“What do you want to be when you grow up?” (we all remember this question from our childhood – perhaps not that fondly)
Stephen Covey, in his 1989 book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, adopted a different spin. He asked readers to imagine their own funerals: what would they like their family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, employees to say about them? At the time, he did acknowledge that some might find the image troubling, but encouraged readers to work through it just the same. And he made clear the “end” was not the end of our lives, but rather the end as in our lives’ purpose – the aim, the aspiration.
What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you hope folks will say at your funeral? You and I benefit from regular intervals self-evaluation along such lines. We need to ask: are we becoming the person we always wanted to be, dreamed we’d be? Are we doing what we always wanted to do? Or do we find ourselves doing something less? Succeeding at something that masquerades as the vision but in reality is coming at the expense of the vision?
To Mr. Covey, a dozen years ago,
Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.
He argued that
One of the best ways to incorporate Habit 2 into your life is to develop a Personal Mission Statement. It focuses on what you want to be and do. It is your plan for success. It reaffirms who you are, puts your goals in focus, and moves your ideas into the real world. Your mission statement makes you the leader of your own life. You create your own destiny and secure the future you envision.
Personal Mission Statement? The most important bit is about your uniqueness and living a life and building relationships with others in ways congruent with your moral code and spiritual beliefs: being trustworthy, loving, faithful, dependable, and all the rest.
But for purposes of this post let’s focus on the career part, the work part – and how to look at that amid the present upheaval: wrenching changes in US policy towards climate change and environmental issues; chainsaw-downsizing of federal agencies; eye-watering uncertainties for the adjoining corporate-, university-, and NGO-sector communities enabling such work. With some over-simplification, Mr. Covey’s message in this context would be something like: if we’re focused on the next research paper, the current project or product, this year’s budget, then we risk being overwhelmed. Instead, we need to remain fixed on the long-term goal.
Some generic version of which for LOTRW readers might be:
Do all I can to enable the world’s present and future population to live satisfying, fulfilling lives on a planet that:
Though generous with food, water, and other natural resources, is finite/limited;
Is dangerous, even though only intermittently; and
Though seemingly robust, is actually fragile – vulnerable to human despoilation in many ways.
Readers should formulate their own, more tailored versions. Want a concrete example? Here’s one. Dick Hallgren, a former director of the National Weather Service and Permanent US Representative to the WMO (and much, much more), used to describe his agency’s mandate this way:
The National Weather Service mission is to protect lives and property.
Then, if he felt you didn’t get his point, he would add, for emphasis: The mission is not simply to forecast the weather, or even to make weather forecasts more accurate. If you stop there, you haven’t done your job. Your job is to save lives and property.[1]
So to repeat: if you haven’t done so already, you might start developing your own. That’s the kind of thing Stephen Covey is talking about/looking for. What is your true long-term objective – the point on the horizon that is your true goal despite the storms you’re weathering where you are now? The standard by which you wished to be judged at every point on life’s journey?
An aside: In turbulent times, as you develop and implement your personal mission statement you might well take heart. You might begin to realize that
The world need for what you have to offer is not going to go away any time soon.
There will always be a shortage of people like you who have the skills, experience, vision, and motivation to address that need. The world will always be looking to you and others like you for help.
What suspense there is, if any, falls on institutions – governments, companies, universities and like entities. Which will history reveal to be the agents of change? Which will history bypass?
In closing: to be proactive, you make your proactivity tangible and beneficial, it helps to make a mission statement, to begin with the end in mind.
And that in turn will lead you to the next habit: Put first things first. More soon.
[1] Today he might add a bit about growing the economy, or explain how that’s covered under protecting lives and property, but you get the idea.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi[1]
In the face of today’s national turmoil and worldwide geopolitical upheaval, how can and should individuals seek to make a positive difference? Lament, in the form of news pieces and op-eds, has been in ample supply, and largely on point. But those people who have been directly impacted by the institutional wrecking balls need real help. Here in the United States, that may eventually come from the courts, the Congress, and the agency heads who find their mandates compromised.
Meanwhile, there’s a lack of on-the-ground assistance to the impacted individuals and institutions who most need it. How can they remain effective under current realities?
There are books about that! One stands out. Those of a certain age will remember it. In 1989, Stephen Covey published to much acclaim The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Over the next three decades, his book would sell over 20 million copies, be translated into 40 languages, and be acknowledged as one of the top 25 most influential management books of all time.
So far, so good! But how effective do these habits look when stress-tested by the often-brutal events and trends of today’s world? Here’s the surprising thing. In some ways, they seem prescient, on point: possibly even more relevant and useful today than they were during the calmer times of decades past. Perhaps we should double down.
But you be the judge. This and the six following LOTRW posts[2] will look at each in turn.
Start with be proactive. Mr. Covey argues that our lives don’t just happen to us so much as we design them. In the face of real-world circumstances, we can choose happiness. We can choose sadness. We choose success. We choose failure. We choose fear. We choose courage. (Recall these are our labels for what’s happening versus what’s actually going on.) Positive choices give us the ability to do things differently and work for more satisfying outcomes.
He argues that we need to take responsibility for these choices/master them. Interestingly, he talks about the importance of what we say as well as what we do. Proactive people choose phrases like I can, I will, I prefer, while reactive people use the opposite: I can’t, I have to, if only. Reactive people fail to see they have positive choices.
Mr. Covey encourages us to be proactive within our circle of influence – those things we can actually do something about: health; family, day-to-day problems at work. He advises against the tendency of reactive people to spend too much effort on the much broader circle of concern: things that matter, but over which we have no control. Worldwide war, convulsions in the economy, political turmoil, the national debt, and much else fall into this latter category.
