Along with my climate reporting, I've also long been on the "rubble in waiting" beat and am haunted now by earthquake vulnerabilities I saw in Istanbul in 2009.
As described in your article, a central fact in such tragedies is often violent men. That is, men willing to profit from the construction of unsafe buildings that they know in advance are going to kill people. Then there are the violent men who drove millions of Syrians in to Turkey, stressing that country financially, and making it harder for the Turks to respond to such disasters.
When we can look beyond the details of particular horrible situations, we'll so often see violent and corrupt men at the heart of any crisis. They either cause the crisis directly, and/or limit the ability to respond.
For example, for years fossil fuel executives (who are already very rich) did everything they could to limit and delay our response to climate change. Climate change was an honest mistake, but our response to it has been thoroughly infected with the disease of corrupt men.
What if there were no violent and corrupt men? What if there were no men? What might our world look like then? I'm increasingly persuaded that the 21st century is going to push us relentlessly towards questions of that scale.
As described in your article, a central fact in such tragedies is often violent men. That is, men willing to profit from the construction of unsafe buildings that they know in advance are going to kill people. Then there are the violent men who drove millions of Syrians in to Turkey, stressing that country financially, and making it harder for the Turks to respond to such disasters.
When we can look beyond the details of particular horrible situations, we'll so often see violent and corrupt men at the heart of any crisis. They either cause the crisis directly, and/or limit the ability to respond.
For example, for years fossil fuel executives (who are already very rich) did everything they could to limit and delay our response to climate change. Climate change was an honest mistake, but our response to it has been thoroughly infected with the disease of corrupt men.
What if there were no violent and corrupt men? What if there were no men? What might our world look like then? I'm increasingly persuaded that the 21st century is going to push us relentlessly towards questions of that scale.