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PETERS – What government can and cannot do in the face of natural disaster

Highway 1 at Tank Hill. (Image: MOTI)

CRITICISM OF GOVERNMENTS for not properly handling environmental catastrophes — like the one we saw last week — can at times be a little unfair.

When Mother Nature truly wants to show her power, human beings are largely powerless.

Could John Horgan or Justin Trudeau have held back the rains?

Do we expect Mike Farnworth to personally dam the flood waters? Do we expect Rob Fleming to, by sheer force of will, keep mudslides and flash floods from damaging our highways?

Of course not.

Short of those type of omnipotent efforts, though, there are some steps governments can take to lessen the impact of natural disasters.

In the big picture, if we can say human-caused climate change is contributing to more severe storm events, governments can do a lot to address human-caused climate change.

Read More >>

James Peters is the radio anchor at CFJC, coming to Kamloops in 2006. He anchors the afternoon news on B-100 and 98.3 CIFM, and contributes weekly editorials to the CFJC Evening News. He tweets regularly @Jamloops.

About Mel Rothenburger (9510 Articles)
ArmchairMayor.ca is a forum about Kamloops and the world. It has more than one million views. Mel Rothenburger is the former Editor of The Daily News in Kamloops, B.C. (retiring in 2012), and past mayor of Kamloops (1999-2005). At ArmchairMayor.ca he is the publisher, editor, news editor, city editor, reporter, webmaster, and just about anything else you can think of. He is grateful for the contributions of several local columnists. This blog doesn't require a subscription but gratefully accepts donations to help defray costs.

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