U.S. Disaster History and the Roots of Environmental Crisis

The United States has always been subject to an unusually broad range of ‘natural’ disasters: floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, wildfires…and the list goes on.  But the severity of these disasters has been determined not simply by nature but by human decisions about how and where to live.  

This talk examines how efforts to protect Americans from disaster during the past century (but especially in recent decades) have often had the paradoxical consequence of leaving them more vulnerable than ever to catastrophic loss.  Although this paradox is widely recognised by disaster experts in government and academia, efforts to discourage development in hazardous locations have enjoyed little success.  

Professor Gareth Davies explores why that should be, and inquires whether the vastly increased cost of disaster in recent years might give those experts greater political authority.