me on this if I am mistaken), short-term and long-term uncertainty are necessary components of human interactions with both weather and climate.
All of which brings me to the development phenomenon Maggie Koerth-Baker discusses. It is tempting (and satisfying) to dismiss as either arrogance or stupidity. How could people fail to see that the conditions underlying the first storm still exist, and if anything, are becoming more likely and more extreme?
I would argue, though, that in addition to the infrastructural and policy problems mentioned above, there is a temporal disconnect in the narratives surrounding these storms and the rebuilding efforts right after. Even as major storms like Florence lead to discussions of human impacts on the climate, and the likelihood of more future storms, those discussions of long-term tendencies remain less prominent than the fundamentally responsive/reactive narratives of resilience and recovery that circulate after major disasters like this–ones I am sure will show up on both MSNBC and Fox News over the coming weeks. There are individuals and communities who are “victimized” by these anthropomorphized storms, but those people are not broken and defeated. No, they will persist, rebuild, and carry on. You see it in “Houston Strong” and in stories about struggles to revive New Orleans after Katrina.
Even when that recovery is (like in New Orleans) uneven and incomplete, these narratives are fundamentally oriented toward the disaster that just happened, and treat it as a singularity, a pivot point to which current behavior must respond. Perfectly sensible, given how traumatic these storms can be. But they also necessarily de-contextualize the storm from the environment and climate that facilitated it. “Responding to Harvey” or “Recovering from Maria” demand reactive thinking over a period of months and years, and a focus on the individuals and communities who experienced the storm directly, not a consideration of the upcoming thousand years of climatological uncertainty and its effect on traditions of where I live, how I live, and who I live near.
I don’t want to underplay the role of money, power, and development in these conversations (the article above does a great job in keeping those interests in mind). But I do think it goes beyond “humans are not good at sacrificing now to benefit later.” There are lots of cultures and communities that think carefully about how they act in both the short-term and long-term, and the stories we tell ourselves about how we prepare for, and recover from, storms like Florence can change the ways we respond to the next one, whenever it shows up.
