Destroying FEMA

Watch out for another disaster coming, except this is something that we can already foresee. The US government has been stripping FEMA down, and has even removed disaster preparedness from its mandate.

We can see the magnitude of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. All sorts of natural disasters will continue to happen and have huge effects on people's lives and the nation's economy. There is clearly a need to have a federal agency responsible for preparing for these and all types of emergencies. But the people running the government are apparently only worried about preparing for terrorist attacks, so they have reduced FEMA's role. Now state and local governments will be increasingly on their own when natural disaster strikes.

It is sad that for years, scientists have been warning us about the dangers in New Orleans, but nothing was done, and funding was even cut, curtailing efforts designed to prevent this kind of disaster. Now, all we can do is hope that people will learn from this tragedy, and that things will be done to prevent other disasters in the future and to prepare people for them.

If you're wondering whether hurricanes have been getting worse, one researcher thinks that they have, and that is most likely because of global warming. That's another thing that we need to do something about, but aren't. The government won't even acknowledge that global warming exists. I guess if we don't admit there's a problem, there won't be anything to fix.