Photo by The National Guard | CC BY 2.0
The failure to treat our colony Puerto Rico as we treated suburban Houston is no accident and it brings sharply in focus how American Exceptionalism makes exceptions to those not white-skinned and upper class. Following the debacle of Katrina, where working poor blacks were hit hardest by poor regional planning and investment, the sequel in the Caribbean shows how ruthless capitalists can be to those low on their ladder. The “external costs” of resource exploitation of the planet include the increasingly powerful storms that run wild over intentionally ruined mangrove swamps in Louisiana, and wipe away decaying above ground electrical infrastructure in Puerto Rico, that would have been replaced wit modern underground systems in a gated community.
Houston was built without zoning or enough simple land-use planning to build expressways above flood waters or to keep areas below water reservoirs free of housing. By luck of the draw this area was the first of three consecutive natural disasters and therefore had the undivided attention of federal resources. The fact that upper middle class homeowners were tricked into buying floodplain property says quite a bit about their understanding of the natural world.
Florida was hit by a very strong storm, luckily its path was sufficiently westward to limit damage to heavily populated areas on the east coast. Electrical power was restored in less than 2 days on the east coast…