Most of us would agree that over recent years and especially the past few months, that circle of concern has expanded while at the same time it is also hitting closer to home. Technology has aggravated this. Today, in 2025, internet-based social media continually bombard us with new reasons for anxiety moment by moment – with immediacy and gut-wrenching detail that wasn’t so pervasive in 1989. We’re being carried along, up to our necks, by a violent flood of sad, even heartbreaking news from our hometowns, our nation, and the world as a whole. Brokenness and dysfunction are rampant, and that news is delivered to our smartphones and other devices in real-time. Worse, the actual news is aggravated by social media’s attendant misinformation and lies
Amidst that tumult, it’s not getting any easier to follow Gandhi’s advice – or Mr. Covey’s related version of it. That’s especially so if we merely approach the task in the abstract. However, the stakes are higher and the rewards for even partial success can be correspondingly great.
To succeed, we need to make that circle of influence more tangible, more concrete. Perhaps that’s where Mr. Covey’s second habit comes in: begin with the end in mind. More on that next time.
[1]Some say that what Gandhi actually said was less concise (but possibly more illuminating): “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
[2]This isn’t the first time I’ve written on Mr. Covey’s book. You can find the first of a series of seven LOTRW posts that ran in 2012 here.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” – Stephen Covey
The previous two LOTRW posts have focused on oral history – which at its core might be thought of as a form of assisted life-examination. Oral historians midwife the process in several ways. They certainly probe the personal events making up individual lives. But they also look deeper. They help interviewees see and give voice to how their lives have been shaped and built by larger historical circumstances and trends. And at the back end – through transcription, interpretation, archival, analysis, and sharing – oral historians make the whole accessible to many others. They inform and inspire.
Having recently been interviewed myself, I’ve come away with several strong impressions.
1. Being interviewed certainly provides significant personal benefits. I’m profoundly thankful to have had the experience. I not only learned a lot about myself, but I also came to grasp more concretely which bits of my life mattered most to me, and why. More importantly, it sharpened my understanding of which aspects of my story might be useful or helpful to others – and which might be much less so. It’s even changed how I prioritize my day, and how I view current events. For these (admittedly self-interested) reasons alone I’d recommend the process to others. If you’re invited to give an oral history, you should accept. You might even consider thinking about what you might have to offer the oral historian and then take the initiative – reach out to one.
2. But throughout the process I was conscious that a lot of the Q&A covered events and memories going back half a century or more, and I was seeing them through the lens of an octogenarian – at the same time both rose-colored and less sharply-focused, possibly (oh, the horror!) even in error here or there. That brings up the second conclusion. Most oral histories tend to be one-offs, developed at a late stage in the lives and careers of those interviewed. Oral histories might even be more useful if they had a longitudinal dimension, stretching over decades, and capturing both the immediate effects of historical events and any longer-term impacts[1].
And more useful still if they captured the experiences of much larger numbers of subjects.
3. That ran up against a third point. The conversational tone of much oral history might mislead one to believe that oral history is somehow simple or easy – that it’s little more than a chat, and therefore almost anyone can do it. Much of the currently archived material – recordings of conversations between close colleagues, personal friends – might contribute to this impression. They certainly have a special value of their own. But Socrates and Stephen Covey provide stretch goals. Push the conversation. Take it to the realm of piercing examination. Achieve genuine understanding. Balance the larger trends of history with personal reminiscence. All this benefits from disciplined guidance. Oral histories are labor intensive, and to some degree bespoke. The oral historian may start out with a basic framework, but an important part of the process is follow-up to the initial questions and answers that branch off from some predetermined script and draw out fresh insights. And then there’s the curation part. Oral historians are few – and oral history sources are perishable.
4. All this led me to wonder – could diaries or journaling be useful adjuncts? I think the answer is yes, although when I was doing an internet search on journaling and storytelling I was surprised to find several sources speaking to the hazards of such activity – mostly along the lines of becoming to self-absorbed, and/or developing grandiose ideas of one’s importance and centrality. Think of it as violating the Stephen Covey idea – jumping past the seek to understand part and preemptively seeking to be understood. Perhaps oral history, by maintaining a focus on how the historical moment shapes our lives, could help us avoid this pitfall.
I chased a rabbit: could artificial intelligence be useful? I fed my iPhone ChatboxAI a bio and asked it to interview me orally, versus in text. “Amelia” turned out to be happy to do so. She was super helpful, polite, and supportive – scarily so. I’m guessing AI is probably already assisting oral historians with bits of their overall process (first-cuts at transcription, say), but to bring it to the point of conducting useful interviews calls for caution – and for framing by oral historians. it might be some time in coming.
6. A closing thought. Perhaps in addition to scaling up oral history directly, in one fell swoop, it might be a useful first step to increase public awareness of and appetite for oral history. One pathway might be K-12 public education. Today’s technology should make it practical for teachers to bring oral histories into every school subject from STEM to history, from economics to band and physical education… The right conversations would bring subject matter alive and energize the students.
Might even prompt them to examine their own lives a bit more intentionally; seek understanding a bit more broadly. We’d all benefit from that, and over time that benefit would grow.
[1]I’m told a few such studies exist. Britain’s The Up Study provides a rare (possibly unique?) example.
Let me tell you what I wish I’d known When I was young and dreamed of glory You have no control Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? – Lin-Manuel Miranda[1]
Continuing our LOTRW oral-history thread. Just outside DC here, my senior-living community occupies a dozen or so large buildings, spread over 56 acres. The buildings look separate but are connected by indoor walkways. The residents total nearly 2000. I’m now in my early 80’s; that makes me one of the younger ones; the average age might be closer to 90 years.
That adds up to some 180,000 years of life histories under one roof.
Nearly everyone eats at least one meal a day at one of several big community dining rooms and a comparable number of small eateries dotting the premises. This means a lot of meals with strangers whom you’re meeting for the first time. With tables-for-four, that turns most dinners into four intermingled oral history interviews.
This works out to something like 1000 oral history interviews every evening.
Of course, they aren’t archived; they’re perishable. And given the demographic, a cynic might expect that much of these are medical histories. There is some of that. But remember that this is DC. A number of the residents are retired military, spanning every service and every rank. A number are former government workers. They’ve seen some history, and they’ve made some. They have stories to tell.
An pertinent example. Early in 2024 I sat down to dinner with a guy here who turned out to be interested in weather – as in, making daily reports to CoCoRaHS from instruments on his balcony.
