Earthquakes and politics

City Journal's Claire Berlinski wrote a fantastic article about earthquakes and urbanization, highlighting the gap between what we can do and what we enable ourselves to do:

So we understand enough about seismology to be sure that certain cities face a high risk of earthquakes with enormous death tolls, and we understand enough about engineering and disaster management to say exactly what should be done to protect the residents of those cities. What we don’t understand—or rather, what we’re seldom willing to say plainly—is why some governments take the risk seriously and take aggressive steps to mitigate it, while others shrug and say, Que será, será.

While the steps to take to minimize earthquake damage risks are by no means cheap, quick, or easy, the technology works yet people's livelihoods are being risked on politics. Not cool, leaders, not cool at all.


[1 Million Dead in 30 Seconds]