Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Australian National University lecturer Maria Tanyag, people who try to stay positive and encourage each other after a town is flattened by a typhoon are ignoring the lessons they should have learned about climate change.
Myths about disaster survivors stall the global response to climate change
August 18, 2019 10.42pm AEST
Yvonne Su
Maria Tanyag…
Disasters, as forms of crisis, can offer opportunities to more sharply focus on historical and ongoing inequalities. What lessons can we learn from large-scale disaster responses and how can we apply them in the face of intensifying and more frequent extreme weather events?
Drawing on our research in the aftermath of the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan disaster in Eastern Visayas, Philippines, we found that few meaningful lessons were drawn from Haiyan because the recovery of survivors had been romanticized and distorted. While resilience and stories of the communities “building back better” has become the legacy of Haiyan, those on the ground says it’s actually more like “building back bitter.”
We found that after almost six years, there are now worrying signs in the telling and re-telling of the disaster, and the recovery that occurred afterwards, especially for the hardest-hit communities.
…
Based on our research, we argue that long-term global climate change response is at risk when accounts of resilience, resourcefulness and remittance are mythologized and eventually cemented as truths in the aftermath of disasters.
The Haiyan disaster is a cautionary case for climate adaptation and mitigation because it demonstrates the seductiveness of survival myths.
These idealized narratives ultimately do more harm than good because they prevent the identification of specific conditions that make households and communities particularly vulnerable to disasters, as well as the tremendous gendered inequalities that are often exacerbated in their aftermath.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/myths-about-disaster-survivors-stall-the-global-response-to-climate-change-121548
How unsurprising; climate alarmists complaining that people should be wallowing in misery and demanding climate action, instead of trying to put their lives back together after a weather disaster.
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What?!? The survivors didn’t really survive? Their survival is all a myth? Someone needs to go set those survivors straight.
From the article: “Disasters, as forms of crisis, can offer opportunities to more sharply focus on historical and ongoing inequalities. What lessons can we learn from large-scale disaster responses and how can we apply them in the face of intensifying and more frequent extreme weather events?”
So many assumptions and so little time.
I think these authors would prefer that victims of a hurricane get out and demonstrate against CAGW rather than rebuild their lives. The authors seem to think the victims have their priorities backwards.
Speaking of disasters, we should have a moment of silence for the passing of Okjokull, Iceland’s first glacier lost to “climate change”. Amidst their grief is tremendous angst over the likely (they think) loss of all 400 of their dear glaciers in future years. These are like pets to them, which why they all have names no one can pronounce.
I saw a news item on tv this morning showing about 100 people going to the now-melted glacier to mourn. It was so sad.
It’s sad that people can get so worked up over nothing.
It does make you wonder what an automated algorithm of climate stupid hooked to a working quantum computer would look like. Or maybe it’s already here with a throttle on it to only spew out a few per day.
One of the most extraordinary demonstrations of survival was during the 900 day siege of Leningrad during the 2nd World War. These heroics were celebrated for a short while as Stalin was deeply suspicious of the distinctive ethos that three years of relative autonomy from Moscow had fostered in Leningrad. The leaders of Leningrad’s survival were shot and 2,000 people were imprisoned or exiled. A museum about the siege was closed, to be reopened 40 years later. For many years Leningrad’s tragic and heroic wartime history would be barely acknowledged, and important aspects of what happened remain unknown to this day.
(some words from https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/leningrad_betrayal_01.shtml)
Listened to an ad here in Vancouver today stating how the last few years of forest fires were climate change. No shame, no mention of the fact that the pine beetle killed millions of trees, now dry and lying on the forest floor and only an imbecile can’t see that would be/ is the cause of some large forest fires. Just completely baffled at how stupid people must think I am- the weather is not the least bit out of historical norms yet I must set my hair on fire (pun intended) due to something perfectly predictable and normal in nature.
“These idealized narratives ultimately do more harm than good because they prevent the identification of specific conditions that make households and communities particularly vulnerable to disasters, as well as the tremendous gendered inequalities that are often exacerbated in their aftermath.”
So many words saying absolutely nothing of any value. So what gendered inequalities were exacerbated by the 2011 Japan earthquake and Tsunami? And if a big asteroid were to strike the earth I assume it will kill and injure more women or ethnic minorities (an oxymoron) because of tremendous gender inequalities.
“And if a big asteroid were to strike the earth I assume it will kill and injure more women or ethnic minorities (an oxymoron) because of tremendous gender inequalities.”
NY Times headline: “World ends Friday: Women and minorities most at risk.”
Wallowing in self pity and anguish is strictly a human thing. You dont see other forms of life rolling around on the ground in an emotional fit. Is that because we are an intelligent sophisticated cultured society. And have become brittle?
This presumes, like the /marxist/socialist/nanny-state does, that people are children/sheep. A normal, balanced, reasonably educated person can keep a necessary, positive attitude to recover from misfortune/disaster and still keep in mind the hard lessons learned from such and the necessity to act on those lessons. This is why the marxists/socialists continue to destroy/usurp the education system.
“. . . people who try to stay positive and encourage each other after a town is flattened by a typhoon are ignoring the lessons they should have learned about climate change . . .” Best laugh I’ve had all day.
So let’s can ‘stay positive’ after an earthquake, tsunami or volcano.
But it’s morally wrong to ‘stay positive’ after a typhoon, flood, or wildfire.
There’s a world of difference between the two, of course.
The people in, for example, Indonesia or Papua / New Guinea did not live on the beach but on the hills and just came to the beach to go out on boats harvesting sea food.
Today they immediately return to the beach to settle there for they trust on global support: they also don’t pay for a home insurance.
the same also on the hills: where pagodas have stood for centuries you can be sure to live for another centuries.
After a tsunami, we get videos by YouTube showing entire cities in these areas disappearing from ground zero within minutes due to “soil liquefaction”.
and with the towns, the newly built pagodas disappear within minutes into the liquefied soil. Kismet!
the same with alpine habitats: where old farms are, it is relatively safe. new luxury resorts are being built next door, but they are at risk from rockfalls, avalanches and even tsunamis:
https://www.google.com/search?q=historic+tsunami+in+swiss+Alpine+lake&oq=historic+tsunami+in+swiss+Alpine+lake&aqs=chrome.
Climate Change -or-: Kismet!