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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Environmental impact of natural disasters & phenomena
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Disaster by Choice - How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes (Paperback)
Loot Price: R440
Discovery Miles 4 400
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Disaster by Choice - How our actions turn natural hazards into catastrophes (Paperback)
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Loot Price R440
Discovery Miles 4 400
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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An earthquake shatters Haiti and a hurricane slices through Texas.
We hear that nature runs rampant, seeking to destroy us through
these 'natural disasters'. Science recounts a different story,
however: disasters are not the consequence of natural causes; they
are the consequence of human choices and decisions. We put
ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures which we know
would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does. This
can be both hard to accept, and hard to unravel. A complex of
factors shape disasters. They arise from the political processes
dictating where and what we build, and from social circumstances
which create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. They
develop from the social preference to blame nature for the damage
wrought, when in fact events such as earthquakes and storms are
entirely commonplace environmental processes. We feel the need to
fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to
protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside
our communities. This attitude distracts us from the real causes of
disasters: humanity's decisions, as societies and as individuals.
It stops us accepting the real solutions to disasters: making
better decisions. This book explores stories of some of our worst
disasters to show how we can and should act to stop people dying
when nature unleashes its energies. The disaster is not the
tornado, the volcanic eruption, or climate change, but the deaths
and injuries, the loss of irreplaceable property, and the lack and
even denial of support to affected people, so that a short-term
interruption becomes a long-term recovery nightmare. But we can
combat this, as Kelman shows, describing inspiring examples of
effective human action that limits damage, such as managing
flooding in Toronto and villages in Bangladesh, or wildfires in
Colorado. Throughout, his message is clear: there is no such thing
as a natural disaster. The disaster lies in our inability to deal
with the environment and with ourselves.
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