Putting aside issues on the representativeness of his site, that’s pretty serious. Anyway, he said he knew two other meteorologists living here. One thing led to another, and he gathered the four of us for dinner (along with his wife and mine – patient souls!). One was a retired NWS senior forecaster who’d gotten a masters degree of from MIT in 1958 – Andrew James Wagner, who was/is also a lay church leader, including a one-year stint as an adjunct professor of New Testament Greek at a local seminar.
Libby’s story was fascinating. Picture a young woman graduating from high school on the eve of World War II, enlisting so that she could be trained as a nurse in 2.5 years versus four (military nurses were allowed to skip pediatrics and geriatrics). A young woman who not only learned to fly but managed to buy her own plane. Who then joined the Air Force and applied for and worked a stint as a secretary at Bolling AFB in order to position herself for a chance to study meteorology at MIT. Who then was the only woman in her 24-member Air Force group sent to MIT for training in the 1950’s. Who by virtue of her one week of seniority on the others was put in command of that group. Who served as a meteorologist in US air force bases in Canada… well, you get the idea.
A natural subject for an oral-history interviewer, right? And as good fortune would have it, an AMS Summer Policy Colloquium alum, Kristine Harper, a former Navy meteorologist, who got a Ph.D in history (check out the book Meteorology by the Numbers: the Genesis of Modern Meteorology, based on her thesis), though now working in Denmark, was able to swing by and interview Libby in September[2].
At the age of 100 years give or take, Libby has told her story.
Who tells your story is an issue for the famous as well as the obscure. Take Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton helped make the United States what it is today. One of the Founding Fathers, he served in the Revolutionary War, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, co-authored the Federalist Papers with John Jay and James Madison, and served as first Secretary of the Treasury. His vision for a strong American economy and a sound financial system probably contributed as much as anyone to the strong position of the United States in the world today, despite the fact that we total only some four percent of the world’s population. Wow! What a cv!
Since 1928 his face has been on the ten-dollar bill – though in today’s cashless society that familiarity will soon fade into oblivion. School children probably still hear his name at some point in their courses, but his role has been given minimal coverage compared with others of the time – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin et al. If Hamilton has been rescued temporarily from this obscurity, it is largely because of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography. And that biography would not have worked such magic had it not first captured the imagination of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who turned it into one of the greatest stage musicals (and movie) of all time. As the biography and the musical make clear, Hamilton, coming to the mainland from the West Indies as a child born out of wedlock was something of an outlier among the Founding Fathers, belonging neither to the group of Virginia plantation owners or the New England faction. After their presidencies, Jefferson and Adams had decades to tell and re-tell their own stories and versions of the Revolutionary War – and share their negative views of Hamilton. By then, Hamilton was long-dead, his life abruptly and violently cut short by his duel with Aaron Burr. Telling his story fell upon his wife Eliza.
Miranda captures this in an extraordinary way in the musical’s remarkably somber and deeply moving closing number. You can view and listen to a brief video here. I’ve put the full lyrics in a footnote[3].
The important question for you and me is this: who tells our stories? More in the next post.
[1]Lyrics from the close of the musical Hamilton; a rather somber finale as these things go.
[2] Libby and Kris allowed me to sit in the room during the interview. What a privilege! Unsure where the archival of that interview stands, but am hoping that if not accessible already, it will be soon.
[3]Let me tell you what I wish I’d known When I was young and dreamed of glory You have no control Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
President Jefferson I’ll give him this, his financial system is a work of genius I couldn’t undo it if I tried And I’ve tried
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
President Madison He took our country from bankruptcy to prosperity I hate to admit it But he doesn’t get enough credit for all the credit he gave us
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story
Every other founding fathers’ story gets told Every other founding father gets to grow old
And when you’re gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story? Who tells your story? Who tells your story?
I put myself back in the narrative (Eliza) I stop wasting time on tears I live another 50 years It’s not enough (Eliza)
I interview every soldier who fought by your side (She tells our story) I try to make sense of your thousands of pages of writings You really do write like you’re running out of time
I rely on Angelica While she’s alive, we tell your story She is buried in Trinity Church near you When I needed her most, she was right on time And I’m still not through I ask myself, what would you do if you had more time The Lord, in his kindness He gives me what you always wanted He gives me more time
I raise funds in D.C. for the Washington Monument (She tells my story) I speak out against slavery You could have done so much more if you only had time And when my time is up, have I done enough? Will they tell your story?
Oh, can I show you what I’m proudest of? (The orphanage) I established the first private orphanage in New York City (The orphanage) I help to raise hundreds of children I get to see them growing up (The orphanage) In their eyes I see you, Alexander I see you every time And when my time is up Have I done enough? Will they tell your story?
Oh, I can’t wait to see you again It’s only a matter of time Will they tell your story? (Time) Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? (Time) Will they tell your story? (Time) Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Like its predecessors, AMS 2025 was a cluster of specialized conferences and symposia. And actually, “Annual Meeting” is a rather tame word when used to describe what’s more like an Annual Celebration of the rapid expansion and progress – and growing utility – of our field. So much is happening! You had to look hard across the acres of the Convention Center, the thousands of participants, the splashy Presidential sessions, the AI-buzz, the review of 2024 weather impacts (there were plenty) and more to uncover this gem: a Monday, January 13th joint session[2] entitled Oral History in the Geosciences: Why it Matters, How It is Done, and What We Can Learn.
“Gem” indeed.
The program was assembled and structured by Patricia Pinto da Silva, the Project Lead for NOAA Fisheries’ VOICES Oral History Archives; Molly Graham, the Project Manager and Oral Historian; and Mona Behl, associate director of NOAA’s Sea Grant Program at the University of Georgia (and also future chair of the AMS Culture and Inclusion Cabinet). Terrence Nathan from UC Davis, and Chair of the AMS History Committee, chaired the session. The focus reflected that of NOAA VOICES itself: firsthand accounts related to the changing environment, climate, oceans, and coasts from around the US and its territories. In addition to a panel discussion, the session provided presentations from across the world (on the Ocean Decade) and on topics ranging from the BP oil spill and its impacts on Gulf communities, to engaging community in climate adaptation efforts, to a look at marine-harvester responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, to the Navajo elder experience of culture, environmental, and landscape change, to Gullah Geechee local ecological knowledge… links here and here provide further detail.
