Disasters began turning unnatural again in the 1970s, when researchers’ attention shifted away from physical hazards and toward the vulnerability of people and communities .Nature remains full of hazards, but only some of them wreak disaster. It is human-built structures, not the shaking ground, that kill when an earthquake strikes; people live, often out of desperation, in low-lying slums where flooding is a certainty; well-intentioned forest managers fuel bigger fires; evacuation systems fail; nuclear plants are built along risky coasts; and devastated communities either get help to survive and recover, or they don’t.

There’s another reason that the “natural disaster” label has long outlived its expiration date. It’s really about blame—deflecting it, dissipating it, or removing it from the equation completely. But unfortunately for the blameworthy, science is learning more every year about how human activity is contributing not only to natural-looking disasters but even to the fluxes of air, earth, and water that inflict the destruction. This didn’t start with greenhouse emissions, but it may end there. Climate disruption has collapsed the last walls between the human and the natural—and the storms are growing.

Hopes this helps in some sort of fashion :)

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3 years ago