The Politics of Hurricanes
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1668 ... September 18, 2018
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The Politics of Hurricanes:
How Climate Catastrophe Victimizes the Poor
Phil Hearse
Climate change catastrophe is, as this article is written, facing hundreds of thousands on the eastern seaboard of the United States and on the Philippines island of Luzon, as Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut make landfall simultaneously. Mangkhut also threatens Hong Kong, South China and maybe Vietnam.
In the United States, Donald Trump has promised all necessary aid to the affected states -- North and South Carolina and Virginia in particular. But the recent hurricane history of the United States is one of neglect and indifference toward poor and non-white populations -- often the same people -- not least by the Trump administration toward the people of Puerto Rico.
In the... United States we see the same set of factors recurring: 1) Poor populations are disproportionately victims because their housing is substandard, because flood defences have been neglected and because they tend to live in the most vulnerable areas; 2) Poor populations have a higher proportion of victims because they don’t have the means to escape from the onrush of storm water; 3) Survivors from Black and Latino populations suffer disproportionately in post-hurricane situations because they often lack the means to rebuild their homes, renew their possessions (including vital documents) or find missing relatives and 4) Local officials are often keen to aid property developers in stealing the land of the poor where their homes and businesses are not rebuilt. As a consequence of these factors communities and families are dispersed, which compounds the grieving and social distress of victims.