The occasion and the talks themselves are now history. More precisely, a bit of oral history. From Wikipedia: Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. And through those same AMS links, you can access these recordings.
Which brings us back to the three questions raised by the Session title. These were touched on, illustrated (versus fully resolved) by case studies comprising the session. Impossible to do more in a few hours, with a handful of speakers, and limited time for Q&A.
But this is the year 2025, not 1925. And we not only have Google- and similar search engines, but AI-enabled search. A matter of a few key clicks and mere seconds to input the three questions, and receive answers like this:
Why does oral history matter? Oral history is important because it preserves people’s memories and experiences, which can help us understand the past and present. Oral histories can also help to fill in gaps in historical records and give voice to people who are often excluded.
How is oral history done? Oral history is conducted by interviewing individuals with firsthand experience of a historical event, recording their narrative through audio or video, and then transcribing and analyzing the recordings to capture their personal perspective and add depth to the historical record; essentially, it involves a structured conversation between an interviewer and an interviewee to document personal memories and experiences about the past, often focusing on specific topics or time periods
What can we learn? Oral history allows us to learn about the personal experiences, emotions, and perspectives of individuals from the past, providing a deeper understanding of historical events beyond just the facts by capturing how people lived through them, often shedding light on marginalized voices and filling gaps in the historical record that might be missing from traditional written sources; essentially, it helps us understand “what it felt like” to live in a particular time and place.
Results may vary. But good enough, you and I might say. However, that is only because we have been anesthetized by our present (largely scientific, for this LOTRW readership) subculture, and frenetic/largely virtual (read secondhand) experience of ways of doing business, not just at work but across the whole of daily life. We’re anxiously dashing through this read because we need to move on to the next one.
Still, far better to bring those words to life, to make them personal. Look at how the NOAA VOICES website does this. It addresses the same three questions, although indirectlyand far more powerfully:
Oral history is a unique example of qualitative data that is co-created by the narrator and interviewer. It is defined by its commitment to a diversity of perspectives, recognizing and valuing individual voices and collective experiences within society. Through deep engagement and active listening, oral history helps us answer, in profoundly intimate and detailed ways, fundamental questions:
Who are we?
How are we connected?
How do we relate to each other and the world around us?
How do we know what we know?
How can we recognize and honor embodied knowledge?
Whoa.
So – oral history enlarges our view of the world and the individual importance of every person in it. In so doing, it also remakes us. It reminds us that our science, or technology, or use of that S&T to make a better world is at its heart, a human enterprise (and that it therefore has a heart). Oral history builds our self-awareness, helps us identify/put ourselves in touch with the core meaning and purpose of our lives. Now, if you can make the time, take things a step further and watch an actual oral-history video or two. You will experience all this in the topics covered and the subjects interviewed, and for that matter, the impact of the process on the interviewers themselves. You won’t be just educated. You’ll be inspired and energized[3].
Time to wrap it up! Let’s close with this. A key part of the oral history discipline, repeated above, is the capture of marginalized voices, the observations and experiences and perspectives of individuals and groups who might be overlooked in the big-picture overviews of mainstream history. Poets know this well. One of these who captured it better than most was Thomas Gray. In his 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (read or re-read the whole of the poem to get the full effect) he looked at the tombstones and speculated on the lives and fortunes of the unknowns buried there, comparing them to unseen, spectacular beauty in God’s natural world.
Marginalized voices? Obscurity? Born to blush unseen and waste our sweetness on the desert air? That’s your life! That’s mine! Should we care? Can we do something about it? More in the next post.
[2]bringing together the 23rd History Symposium, the 20th Symposium on Societal Applications, Policy, and Practice, and the 6th Symposium on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
[3] A quote (variously attributed to “ancient sources,” or “Native Americans,” or this or that modern-day figure) captures this so perfectly that it appears on oral-history websites everywhere. It goes this way:
Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
Leave it to the poet Robert Frost, writing more than a century ago, to capture in 9 short lines and 51 words the challenge facing the world, and perhaps its ultimate fate:
The poem’s Wikipedia link tells us that Frost may have had a bit of help from a scientist – not a meteorologist, but the renowned astronomer Harlow Shapley[1]. Shapley once recalled a conversation with Frost a year prior to the poem’s publication, in which Frost asked him how the world might end. Shapley provided two extreme possibilities: the sun might explode, incinerating the Earth; or perhaps the earth might survive only to slowly freeze in deep space.
(And people heap scorn on meteorologists for the uncertainties and error bars in our forecasts!)
Parallel weather events of recent days bring this poem to mind.
Start with fire – in this case, the horrific Los Angeles wildfires – a kind of perfect storm of Santa Ana winds inflicting vast damage and economic disruption on the city. The number of known fatalities continues to rise, days later. Entire subcommunities have been wiped out. Those displaced by the fire include thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, who have lost everything – whose lives are now consumed with the raw, agonizing task of finding water, food, and shelter daily – when once these basic needs had been routinely and effortlessly satisfied.
The fires, still burning as of this writing, have captured the attention of millions in this country and worldwide, but only for the moment. In the coming days the rest of the world will shift attention to other concerns. By contrast, the financial, physical and emotional toll on those displaced by the fire, and their families, will be enduring, lifelong.
It is our human nature to see this event as a one-off, but consider this quote from the author Joan Didion[2], more than fifty years ago:
Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.
Today’s Los Angeles fires are the latest but won’t be the last. They’ll not merely be succeeded, they’ll be exceeded by future disasters. Disaster and tragedy are indeed the proper words, for these disasters have a largely human cause. Extremes (high winds, heat and drought, flood, fire, cold and ice) are nature’s way of doing business. But disasters are the results of multiple human decisions made and actions taken over extended periods of time. This has already been recognized in the case of the Los Angeles fires.
