Don’t link climate change to increasing costs of disasters
While the world focuses on the devastating storms in South Asia and the US, it is timely to ask ourselves two broad, related questions. First, how do we prevent such disasters from being so devastating in the future? And second, how do we best help the vulnerable people who are most affected?
When big weather events happen, often the first thing talked about is climate change. Perhaps it’s a matter of trying to pin blame for a natural disaster. “South Asia is also suffering the horrors of climate change” was one recent American headline.
This claim has some justification, but ultimately points us in the wrong direction.