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 “Water poured into his house. Floods deluged his
neighborhood. At least one of his neighbors drowned.” According to New York
Times reporters Zia ur-Rehman, Christina Goldbaum, and Salman Masood, this is
the norm for Murtaza Hussain in Kausur Niazi Colony, a slum in Karachi. As the
reporters put it, “Year after year” Hussain and his neighbors have “watched as
monsoon rains flooded into their homes, damaged furniture, televisions, and
other precious valuables.”
On its face, what Hussain and his neighbors endure every year is another one of
the many sad stories told daily in the New York Times. This is said as a
compliment to the newspaper. It’s hard to imagine another one with such global
reach. Except that ur-Rehman, Goldbaum, and Masood aren’t just reporting on the
miseries of the poor. There’s as some might expect an environmental angle.
They write that a monsoon season that has been “particularly brutal” in 2022 is
“an urgent reminder that in an era of global warming, extreme weather events are
increasingly the norm, not the exception, across the region, and that Pakistan’s
major cities remain woefully ill-equipped to handle them.” About this, keep in
mind that Karachi is a coastal city, and that the proponents of the theory that
is global warming expect cities next to large bodies of water to suffer warming
the most. Except that there’s an obvious problem with their analysis.
For one, some readers will point out that flooding in Kausur Niazi Colony is an
annual thing, or “Year after year” as explained by the Times reporters. If the
flooding is yearly, isn’t it likely that something other than warming is the
cause?
The above question is a reasonable one mainly because there are lots of coastal
cities around the world, but most inhabitants of those cities don’t suffer as
Hussain et al do every year in Pakistan. That Karachi’s flood experience isn’t
the global coastal norm arguably answers the response that some might have about
2022 being a “particularly brutal” monsoon season in Karachi. The Times
reporters would have us believe there’s a direct correlation between a warming
planet and intense flooding. That’s hard to countenance.
Basically, the reporters are constructing a difficult correlation. As Americans
we know this well. The U.S. has an abundance of coastal cities, it’s no doubt
true that occasionally a hurricane or some extreme weather event will hit one
area pretty hard (Kentucky comes to mind), but this is hardly a “Year after
year” problem for specific cities. Better yet, it’s so far not been a notable
problem in 2022 despite the latter existing as a “particularly brutal” year in
Pakistan. In other words, anecdote isn’t statistic, trend, or much else. It’s
been an awful monsoon season in Pakistan, but not in every global port city.
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In particular, no U.S. town or city can claim annual miseries related to
flooding as Karachi can. They just can’t. All of which raises a question of why?
The answer seems kind of obvious. If a U.S. city were annually flooded due to
weather, it would either be a deserted city; that, or walls, moats, and other
barriers to rising water levels would have been constructed to mitigate the
impact of extreme weather. Which is the point.
Stating what’s kind of obvious, capitalism produces the resources necessary to
protect us from weather extremes. Precisely because there’s property that could
or can be damaged by weather and its vagaries, the profit-motivated either have
an incentive to erect barriers; that, or they choose not to build where their
property is threatened in the first place. Nothing original or insightful here,
as much as it’s a reminder that the cruelty of weather is more a consequence of
a lack of economic growth (and subsequent lack of resources) than anything else.
Which calls into question all the alarmism about global warming. If we ignore
that the only constant about scientists is that they’re always arguing with each
other, the belief that warming signals future doom is difficult to take too
seriously. That is so given the examples used by reporters, including the ones
mentioned here. They contend that Karachi’s troubles are a consequence of
warming, but by their own admission monsoon floods are annual. Assuming the
theory is real, it’s no stretch to say its effects are felt not because of
capitalism, but due to a lack of same.
It all begs for a more reasoned approach about the future. About it, it’s
notable that at least in the U.S., investment continues to flow in copious
amounts to coastal locales. It’s a powerful market signal, and an inconvenient
one for those who buy into the warming theory. If there’s any validity to it,
it’s apparent investors aren’t worried. Probably with good reason. As long as
there’s capitalism, there will be resources necessary to ably handle whatever
Mother Nature throws at us.
John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Vice President at
FreedomWorks, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and a senior economic
adviser to Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His most recent
book is "When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a
Tragic Lapse of Reason."
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