Turning to ice. Even as Los Angeles struggles with fire, the rest of the United States is dealing with winter. The first days of the fires coincided with a snow-and-ice storm sweeping across several central and southeastern states. The story is a familiar one. A foot of snow in places unused to such amounts, emergency declarations from state governors, downed power lines and thousands of people without power under circumstances where their need for it is greatest. People (that this, people not in the direct path of this storm) might be justified in thinking of this weather as “garden-variety,” but we don’t have to go too far back in history to encounter the North American ice storm of 2021 (think Texas), which killed hundreds and inflicted economic losses in the neighborhood of $100-200B.
A second recent winter headline was almost buried by these catastrophic events: a small spotlight on a research study showing that deaths due to cold are on the rise (NYT link here and Washington Post link here). From the New York Times:
Deaths related to cold weather have risen steadily nationwide in recent decades, new research shows, underscoring the continued risks of cold exposure even as average temperatures continue to climb.
The study, which examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the rate of deaths in which cold was an underlying or contributing cause more than doubled between 1999 and 2022, with the highest mortality rates recorded in the Midwest. In 2022, 3,571 people died of causes linked to cold weather, the study’s authors said.
Hm… some ten times the death toll from the 2021 ice storm, yet receiving hardly any notice. Why? The former was an acute and visible catastrophe; the latter picked off a much larger number of victims, but individually or by twos and threes.
All of which brings us back to Robert Frost. The poet has invited us to see that our real problem might not be either fire or ice but rather accompanying or underlying emotional states of smoldering desires and frigid hatred[3]. And this too, is reflected in the societal reaction to the weather extremes. With respect to the Los Angeles fires, we see political finger-pointing, and a partisan interest in withholding urgently-needed disaster relief hostage to political ends. There’s more focus on fixing the blame than fixing the problem. Finding-fault in others may bring a sense of satisfaction (though brief and misplaced). By contrast, fixing the problem involves the sustained hard work of thoughtful, long-term stewardship of land use, developing and implementing far-sighted building codes and standards for critical water- and electrical infrastructure, and addressing underlying social inequities that often place the poorest in the greatest position of risk. In short, fixing the problem requires a unified people[4].
It’s our own juxtaposed desire and hate that together pose the greatest threat to humanity. The planet’s end will only be a belated announcement of that reality.
[1]I knew of Harlow Shapley, but did not know him personally. However, I did knew one of his four sons, Alan, who was an established figure at Boulder’s Space Environment Labs (NOAA; formerly ESSA) when I arrived there as a newly-minted Ph.D. You can find an interesting oral history of Alan Shapley on an AIP website here.
[3]Desire, while not hate, is neither a purely noble form of love. Instead, it’s more a self-centered, acquisitive form of attachment .
[4]Bringing to mind another poet, John Donne, who – 400 years ago – warned against thoughtlessly asking for whom the bell tolls, when in fact it tolls for each of us.
050102-N-9593M-040.Indian Ocean (Jan. 2, 2005) – A village near the coast of Sumatra lays in ruin after the Tsunami that struck South East Asia. Helicopters assigned to Carrier Air Wing Two (CVW-2) and Sailors from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are conducting humanitarian operations in the wake of the Tsunami that struck South East Asia. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is currently operating in the Indian Ocean off the waters of Indonesia and Thailand. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Philip A. McDaniel (RELEASED).
On this day, twenty years ago, Indonesia (and much of southeast Asia) experienced a catastrophic tsunami. The physical impacts extended across much of southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The human impact was global. For example, more than 500 Swedes (mostly tourists) lost their lives, making it one of the greatest tragedies in recent Swedish history. Several days later, the Washington Post published my op-ed on that tragic event. I’ve reprinted it here in its entirety, without edits.
Avoiding a Catastrophe Of Human Error
January 4, 2005
We live on a planet of extremes and cataclysm. A year to the day before the Dec. 26 tsunami, whose death toll has surpassed 150,000, the Bam earthquake in Iran killed 46,000 people, injured 20,000 and left 60,000 homeless. In India the Gujarat earthquake of 2001 resulted in more than 20,000 deaths and 167,000 injuries. In 1998 Central America lost 10,000 lives to Hurricane Mitch. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China killed 250,000.
Nor are such losses confined to the developing world. In 2003 a European heat wave killed about 20,000 people; the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan killed 5,000. Insured losses worldwide for the 2004 hurricane season came to $35 billion; the total losses were far higher. Here’s the sober truth. Hurricanes, brutal cold fronts and heat waves, ice storms and tornadoes, cycles of flood and drought, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are not unforeseeable interruptions of normality. Rather, these extremes are the way that the planet we live on does its business. Hurricanes, in some parts of the world, provide a third of the average annual rainfall. What we call “climate” is really an average of extremes of heat and cold, precipitation and drought. And climate change? The issue is not the small increments in the averages but what lies behind them: the projected changes in storm patterns, intensity and tracks, and the altered outlook for floods and drought. For island nations, or even the United States, the impact of a one-foot change in average sea level over a century can in some respects be accommodated far more readily than the devastation of a single 6- to 15-foot storm surge sustained for just 24 hours during that hundred years.
In this connection, the geological record is not comforting. All the evidence from paleoclimatology and geology suggests that over the long haul, the extremes we face will be substantially greater than even the strongest in our brief historical record. Can we blunt these catastrophes? What measures can and should we take to reduce loss of life and suffering, mitigate economic disruption and protect the environment and ecosystems in the face of extreme events? There are several:
Monitor. This measure has been discussed repeatedly in the days since Dec. 26. Scientific research and technological development have led to great advances in our ability to anticipate the development, track and intensity of many natural hazards, and to detect many more. In the wake of the latest disaster it is tempting to focus attention on this particular threat — namely by our attention to a tsunami detection system such as that developed by Eddie Bernard at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But nations of the world need to address the challenge of monitoring the entire range of natural hazards in a balanced, globally coordinated way.
