Ted Steinberg: Why Deregulation Is to Blame in part for Katrina and Other Natural Disasters
[Ted Steinberg is a professor of history and law at Case Western Reserve University. Among his books are Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (Oxford University Press, 2000) and American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006).]
... To date the Katrina disaster has been presented in the news media as primarily a textbook example of failed Republican politics. If only President Bush had left the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone and not incorporated it into the Department of Homeland Security. If only he had appointed a FEMA director with experience in disaster preparedness. If only he had not slashed funds to strengthen the levees, then things would have gone better down South.
There is little doubt that the Bush administration badly mishandled the disaster. Nor can there be any question that concern with terrorism drained away resources and distracted political leaders from the threat of natural disasters. But ultimately our nation's problem with such calamities goes back much further than the rise of Republicans to power in the 2000 election or the attacks of September 11, 2001. The dilemma stems from the deregulatory ethos that has dominated U.S. politics since 1980. That disregard for limits — be they on coastal development or storm-susceptible housing — is something that both Republicans and Democrats have conspired to bring about.
The ethos is part of a more general trend since the late 1970s toward a neoliberal agenda. As described by the geographer David Harvey in his recent A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005), neoliberalism involves "an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade." It is a philosophy centered on nearly absolute economic freedom that flourished during the Reagan administration and, as the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has pointed out in The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton, 2003), carried over into the Clinton era.
Consider, for example, the National Flood Insurance Program, established in 1968 and based on the idea that the federal government would help people in flood-prone locales insure their property. In return, local municipalities would enact regulations limiting land use in vulnerable areas and thereby reduce exposure to flood risk. Unfortunately, a 1983 General Accounting Office report revealed that FEMA — first charged with administering the program under Jimmy Carter — had failed to monitor state and local regulations.
A bipartisan assault on the program soon followed. What was once a requirement that local authorities adopt flood-plain rules became "the preferred approach" under the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration then abandoned land-use regulation entirely, drafting a new policy that sought to "encourage positive attitudes toward flood-plain management."
Meanwhile FEMA allowed the maps defining flood zones to go out of date, a move that understated the risk of inundation and thus helped encourage coastal development in vulnerable areas. Back in the 1970s, mapping those areas subject to a 1-percent risk of annual flooding occurred every three to five years. But the deregulatory climate that began the following decade led to a lackadaisical attitude at FEMA's cartography department.
By the time Hurricane Katrina struck, some of the flood-insurance maps were a full generation old. A map depicting part of Hancock County, Miss., for example, allowed homeowners to build some 10 feet below the elevation that an accurate estimate of a 100-year flood would have permitted — a disaster waiting to happen if ever there was one....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
... To date the Katrina disaster has been presented in the news media as primarily a textbook example of failed Republican politics. If only President Bush had left the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone and not incorporated it into the Department of Homeland Security. If only he had appointed a FEMA director with experience in disaster preparedness. If only he had not slashed funds to strengthen the levees, then things would have gone better down South.
There is little doubt that the Bush administration badly mishandled the disaster. Nor can there be any question that concern with terrorism drained away resources and distracted political leaders from the threat of natural disasters. But ultimately our nation's problem with such calamities goes back much further than the rise of Republicans to power in the 2000 election or the attacks of September 11, 2001. The dilemma stems from the deregulatory ethos that has dominated U.S. politics since 1980. That disregard for limits — be they on coastal development or storm-susceptible housing — is something that both Republicans and Democrats have conspired to bring about.
The ethos is part of a more general trend since the late 1970s toward a neoliberal agenda. As described by the geographer David Harvey in his recent A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005), neoliberalism involves "an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade." It is a philosophy centered on nearly absolute economic freedom that flourished during the Reagan administration and, as the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has pointed out in The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton, 2003), carried over into the Clinton era.
Consider, for example, the National Flood Insurance Program, established in 1968 and based on the idea that the federal government would help people in flood-prone locales insure their property. In return, local municipalities would enact regulations limiting land use in vulnerable areas and thereby reduce exposure to flood risk. Unfortunately, a 1983 General Accounting Office report revealed that FEMA — first charged with administering the program under Jimmy Carter — had failed to monitor state and local regulations.
A bipartisan assault on the program soon followed. What was once a requirement that local authorities adopt flood-plain rules became "the preferred approach" under the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration then abandoned land-use regulation entirely, drafting a new policy that sought to "encourage positive attitudes toward flood-plain management."
Meanwhile FEMA allowed the maps defining flood zones to go out of date, a move that understated the risk of inundation and thus helped encourage coastal development in vulnerable areas. Back in the 1970s, mapping those areas subject to a 1-percent risk of annual flooding occurred every three to five years. But the deregulatory climate that began the following decade led to a lackadaisical attitude at FEMA's cartography department.
By the time Hurricane Katrina struck, some of the flood-insurance maps were a full generation old. A map depicting part of Hancock County, Miss., for example, allowed homeowners to build some 10 feet below the elevation that an accurate estimate of a 100-year flood would have permitted — a disaster waiting to happen if ever there was one....