Survival of the richest – Perspective Magazine

The US Census Bureau recently estimated that 3.3 million American adults are displaced from their homes every year due to fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Most are evacuated from the path of danger and return within a week, but 500,000 never go home. Half a million people equals a good-sized city roughly the population of Liverpool, Edinburgh, Atlanta or Kansas City, displaced every year. But were not missing any major cities. Instead, what is happening is the emptying out, and in some cases, abandonment, of hundreds of scattered, smaller places.

Thinking of entire towns disappearing reminds me of the book series Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, a YA tale about a future, war-shattered Earth riven by erupting volcanoes and earthquakes, where cities mount themselves on giant tracks and become predatory, chasing down smaller, slower rivals and consuming them, absorbing their resources and enslaving their inhabitants. Only the biggest, fastest, and most pitiless survive, and they justify their violence with the doctrine of Municipal Darwinism the survival of the fittest.

Its the doctrine of Municipal Darwinism the survival of the fittest

Is real life on Earth coming to resemble Mortal Engines? In a sense, yes. Our landscapes are increasingly buffeted by ever-stronger natural forces, intensified by global warming, destabilising even the ground beneath our feet. Sure, cities havent become physically mobile, as in the book, but their inhabitants and their capital have; a zero-sum competition is increasingly the norm between larger and smaller urban areas, for resources to deal with climate chaos.

This worrying trend is happening everywhere and is sadly likely to be in everyones future. But for many it is already here: most visibly in places exposed to frequent extreme weather events. In the US they include Florida, Louisiana, Texas and of course California, where I live. Ever the trendsetter, California is a climate early-warning system, thanks to its statistic-topping variability of wet/dry and hot/cold, where normal weather has always been marked by extremes, making the new extremes even more ferocious.

In the last five years, firestorms of unprecedented intensity have obliterated whole towns, including Greenfield, Concow and Paradise, where 85 people perished in flames. This year, a nonstop parade of powerful atmospheric river storms training in from the Pacific Ocean have overtopped levees and inundated scores of towns: Pajaro, Kernville, Woodlake, Felton, Porterville the list grows with each weeks new storm with at least 22 dead. Along the coastline, wind and waves have smashed piers, devoured roads, and collapsed cliffs from under apartment buildings. Even snow, not generally associated with Southern California, has proved fatal, with thirteen people found dead in San Bernardino County after heavy snows buried towns for more than a week, exposing the shocking failure of local authorities to prepare for predictable events.

For some, recovery is relatively quick. Money flows from insurance for those fortunate enough to afford it, and from the federal government, which unhesitatingly funds generous relief outlays so long as communities have the political clout to demand it. The wealthier a place is to begin with, the more relief money it will garner. With few strings attached to aid and subsidies, many rebuild bigger on the same spot, putting more value in harms way, and in the process becoming richer, at least on paper. Repetitive losses are the rule not the exception: on hurricane-prone coasts, homes having been rebuilt four times with taxpayer funds are not uncommon.

But for others, recovery comes haltingly or not at all. Lower-income communities and those with a high percentage of immigrants, people of colour and, especially, undocumented residents, fare the worst. Most lack insurance, the personal capital to tide them over, much less to rebuild, and the political clout needed to compel politicians to help. The results are shrinking, weakening towns and settlements, sometimes abandoned altogether.

In the recent March storms, the town of Pajaro, home to around 3,000 mostly Spanish-speaking workers, was flooded when the Pajaro River, which separates it from the more prosperous city of Watsonville, broke through a levee. Authorities had known for decades that the levee on the Pajaro side could fail but had rejected an improvement project on cost grounds. Its a low-income area. Its largely farmworkers that live there, were the words of one official. For a century and a half, low-lying Pajaro was where immigrant, non-white agricultural workers were relegated: first Chinese, then Japanese, Filipino, and now Mexican. Though the residents pay taxes, they get few services in return County authorities historically have been slow to pave streets, or to provide water, sewerage and other infrastructure.

The residents of Pajaro may never be able to return to their homes. Watsonville, with a better-maintained levee, remained dry.

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Survival of the richest - Perspective Magazine