AT PENPOINT
It was perhaps a reminder of the fleeting nature of human power to see the world’s two superpowers, the USA and China, attacked by natural disasters, and even though the two countries are locked in a struggle for international dominance, the governments appeared ineffectual in the face of natural disasters.
Digging a little deeper, it would become apparent that the nature of the disasters differed. In China, there was an earthquake. There is hardly any way that that could be ascribed to human agency, except for the more extreme conspiracy theories. The Chinese government was left to face the responsibility of the clean-up of what was essentially a brief event. On the other hand, the fires in Los Angeles, being a combination of wildfires and urban fires, were much more inchoate, and much more prolonged. After the earthquake, there was only the danger of aftershocks; but putting out one fire was no guarantee against another breaking out somewhere else.
The toll was also different. In China, 126 people were killed. In Los Angeles, only 25 people were reported dead, but 153,000 people had received evacuation orders so far, while 166,000 had received warnings that they might need to evacuate.
Further, Los Angeles was not purely a natural disaster. Wildfires do break out in the sort of forests that surround Los Angeles, which along with the Long Beach and Anaheim municipalities, constitutes the second largest metropolitan statistical area in the USA. However, forest fires depend on dryness both for the original conflagration and the spreading of the fire. Also, once it gets into urban areas, much will depend on how exactly people have constructed their buildings. The result has been an estimated $135 billion in damage. Perhaps now the developed world will wake up to the reality of the need for a climate rehabilitation fund. However, instead of dirt roads in some rural area in Africa, now repairs are needed for Malibu beach houses.
Los Angeles is south of San Francisco, which has been the centre of fears in California, especially since the earthquake there in 1905, which brought to attention the San Andreas Fault, atop which the city has been built, and which will eventually separate it from the mainland after about 20 million years. Of course, the Chinese earthquake took place in a seismically active area, the Himalayas, which are rated one of the youngest of the world’s mountain ranges.
Perhaps the people of Los Angeles should not be upset at suffering these fires, for the seismologists have predicted that there are strong chances of an earthquake hitting the city. It might be remembered that the real killer in San Francisco in 1906 were the fires that broke out, li;;omg about 3000 people. Some of the fires were set off by escaping gas from broken pipelines.
At that time, San Francisco was bigger than Los Angeles, but ceded to it commercial leadership thereafter, and Los Angeles rapidly became the bigger city. A return is not likely, not unless there are further such disasters. San Francisco did not lose out solely because of the 1906 earthquake, but because it suffered seven fires between December 1849 and June 1851, with one in May 1851 destroying three-quarters of the city. At that time, most of the city was uninsured, but most buildings were insured against fire in 1906, but not earthquakes, so those homeowners whose earthquake ruins were engulfed by fire could claim that the damage was caused by fire. It is thought that some fire was spread in this way.
A further factor in the fire appearing such a monster, was the denial by many civic leaders that there had been an earthquake at all. Their purpose was to stop business going away. This is echoed in the denial of global warming. It should not be forgotten that the wildfires have been getting worse with each passing year, and just as the 1906 fires could be envisaged as a possibility, so could the Los Angeles fires this year.
However, there is one difference. As the globe warms, there is a greater chance of a repeat. This mirrors what is happening in the Third World, where extreme weather events keep on recurring. Pakistan experienced its worst ever flooding in 2023. Floods occur here every year, so they will keep on occurring. Worse floods will occur, and others nearly as bad. Such floods will occur more frequently, even before the damage of the last flood has been repaired.
Events in China and the USA should provide a lesson to Pakistanis that while both are superpowers, they do not have dominion over nature, and to look to either to provide a solution of only their own problems will mean only being certain of disappointment.
Similarly, California has not got half a century, as it did between the 1851 and 1906 San Francisco fires. It will have to deal with more frequent fires.
However, China will not face heightened risk of earthquakes because of global warming. On ther other hand, its recent dam construction has laid it more open to the risk of a dam collapse because of seismic activity. There is a similar risk for Pakistan’s Diamer-Bhasha Dam. The risk comes from building dams in or near the Himalayan area. It should not be forgotten that the Himalayas have not ‘settled down’ in the sense that there is still some adjustment expected where the tectonic plate continuing the Indian Subcontinent has crashed into the one bearing the Eurasian Continent. The Himalayas are the result of that plate burrowing under the other, and so long as that process continues down the millennia expect earthquakes. If there are dams around, also expect trouble.
Pakistan and China are not the only countries that should be concerned. So should India, especially now that it has launched into an ambitious damming exercise in the Himalayas, for power, water or both.
Actually, any dam collapse would be like the Los Angeles wildfires: the result of human activity. If Tibetans had not developed the area, the earthquake would have not destroyed anything. In the same way, if Angelenos had not built their city in the way of the brush, they would not have risked the fire.
The nature of man being to try and shape his environment, the clash was perhaps inevitable. But the need to make the environment subordinate to himself seems to have caused him to lose balance. The destruction in Los Angeles could have been avoided, had man acted early enough and refrained from certain actions. The refusal to accept that climate change is happening because part of humanity is pursuing untrammelled development, and is perhaps inevitable. However, it also gives the impression that the world’s elite does not have a solution.
The only solution that well-meaning people in the West have come up with is to cut back on producing greenhouse gases, mainly by not burning fossil fuels. India is leading the charge to be allowed to burn even more fossil fuels in its desire to catch up with the West. It is asking for trouble either way, because even while its hydroelectric ambitions put it at risk, burning fossil fuels means it will suffer extreme weather conditions more frequently too.
How exactly man is to return in balance with nature will depend on finding a way to reverse the damage already done. The strategy of waiting things out depends on humans ceasing to pollute. That is not going to happen. First it must be accepted that no single state can do what is needed. It also must be accepted that no combination of states can, because states all place the national interest first. Only then can Mankind proceed.
Events in China and the USA should provide a lesson to Pakistanis that while both are superpowers, they do not have dominion over nature, and to look to either to provide a solution of only their own problems will mean only being certain of disappointment.
