There's No Such Thing As a Natural Disaster (I): Heat Waves

There is no such thing as a Natural Disaster. This seems like a strange thing to say. After all, from Hurricane Katrina to the European heat wave, haven't we seen nature's terror? In a series of posts, beginning today, I want to suggest something else: that in our technological age, there are no pure natural disasters. In fact, all natural events are socially mediated, and increasingly so. The impact of nature on human life is now more and more amenable to political and technological control.

To a degree, we already think this way, but in a distorted way. The theory of man-made global warming locates a human agency behind ostensible natural disasters. But the problem here is twofold. First, it often exaggerates the human impact. Hurricane Katrina, for instance, just was not caused by global warming, even if some hurricanes, or their increased intensity, might in the future be attributable to the human contribution to climate change. Second, more importantly, the impact of human activity is, on this narrative, largely considered to be negative. It is our effort to control nature, and bend it to our purposes, that has led to these unintended, devastating effects.

What really goes wrong here, is to overlook where individual and collective decisions (and non-decisions) have a far greater impact on the human outcomes of natural events. I'd like to use heat waves as my first illustration of the general point that there is no such thing as a natural disaster.

Heat waves are the most immediate way in which global warming is represented to us. From the European heat wave to the Greek forest fires to the San Diego wildfires, many take increasing temperatures to mean more heat waves. More heat waves, more death and destruction to human life. This is not necessarily so for a number of reasons.

The most immediate, and cheapest point, is 'hotter weather, fewer deaths' because cold is a greater killer than heat. For example, "Up to 50,000 more people die in the UK during the winter months than in the summer," and these numbers are as true in balmy Athens as wintry Siberia. Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated this, and, especially given that most climate change models show warming happening mostly during winter months, there is some reason not to be all that worried, at least in terms of the direct effects of changing temperatures. (I leave indirect impacts, like drought, flooding, etc... for other posts).

However, on its own, this is not decisive, because it still suggests that on the high heat end, things will be getting worse. What is interesting, however, is that this is not true either. Over the course of the twentieth century, despite the fact that temperatures in the United States have risen with each decade, morbidity and mortality from heat waves have not gotten worse by any measure. Indeed, scientific studies (and here) that asked the question “Have mortality rates changed on a decadal basis in conjunction with heat waves?” have found a resounding Yes. But the change has been a marked decline in mortality rates. From the 1960s to the 1990s, when the most rapid warming has occurred, mean mortality has dropped almost 50%. Indeed, according to one of these studies, in some Southern cities, like Charlotte and Miami, there “the populace
exhibits no elevated mortality on days with high [average temperatures]
for any decade in our record.”

The reason for this decline is social and technological. The main technological reasons have to do with improved medical facilities, forecasting techniques, and the availability of air-conditioning in homes, cars and public places. The main social reasons have to do with declining costs of air-conditioning, the creation of cooling centers for those without access to air-conditioning, especially the elderly, and city-wide heat wave management plans.

There is every reason to believe the declining mortality from heat waves will continue, as cities improve their heat-wave management plans, as air-conditioners become cheaper – and so long as energy remains cheap. Indeed, here is a very immediate and good reason for making cheap energy, rather than lower emissions, the top priority – so people can stay cool in hot temperatures, regardless of who caused them. In a later post I will discuss one final, all-important social factor in the impact of heat waves on human beings: inequality. The point here was just to show how significant the social factors, in terms of available technology and political planning, are in determining the impact of nature on mankind. Despite the dramatic rise in temperatures over the past forty years, heat waves have been having an ever dwindling effect. This is true even including such dramatic events as the Chicago heat wave of 1995, which I shall discuss in a later post.

There is no such thing as a natural disaster, and that’s a good thing.