We Need a Permanent Solution to Extreme Weather
Posted at 8:45 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2012
Destructive extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy are becoming increasingly common events in the Northeast, and James Surowiecki argues that “Instead of just cleaning up after disasters hit, we would be wise to follow the Dutch, and take steps to make them less destructive in the first place.”
“Meaningful disaster-prevention measures will certainly be expensive: estimates for a New York seawall range from ten to twenty billion dollars. That may seem unreasonable at a time when Washington is obsessed with cutting the federal deficit. Yet inaction can be even more expensive—after Katrina, the government had to spend more than a hundred billion dollars on relief and reconstruction.”
“In fact, there’s never been a better time for a Delta Plan in the U.S. With interest rates so low, it’s cheap to borrow money, and there are plenty of unemployed workers and unused resources that can be put to work.”
