Haiti and Climate Change: What’s the Real Problem?
Nicolas Loris /
While some people are trying to determine if Pat Robertson or Danny Glover made the more egregious comment on the cause of the earthquake in Haiti (was it a deal with the Devil or failures in Copenhagen), others are getting to the root of the problem: Haiti is very poor and does not have the resources or infrastructure to prevent damage, react properly to a natural disaster or rebuild after the damage has been done. And proposed environmental solutions, both here and internationally, will do much more to hurt the world’s poor than to help them.
New York Times columnist David Brooks writes, “This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services.” Phelim McAleer makes similar points here. And there’s evidence to support it says George Mason economist Don Boudreaux:
Empirical research reveals that Mr. Brooks is correct. For example, in a 2005 paper, economist Matthew Kahn (now teaching at UCLA) found that, while rich countries experience just as many natural disasters as do poor countries, persons in rich countries are less likely than are persons in poor countries to die from such disasters. Specifically, a country of 100 million people with a per-capita income of $8,000 will experience about 530 fewer deaths from natural disasters each year than will a country with the same population but where per-capita income is only $2,000. Raise the per-capita income from $8,000 to $14,000 and the annual expected death toll from natural disasters falls by another 233 persons.”