The Next Disaster

Western North Carolina is in crisis, along with much of the southeastern United States. My aunt in Tennessee was woken at 2:00 a.m. by the sheriff’s department, warning of the imminent failure of a nearby dam. A few days later, her neighbors—an elderly couple in their eighties—were found buried under the mud that swallowed their home.

Boone, where I lived while studying at Appalachian State, is a disaster zone. The town is reeling, and I can’t help but think about the many migrant laborers and first-generation immigrants who sustain the region’s agriculture, including the famous Christmas tree farms. They are among the most vulnerable in times like these, yet essential to the community’s survival.

But my concerns don’t stop there. I fear that this disaster, instead of slowing the relentless pace of development in the region, will be used as a pretext to accelerate it. Real estate developers, emboldened by tragedy, will likely seize the opportunity to acquire even more land. Naomi Klein calls this the “shock doctrine”—the strategy by which capital takes advantage of mass trauma and disaster to consolidate power and property. Unlike gentrification, which is a slow and steady process, the shock doctrine moves swiftly, exploiting the chaos and confusion of disaster to reshape landscapes for profit.

Overdevelopment is undoubtedly a factor in the severity of this disaster. Climate change, of course, compounds it. How many more “once-in-a-lifetime” or “once-in-a-millennia” disasters must we endure before we wake up to the reality that this is the new normal? How many more times must Florida sink under rising seas before we acknowledge what’s happening?

Even insurance companies, which have no political stake in the climate debate, are becoming increasingly reluctant to provide coverage in regions at risk of sea-level rise. To them, the science is as real as the premiums they collect.

As the floodwaters recede, the true scale of this catastrophe will come into sharper focus. As always, it will be the poor and vulnerable who bear the brunt of the suffering. Mary Oliver’s words seem especially poignant right now:

“Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
senseless acts has its thread looping
back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
the gold-trimmed thunder
wanders the sky; the river
may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
bring us to grief — but these are the hours
with the old wooden-god faces;
we lift them to our shoulders like so many
black coffins, we continue walking
into the future. I don’t mean
there are no bodies in the river,
or bones broken by the wind. I mean
everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
of any person, or reason — I mean
the waters rise without any plot upon
history, or even geography. Whatever
power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
the name of the catastrophe, it is never
the opposite of love.”

The shock doctrine is not “an act of God.” It’s the disaster that follows disaster—the exploitation of trauma by those seeking profit, ensuring that the wounds inflicted by natural calamities deepen long after the storms pass.