Fortunately, thanks in large part to retired Vice Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher, the NOAA administrator, such a concerted international effort is underway. More than 50 nations will be meeting in Brussels next month to solemnize agreements governing a decade of cooperation in enhanced global monitoring for public safety, economic growth, and protection of the environment and ecosystems.
But for many participating nations, the agreements will simply mean changes and adjustments in the use of resources. New warning capabilities will not be in place for years — at least not under current levels of investment. Here at home, Congress and the federal agencies could put meat on the bones of these proposals by increasing the funds available. Considering that the level of U.S. investment in such monitoring and the associated research and services is only about 0.1 percent of gross domestic product, and that weather-sensitive sectors (agriculture, energy, transportation, etc.) make up a third of our economy, this would be a matter of common sense.
Warn. Monitoring doesn’t tell the whole story. When information on an impending hazard is available to only a few government officials, it is virtually useless. The warning must be in the hands of the public — those of us in harm’s way. For many events, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, the warning time is too short to rely on the handoff of information between intermediaries. Nations must pay more attention to technical means for disseminating warnings directly to those affected. In this country, it means programs such as all-hazards NOAA Weather Radio, but also systems linked to cell phones, pagers and all the technology of the home and workplace. In the case of earthquakes, it might mean warning systems that automatically take the steps needed to protect critical infrastructure, without human intervention (and fatal delay).
Prepare the public. Those in Sumatra, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and elsewhere simply did not know how to interpret the meaning of the scene before them — an ocean suddenly receding far from the coast, with fish flopping around on sediment that moments before had been underwater. Such public awareness by itself, with or without government warnings, could have triggered an immediate and massive exodus to higher ground. Arguably, more lives might have been saved through such awareness — and the precious seconds it would have bought — than through any technical means.
Here at home, K-12 education offers a powerful tool for building public awareness and for providing additional benefits. We can teach children (society’s most vulnerable population) about the hazards they face. As they enter adulthood, they will bring that awareness with them. Children are fascinated by natural extremes. Earth science education therefore serves as a gateway, stimulating their interest in all branches of science, including physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics.
But the earth sciences, including meteorology, climatology, hydrology, oceanography, geology and many other disciplines, can go only so far in protecting the public. Our community, and the warnings and forecasts we provide, have their limits. To protect ourselves on this wild ride on our untamed planet, we must take additional measures. Here are just a few:
Adopt less risky behavior. Many of the dazed and injured in Asia have no livelihood to return to, no prospect of getting their lives back on track. The tragedy will not just persist for years — it will grow. To protect against the property loss and economic disruption of disasters, we must adopt more prudent land-use policies, especially in coastal regions and other hazardous zones. We must strengthen building codes and their enforcement. When we ignore these measures we behave like the man who, instead of eating better, exercising, giving up smoking and making other lifestyle changes, just figures that when the heart attack comes, the ambulance will be there and the bypass surgery will make him as good as new.
Focus on social equity. Like every such disaster, this one aggravates and compounds existing social inequities. Statistically, those hit the hardest are the ones who were struggling to begin with: the poor, the elderly, the sick, women and children, ethnic minorities. Do we want to protect ourselves (and others) from natural hazards? Then let’s work together to take care of today’s basic needs — food, clothing, and shelter — so there’s a surplus to put toward greater safety over the long haul. In 1998 Hurricane Mitch undid a decade of World Bank investment in Central America. Donor nations and nongovernmental organizations such as the World Bank must link aid and investment to strategies for reducing vulnerability to natural hazards.
In the face of these realities, the United States has options. At one extreme, we can focus on domestic concerns and continue to be surprised by disasters abroad — tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions — and the horror they occasion, as well as their enduring and destabilizing effects on geopolitics. At the other, we can seize this unique opportunity to be a good neighbor.
Congress and the executive branch should think long-term about this threat to humanity’s interests and work strategically with others to build a safer, richer, more congenial world. Address natural hazards and we’ll build the international collaborations and trust needed to handle freshwater and resource issues, pollution, poverty and other global problems. Tackle those concerns and we’ll defuse a lot of potential armed conflict. The investment amounts to pennies on the dollar; the unquantifiable social benefits are immense.
The writer, a former NOAA employee, directs the American Meteorological Society’s policy program and chairs the Disaster Roundtable of the National Academies of Science-National Research Council. The views expressed here are his own.
A final note: to the extent the world is succeeding in at least reducing the future tsunami threat, we owe a debt of thanks to Dr. Eddie Bernard, who as a NOAA Corps officer, a scientist, and ultimately Director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratories has played a leading role in such work, even after his retirement in 2010. You can find his fifty-year history of PMEL’s tsunami program here.
“Civilization exists under geological consent – subject to change without notice.” – attributed (sometimes) to Will Durant.
“If you are afraid to fail, then you should go and become a banker.” Yossi Vardi
“A banker lends you an umbrella when the sun is shining but takes it back when it starts to rain.” – Unknown
The threats that natural hazards pose to communities – though they can be existential – lie outside the time frame of deterministic forecasts. As a result, land-use planning, real-estate development, and other community decisions typically incorporate (average) climatology, data on community demography, economic trends, etc., but often fail to allow for extreme events that might depart from these averages. This unforecastable character of natural hazards opens the door to societal ills. For example, it can encourage unjustified community optimism, and ironically its flip side – fatalism. It also tempts short-term speculators to extract income from the poor while saddling those same poor with the economic losses long-term, when and if hazard risks are actualized. And so on.
Banks and other financial institutions face similar challenges. Start with an inherent banking vulnerability. Banks use short-term deposits to make long-term loans, extending over many years. Depositors are free to withdraw their funds with little or no notice. When depositors do this en-masse, the result is a bank run. Runs on banks can become self-fulfilling prophecies, can spread to other banks, and even bring down entire banking systems. Bank runs were responsible for the Great Depression of the 1930’s. More recently, the 2007-2008 financial crisis saw important financial institutions either fail outright or require bailout. Job losses in the United States alone approached 10 million. Financial markets lost as much as fifty percent of their value. Central banks injected trillions of dollars into the world’s economies to avoid a complete collapse of the global financial system.
