Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America

I am starting to think about a 2009 book on CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: Faith, Ideology, and the Five Minds (the later from Five Minds for the Future and I am constantly enchanted when I run across a vital reference to how culture is the disaster, not nature. This book is a magnificent epistle on the folly of mankind and the duplicity of government, business and the media. The author of totally brilliant as he gently sets forth the myth that we are not responsible for acts of God when in fact we are the perpetrators of complex human, social, economic, and political fabrications and decisions that invariably: 1. Screw over the poor and those of color 2. Amortize high risks taken by the rich across the entire taxpayer base 3. Conceal, lie, deceive as to the actual premediated decisions that occasioned the disaster turning into a catastrophe. I am reminded of that excellent work, Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series). Here is "the" quote from the author, on page xxii: "The official response to natural disaster is profoundly dysfunctional in the sense that it has both contributed to a continuing cycle of death and destruction and also normalized the injustices of class and race." The middle of the book is a detailed but not at all tedious account of California, Florida, and the Mississippi flood plain. In all three cases calamity was treated as a cultural script to execute: 1. A political agenda on the poor 2. Conceal and deceive outsiders to keep investment coming in 3. Further land speculation, with insurance company as well as state government complicity I am reminded of the two books, Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. Our country has lost its moral compass across all of its institutions. This is not new, the price is simply higher now. The account of how a railroad magnate built a railway from Jacksonville to Miami (which was 200 feet of sand at first) and then on to Key West, with the taxpayer footing the bill, the state government giving away the land, and the speculation leading inevitably to enormous disaster and death, is riveting. Or at least captivating. He lambasts the federal government for venturing into the political economy of risk, for trying to control weather from the 1950's, and for "writing off" the poor in their mobile homes. Land in hazardous terrain subject to flooding is cheaper, mobile homes are cheaper, the poor cannot afford to evacuate, this strikes me as something only a genocidal maniac would love: "natural eugenics," only a little connivance needed. The author tells us that through the 1970's the federal government stunk at both forecasting and warning, in part because of poor budgeting for the National Weather Service, in part because of privatization, in part because of ineptness (e.g. not repairing critical buoys). He states, and

Have "natural disasters" become more destructive ... or has economic development caused this alleged paradigm? Ted Steinberg investigates and confirms what private developers don't want you to hear. As the population grows and moves to more hazard-prone locales (ocean-front properties in Florida and along California's fault lines), humans are creating a supply-and-demand environment with major catastrophes looming on the horizon. Steinburg digs deep into the annuls of American history to expose how hazard vulnerablility began and continues to this very day. While this book was written pre-Katrina, it eerily foreshadows the 2005 hurricane season and precisely predicted the magnitude of destruction that Katrina leveled on the city of New Orleans. While this book is heavy on history and research, it is readable even to the average citizen interested in finding out how we put ourselves in danger. Steinburg washes away political-correctness and tells it like it should be in the many topics he covers (impoverished minorities, weather control, and problems between local, state, and federal governments). This eye-opening book is a must-read for anyone involved in disaster management or concerned about the current state of disaster in the U.S.

This is a brilliant book -- well-researched, incisive, and passionate. It should inspire all of us to think more deeply and critically about how social oppression manifests itself in the ecosystem.

Ted Steinberg's book, Acts of God, is an interesting look at the handling of natural disasters in America. It shows how natural disasters may arrive from nature (as flood, hurricane, earthquake, drought, etc.) but it is the social and cultural context of American that truly turns these phenomena into disasters. This can result from such things lack of warning due to budget cuts, downplaying the effects of the disaster in order to support boosterism, or controlling relief efforts in way that hurts the poor, elderly or minorities. The unusually high proportion of death and loss of property of people in mobile homes is not, in fact,due to random, natural acts or some perverse vendetta against by natural forces against mobile homes but, instead, by purposeful acts by government and capitilists. These arguments are presented forcefully using examples from throughout American history. On occasion, particulary the chapter on weather control, the arguments can become a little muddied. It is, nevertheless, a fairly powerful indictment of the current system that will result in more disasters than it will prevent.