Reply #4: Can we recognize how incalculably error-prone these facile comparisons are? [View All]

[jpgray]

I hope so. Development in the Outer Banks or Tahoe is harmful to treasured natural environments, and brings with it an almost one-to-one risk of complete disaster. But no, we have to pretend it's like living anywhere else. Why? Because we can. It's like living in tornado alley! No, it's like driving a car! No, it's like living in an area of high crime!

No, it's like none of these things once you go beyond the fucking blatant similarity that both carry risk. It's a shame analogies are so seductive that people dive into them all the time based on those one or two superficial similarities. Living on the Outer Banks or near Tahoe or in Tornado Alley carries risk! That's the sort of bauble most analogy peddlers seize upon. While congratulating themselves for their clever ideas, they fail to ask a basic question: are the risks at all alike, carrying similar dangers to people, property and the environment--not to mention similar probabilities of total disaster for the poor souls living there? Uh, no. Not at all.

No one should berate people who already have a home in these danger areas. They deserve our sympathy and respect. However, that does not mean the predatory speculation of real estate developers and the sadly corruptible local authorities should be ignored. When it's a choice, as is oft reported on this late Tahoe tragedy, between destroying the landscape that brought people there in the first place or dooming the homes to destruction, it's a hint that living there might not be the best idea. Despite the seriousness of a Texas flood, its capacity for permanent, life/environment-destroying damage exists on a far lower scale than in Tahoe or the Outer Banks.

Why do I keep blathering about the Outer Banks? Because it's the perfect example of this foolish societal madness that puts McMansions in areas best left without large developments. There are responsible ways to live in such areas, but in quantity/quality that doesn't spell untold disaster for the residents or the environment. Matthew Engels describes the scenario very well:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1069883,00.html

On the map of the United States, just below halfway down the east coast, you can see a series of islets, in the shape of a hooked nose. These are the Outer Banks, barrier islands - sun-kissed in summer, storm-tossed in winter - that stretch for 100 miles and more, protecting the main coastline of the state of North Carolina. They are built, quite literally, on shifting sands.

...

This is what local agents call "a very nice market", and last month their area had a week of free worldwide publicity. Hurricane Isabel swept in, washing out much of the islands' only road and picking up motels from their foundations and tossing them, according to one report, "like cigarette butts". One island was turned into several islets, with a whole town, Hatteras Village, being cut off from the rest of the US - for ever, if nature has its way.

Residents, journalists reported, were in shock. Many scientists were not. Speaking well before Isabel, Dr Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University in North Carolina, described the Outer Banks property boom to me as "a form of societal madness". "I wouldn't buy a house on the front row of the Outer Banks. Or the second," agreed Dr Stephen Leatherman, who is such a connoisseur of American coastlines that he is known as Dr Beach.

For the market is not the only thing that has been rising round here. Like other experts, Pilkey expects the Atlantic to inundate the existing beaches "within two to four generations". Normally, that would be no problem for the sands, which would simply regroup and re-form further back. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible: the $2m houses are in the way. According to Pilkey, the government will either have to build millions of dollars worth of seawall, which will destroy the beach anyway, or demolish the houses. "Coastal scientists from abroad come here and just shake their heads in disbelief," he says.

See the pattern there? No point in going after the people who live in such areas already, but plenty of reason to dispute the dangerous practices that lead to these disasters, and especially there is reason to dispute these silly comparisons made by people who haven't bothered to make a true comparative analysis of the risks of developing certain areas. The people living there are blameless--the people who unreasonably developed there I have a huge problem with.