In the aftermath, nations and their central banks strengthened old tools and developed new ones to reduce the risk of such calamities in future years. One such measure requires individual banks to analyze and improve their resilience to future shocks through a form of scenario analysis known as a bank stress test. Banks are asked to demonstrate annually that their capitalization can survive a rise in unemployment rate, or a crash in equity markets, or a fall in GDP, etc. Post-2010 imposition of more-stringent forms of bank stress tests caused a lot of grumbling across the financial world, but their value was realized a decade later when the banking sector cruised through the covid pandemic (again, with the help of big cash infusions from central banks).
In a similar way, scenario analysis, though it falls short of providing the predictive timetable for risk that has proved so helpful in aviation, ought to help communities prepare for climate and weather (and even seismic) risks[1].
But risk is not all. Resilience, the capacity to rebound from adversity, can matter just as much…
…While there’s no perfect way to measure resilience, there’s a growing body of data to draw from. AlphaGeo helps real estate, insurance and financial firms predict how global climate models translate into local impacts, and how those risks might be offset by factors on the ground, from a city’s finances to how old the buildings are.
We teamed up with AlphaGeo to reveal where and why communities appear best positioned to recover from adversity…
…And we built a tool [allowing you to compare] your city’s risk and resilience scores, and judge its vulnerability in a volatile climate.
The article is worth reading in its entirety; giving the WaPo tool a test drive is enlightening. But chances are good that the experience will whet your appetite for more particulars. You might find that the demonstration model doesn’t cover your location of interest[2]. The demo doesn’t downscale to the neighborhood level, or to a specific business. I may have missed something but it doesn’t appear to extend to other hazards (e.g., seismic risk), and for a comprehensive risk management strategy this should be included. Presumably, AlphaGeo and other providers can and do add all this and more to meet the needs of individual clients.
Community governments – not just private investors – might reasonably be interested in joining the client list. One barrier might be expense. Another might be lack of the local-level government expertise able to realize the fullest benefit of such information. Another might be the challenge of updating the information to accommodate new land development, infrastructure modifications, lessons learned from other community-level experience, and much more.
Application of artificial intelligence in every aspect of this work promises to be game-changing. And any ability to foresee risk and use the information to forestall disasters would be potentially far more valuable than learning from experience. Numerous institutions – reinsurers, data analytics firms, the World Bank, and others, are exploring this space. NASA and IBM are partnering to offer foundational AI models.
The growing threats posed by natural extremes provides powerful motivation. AI and other technologies offer new means for reducing vulnerability and risk. What is needed is the unity and and will at the community level to take appropriate action.
[1] This is not the first time that this blog has touched on community stress tests. You can find earlier posts via the link here.
[2]For example, it covered many of the places I’ve lived – Raleigh NC, Arlington/Alexandria VA, Princeton NJ, Chicago IL, Boulder CO – but not all; the latter included Sewanee TN (geographically close to Asheville NC and though not directly impacted by Helene socially impacted), Wilkinsburg PA (near Pittsburgh), or Springfield VA (near DC).
The previous LOTRW post left this question hanging: Why, in the aftermath of natural disasters, do we simply rebuild as before – in the same way, and on the same land – when this perpetuates losses and human suffering?
On its surface, the question seems particularly poignant when compared with the positive experience of the commercial aviation sector, which has seen striking benefits from its tradition of learning from mistakes, and its mantra after each disaster: This must never happen again. Commercial air travel is nearly 100 times safer than it was in the 1960’s.
What accounts for this dichotomy?
The reasons are several. In part, the differences stem from the divergence in the sheer size of the sunk costs and pre-existing investment. The lifetime of the aviation fleet is something like 20-30 years. Estimates are that the industry will invest $3T or more in new planes over such a period. That seems like a lot. But the value of the world’s tangible assets is some one hundred times greater – perhaps $300T. Furthermore, in contrast to the turnover rate for aircraft, some 80% of the world’s current building stock (including a large fraction in housing) is expected to still be around in 2050. Vulnerabilities in the world’s building stock arising from construction or location are expensive to correct.
The disparity in dollars and time frames is reinforced by similarly strong human psychological, emotional, social, and even spiritual attachment to place. When people choose where to live and work, and raise families, safety considerations with respect to natural hazards often take a back seat to job markets, living costs, preexisting family or social ties, and day-to-day quality of life. In the same way, when corporate leaders select the location of a new factory or business, they tend to seek strong labor pools, reliable infrastructure, favorable tax policies and regulatory frameworks, and access to markets, finding these more salient than a community or state’s climate-, weather-, and seismic risks.
When natural hazards finally do hit, they drive up insurance costs and pummel property values. This can be true even if their risks are recognized and acknowledged. Policymakers and business leaders alike therefore find that making actuarially-sound hazard resilience decisions is increasingly fraught, especially given today’s rise of populism and polarized politics. What’s more, in the past, Americans used to pride themselves on helping the less fortunate. Local leaders could expect national-level help in recovery. But the rising cost of disasters is leading to sticker-shock and to delays or even public reluctance to pay at all. (An example: while I was writing an earlier draft of this this, President Biden was seeking a $100B to fund recent hurricane relief needs. The timing of this request – during a transition between administrations – Is particularly inopportune.) Americans can expect even larger bills to come due in future years.
By contrast, travelers invest little sentiment in choosing an airline. Safety comes first; cost, comfort and convenience trump any love for a particular carrier or equipment. Boeing’s experience with its 737-MAX aircraft provides a cautionary tale.
Aggravating the problems posed by the scale of the natural hazard problem and its accompanying social attachment to people and place is its sheer complexity and fuzziness. Most of the aviation safety issues are clear-cut matters of engineering and materials science – the performance of metals, carbon fiber, and other materials in response to thermal and mechanical stresses over extended periods of time. The major social factors are limited in comparison – primarily involving pilots and air traffic controllers – a select segment of the general population, and highly trained for specific tasks – operating under relatively restricted conditions. The influence of weather is short-term, relatively well observed and predicted, and communicated in crisp clear language to those impacted[1].
