Are we entering a Century of Disasters?

I have to say that Joel Achenbach has written an excellent article The Century of Disasters for Slate Magazine.  If I didn't know better I'd think he was an emergency manager.  The only place that he falls down on is at the very end of the article where he could have made a better pitch for individual disaster preparedness and for that matter, disaster mitigation.

 

The article touches on many of the issues that are leading to the impact of disasters being felt more widely and intensely.  World population growth, mega cities, interdependencies, technology, fragility of systems (I don't think he did touch on the issue of "failing to maintain" infrastructure).  Then there is our acceptance of risk and why we don't think any of these bad things will happen to us personally.  Not to mention maybe in our interconnected world we now know about almost every disaster as it is happening.

 

Joel, you may still have a career in emergency management should the writing gig not work out!