Month: February 2023

Earthquakes and other disasters: some green points

The terrible earthquakes in SE Turkey and NW Syria have focused attention quite rightly on relief efforts and longer term aid for survivors. It might be wondered if there is any distinctly green points to be made on top of all the extant commentary. Much has been said, for example, about the scale of corruption and the attendant failure to enforce building regulations that could have saved many lives.

Then, there is the recurrent failure of authoritarian regimes to cope with disasters (as well as cause them). Thus there was the lamentable record of the USSR regarding Kyshtym and then Chernobyl, China and Covid, and now Erdogan and al-Assad and the recent earthquake. They variously deny what has happened or the severity of the crisis as well as block and delay the necessary actions.

But these arguments has been made in many quarters. Indeed the recent earthquake disaster was anticipated on such grounds: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/09/07/547608828/turkey

Perhaps a greener point refers to the failure to create sufficient parks and generally protect green spaces. There is overwhelming evidence of their health benefits as well as their role in conserving wildlife. But they also offer zones where people might find some comparative safety especially when buildings are collapsing.

Then there is the matter of tall buildings. Of course, they can be constructed to very high safety standards, though, as just noted, actual practice can depart from theoretical ideals (a point made, of course, in the film ‘Towering Inferno’). Clearly, people have more chance of getting out in the event of some disaster if there are not so many floors below them, not so much debris falling down from on high and fewer people at risk in the building. Thus what architect Lloyd Alter of Treehugger website calls the goldilocks principle (just the right height) is very pertinent (https://www.treehugger.com/architect-guide-19-ways-to-build-better-housing-6654200 ).

Earthquakes and other disasters such as tidal waves, giant mudslides and super-hurricanes also illustrate the need for ‘failure-tolerant’ technologies, ones that do not bring potentially catastrophic risks in the wake of such events and are likely to be resilient under their blows. Two stand out: nuclear power plants and giant dams. The consequences of failure in both cases (nuclear meltdown and a wall of water from a burst dam wall) outweigh what would happen if lots of wind turbines were blown over or huge areas of PV arrays were shattered.

Quite irresponsibly, several nuclear power plants and big dams have built on earthquake fault lines. In the former case the countries at fault are varied: USA, Brazil, Japan … and Turkey (https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/02/12/the-latest-warning/?fbclid=IwAR0XnFySTIxqCzwPoipDiYJh3kGw4e_DiYo4WZ6OpKL5HybJ5Cnsrnk0jYc ). It is hard to say why: perhaps the fact that the nuclear power industry does not have to pay for full insurance for the risks it poses (otherwise its economic viability would be worse than is the case now) has made operators not as careful as they ought to be (https://www.loc.gov/item/2011657100/ ). Of course, the need for water also led to nuclear plants routinely being sited in locations that are increasingly vulnerable to rising sea levels, truly future disasters in the making unless a closure programme is initiated.

By contrast, big dams not only pose severe risks in the event of earthquakes, they also can actually add to seismic activity and attendance dangers (https://archive.internationalrivers.org/earthquakes-triggered-by-dams and https://www.src.com.au/earthquakes/seismology-101/dams-earthquakes/ ). Big dams also bring a multiplicity of other problems too (click on ‘Resurgence’ download here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-social-and-environmental-effects-of-large-dams-Goldsmith-Hildyard/307c293c62228d43b2f924cfed16266532f1e56e ). Again we need a programme of removal (eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/17/us-dam-removal-endangered-salmon-klamath-riverand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_removal )

The hardest point to make in the wake of such a horrendous death toll is the pervasive problem of overpopulation. Of course there are many factors at work, not least land ownership patterns that, for example, force out large numbers to make way for cash crop plantations and the like. They are pushed into very arid areas where their vulnerability to drought-caused famine disasters can but increase. But the huge growth in human numbers has meant that people have to settle all sorts of high risk areas such as flood plains, very low-lying coastal areas and regions prone to earthquakes (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/population-rises-so-will-earthquake-death-tolls-flna1c8502980 ; https://www.yourweather.co.uk/news/science/more-people-than-ever-are-living-in-flood-plains-flooding-uk.html ) More than 50% of the population increase in global earthquake-prone areas will take place in a few developing countries (Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh) that are particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. Some 680 million people currently live in the dangerously low-lying coastal zone, a number projected to reach more than one billion by 2050.

Turkey illustrates the dangers. From 1960 to 2021 the population of Turkey increased from 27.47 million to 84.78 million people. This is a growth of 208.6 percent in 61 years. This is increasing just about every problem the country faces whilst making most far harder to solve. Yet Turkish President Erdogan is on the record arguing that couples should have at least three children (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3627087/President-Erdogan-urges-Turkish-women-three-children-tells-lives-incomplete-without-babies.html ).

Imagine if, instead of such growth patterns, there had been population policies in place worldwide over the past half century (https://overpopulation-project.com/just-population-policies-for-an-overpopulated-world/ ). We would still have had ‘natural’ disasters but the degree of exposure would have been far less. There is just cause for rush aid to Turkey and Syria but that should not mean continuation of the widespread myopia about underlying issues.