By contrast, community resilience with respect to natural hazards is determined by the interplay of politics and economics, involving broad populations, often unaware or oblivious to natural hazard risks, highly mobile, moving into and out of communities on time frames short compared with the risk incidence. In addition, vulnerability of the built environment and critical infrastructure to any natural hazards is poorly understood, relative to the wide variety of possible hazard presentations and their unique particularities to individual communities.
One final sticking point – possibly the most important difference between the natural-hazard and aviation-safety challenges – is the uncertain time factor for the former. The aviation community can reasonably estimate the lifetime of an aircraft mainframe, or significant components, such as a jet engine, based on flight hours, numbers of takeoffs and landings, duty cycles, and other factors. Calculating the return-on-investment (and optimization and scheduling) of maintenance and equipment replacement is routine.
But droughts and floods, hurricane landfall, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions provide little advance notice yet can compromise the futures of settlements and economies in their paths for years or even decades. Consider this hypothetical comparison: a sizable capital investment made in Asheville North Carolina in the 1990’s with a 30-year payout versus a similar investment made in 2023. The former would have recouped the expected return; the latter, not. Yet the risk outlook during the period of the decisions were made would have looked little different. In 2023, who saw Helene’s devastation coming?
In the face of that large – and largely unresolvable – uncertainty, what to do? Is it possible to do better than simply hope to muddle through? More in the next post.
On this real world, natural threats and hazards – cycles of flood and drought; hurricanes and winter storms; earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions; and more – are much in evidence. They are not merely features that make Earth a bit more interesting. They are consequential. We need to be clear-eyed about their nature and impacts. They are inevitable, inimical, and irreversible.
Start with inevitable. Extremes are in large part the way the planet does its business. They are not merely incidental – and not entirely without benefit. Fact is, hurricanes make substantial contributions to annual average rainfall in tropical regions. Winter storms contribute to the great polar heat transfers that keep Earth’s cold-season hemisphere warmer and more livable than it would be otherwise. The interplay of floods and drought has shaped the natural ecosystems that support human life. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions reflect the continuing drift and reconfiguring of Earth’s continental crustal masses.
Inimical. That said, the localized and direct impacts of hazards are momentous, and for the most part dire. Earth’s extremes kill. They maim, physically, during the events themselves, and then psychologically and spiritually, through their lingering effects on survivors over the months and even years that follow (think of the analogy to long-covid). They destroy property and disrupt lives and economies. They trigger evacuations, both temporary and permanent. These impacts are most evident to those “in harm’s way,” but they extend across whole regions and peoples. As John Donne said, “no man is an island.” But those of us who escaped the latest event tend to be rather complacent about the unending distress of those struggling to put their lives back together. The result is a fraying of the larger social fabric.
Moreover, these impacts are also almost wholly irreversible. Experts speak of “disaster recovery,” as if it were real, but in fact it’s closer to an oxymoron. New construction may replace the old that was carried away by flood or consumed in fire, but it’s new construction. A new community may occupy the former disaster site, but it’s made up of newcomers as much or more than by former residents. What we refer to as recovery is more a matter of the unaffected world nearby moving on obliviously[1].
All this creates human tragedy. That’s because it is not Earth’s extremes per se that do all this harm. It is a history of human decision, actions, and inaction that is the proximate cause. Ineffective zoning, and settlement in floodplains and atop seismic zones. Inadequate building codes. Poor construction. Political pressure from business interests. Complacency in the face of poverty and inequity.
And repeated failures to learn from experience and improve things.
After such tragedies, the default response is to rebuild as before, on the prior location (in the floodplain, or on the seismic fault zone).
Muddling through? Repeating a mistake but hoping for a different result? That’s not the stance we take towards other risks.
As one example: take aviation. When it comes to aviation, airframe manufacturers, airlines, and governments learn from experience, and improve design, manufacture, operation and maintenance. Despite an eightfold increase in commercial flights over the past half-century, deaths per year have fallen from the rate of some 1500 per year in the 1960’s to some ten percent of that figure. A commercial flight is nearly 80 times safer today than it was a century ago.
How different from living, say, in Florida’s coastal communities – where warmer climates, more intense storms, and sea-level rise increase disaster risk, and vulnerable infrastructure – roads, electrical power, etc. – make evacuation necessary and return home problematic at best. The dismal rise in property destruction and economic disruption have motivated some, me included (e.g., here, with my colleague Gina Eosco, and again here), to call for an analogy to the National Transportation Safety Board – a notional Natural Disaster Review Board that might mimic the success of the aviation community and make American living safer. In fact, the kernel of such ideas goes back even further. For example, Quarantelli (1987) provides a nice historical perspective on prior work at the National Academies and elsewhere, even extending back to DoD work in the 1950’s. Since then, social scientists have continued to weigh in[2].
Such ideas have failed to receive any traction. Why not? The reasons are many and varied, and in some respects compelling. But perhaps all that could change. More in the next post.
[1]There is something of an analog to this in natural ecosystems. Recall the documentaries you’ve seen on African wildlife. A prey species finds its routine disrupted by a predator attack; after the kill, the cameras pan back to show the prey species grazing seemingly unconcerned within eyesight and easy reach of the predators, as the latter focus on their newly-downed meal. Not unlike those prey species, human beings can sometimes seem resigned – fatalistic – when it comes to natural disaster.
[2]in 2001, a famous trio of social scientists – Gilbert White, Ian Burton, and Bob Kates – considered the growth in disaster losses in an article entitled Knowing better and losing even more: the use of knowledge in hazards management. They concluded that either (1) knowledge is lacking, (2) knowledge is available but unused, (3) knowledge is available but used ineffectively, (4) there is a time lag between the application of knowledge and the results, or (5) the best efforts to apply knowledge are overwhelmed by the rapid increase in vulnerability, etc. Only possibilities (2) and (3) are considered in this post.
