A journalist friend of mine, Kelsey Atherton, tells a dark joke about America: “Oh, you’re experiencing a structural problem? Have you ever considered trying different personal choices instead?”
I find myself thinking about it whenever big, awful climate-related catastrophes happen. I was overseas when Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, N.C., killing 42 people (that we know about), displacing thousands, and causing an estimated $53 billion in damage. Many of the area’s 55 breweries were knocked offline for days or weeks. Some are facing total loss.
Hurricanes aren’t structural problems per se, but the grim humor came to mind anyway. Maybe it was scientific finding that the storm dumped 10 percent more rain than it might have before climate change kicked in, or that the federal government’s flood maps for the area underestimated risks to the public by 100 percent due to years of Congressional underfunding for disaster relief, or that Republican lawmakers in the state have been wielding their gerrymandered supermajority to block flood safety regulations in Raleigh for the past 15 years. Storms may not be structural, but our ability to weather them (or not) certainly is.
I’m encouraged by reporting on the pretty good response by the North Carolina National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), though it is far from perfect, and hopeful for my personal friends and professional contacts in Asheville as they begin to rebuild. A couple weeks after the storm receded, with my feet planted firmly on domestic soil, I heard from one
