Can we build a sustainable Japan?

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Whatever happened to Japan’s sustainable reconstruction?

I asked myself that question as I stood on a beach in Sendai in northeastern Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture two weeks ago.

I had arrived in Miyagi via Fukushima, the prefecture just to the south. In Fukushima I talked to people living through the most intensely-scrutinized environmental disaster in Japan’s history: the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that followed the tsunami and earthquake of March 11, 2011. Over 150,000 people are still living as evacuees, often in tiny temporary houses and subsidized apartments, as efforts at decontamination moves slowly forward. Many told me they didn’t ever want to return home, no matter how safe the government promised they would be.

I was hoping to find a more positive story in Miyagi.

Disaster capitalism doesn’t work

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:12:00 +0000

There’s a reason Mitt Romney keeps dodging questions about how he wanted to defund FEMA. Most Americans aren’t crazy about the idea of handing over disaster relief to the states. And they're even less keen on farming it out to private business. And yet, in a Thursday Forbes Op-Ed, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Iain Murray argued we’ve got it all wrong: Rather than showing “the need for big government,” Murray says that “disaster relief provides an excellent example of how the invisible hand of the market works to alleviate suffering and bring quick relief to those in need.”

That sure doesn't sound right. But is it? Salon went for guidance to SUNY disaster historian Jacob Remes , author of the forthcoming book "Disaster Citizenship: Urban Disasters and the Formation of the North American Progressive State." What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

So are our intuitions wrong here? Is Hurricane Sandy really an argument for big business, and against big government?

Salon.com > disaster capitalism

Can we build a sustainable Japan?

Disaster capitalism doesn’t work