With the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, looking back on CPR’s landmark report on the disaster reveals two essential public policy insights. One is that a series of government policy failures resulted in a far worse disaster than would have occurred if government had been more pro-active. The second is that more effective government requires addressing and resolving what are often difficult policy issues, something that requires an ongoing dialogue and attention to what experts know and do not know about our options. Today, ten years after Katrina, the country has retreated even further from having pro-active government. Many elected leaders refuse even to discuss what are the appropriate functions of government, let alone what is the preferable governmental policy option. For them, there is simply no justification for expanding the government or even for adequately funding the government that we have.
The deep irony is that, as conservatives, they ignore the fact that spending money on pro-active government can save billions of dollars in averted costs. Katrina is a prime example. The cost to the country has been estimated to be around $100 billion and may have been in excess of $200 billion. The prevention methods discussed in the CPR report would have saved the country billions. Moreover, for many of us, the cost of lives lost and the extraordinarily disruption to families cannot readily be measured in dollars and cents. In short, we continue to pay, and will continue to pay, a very high price for denying that government can make a difference.
The line-in-the-sand opponents of government ignore another basic lesson of public policy that they, as conservatives, ought to appreciate. Although they extoll the virtues of markets, the anti-government crowd ignores what every basic economic course teaches: polluters and others must pay for the damages that they cause to people and the environment for markets to function properly. Nevertheless, in the pursuit of reducing government, the “just say no” elected officials protect polluters and others from paying for these damages. As a result, as I demonstrated in an empirical study, individuals and their families end up paying for this damage, often with assistance from the rest of us as taxpayers when these individuals are subsequently forced into poverty by.
What are the functions of government? It is to keep our families, our neighbors, and us as safe and secure as reasonable public policy can achieve. Sensible public policy would save lives and money for the country. That is a central lesson of Katrina, a lesson yet to be learned.
Watch Shapiro and fellow CPR Scholars discuss the lessons learned from Katrina in the CPR Roundtable on Katrina+10. And Read Tom McGarity's Katrina+10 post, Hurricane Katrina and the Perversity Thesis.
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Sidney A. Shapiro | August 27, 2015
With the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, looking back on CPR’s landmark report on the disaster reveals two essential public policy insights. One is that a series of government policy failures resulted in a far worse disaster than would have occurred if government had been more pro-active. The second is that more effective government requires addressing […]
Thomas McGarity | August 26, 2015
In Albert O. Hirschman’s brilliant analysis of conservative responses to progressive social programs entitled The Rhetoric of Reaction, he identifies and critiques three reactionary narratives that conservatives use to critique governmental programs — the futility thesis; the jeopardy thesis; and the perversity thesis. The futility thesis posits that governmental attempts to cure social ills or […]
Matt Shudtz | August 25, 2015
Recently, six CPR Member Scholars sat down for an hour-long conversation about the lessons that policymakers have—and have not—learned in the years since Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast and stretched our flawed flood-protection infrastructure past its limits. As explained in our groundbreaking report, Unnatural Disaster: The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, published just weeks after […]
| August 24, 2015
As readers of this blog and watchers of the Bay restoration process understand, states are under increasing scrutiny regarding their progress, or lack thereof, implementing the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) as we approach the 2017 midpoint assessment. But behind the scenes, a federal-state partnership known as the Chesapeake Bay Program is also […]
Katie Tracy | August 18, 2015
Thousands of U.S. workers die every year because of on-the-job exposure to unsafe levels of crystalline silica, a toxic dust common in the construction, sandblasting, and mining industries. Even at the current legal limits, inhaling the tiny toxic particles poses a significant risk to workers of silicosis—an incurable and fatal disease that attacks the lungs—and […]
Erin Kesler | August 18, 2015
Board Pleased to Welcome New Members with Expertise in Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Conservation and Energy Infrastructure The board of directors of the Center for Progressive Reform today announced the appointment of three new board members: Alyson Flournoy, Alice Kaswan, and Alexandra Klass. Alyson Flournoy is the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a […]
Alice Kaswan | August 17, 2015
On Thursday and Friday of last week, I blogged about environmental justice and the Clean Power Plan. My first post considered how stringent targets and the right incentives could lead to significant aggregate reductions that will indirectly lead to reductions in co-pollutants that have a disproportionate impact on of-color and low-income communities. Friday, I examined […]
Alice Kaswan | August 14, 2015
Yesterday in this space, I discussed how stringent Clean Power Plan targets are critical to achieving significant aggregate co-pollutant reductions that will indirectly benefit many overburdened communities. Today, I turn to classic environmental justice issues: the distributional effects of the plan and its community engagement provisions. As I explained in my short essay in CPR’s […]
Evan Isaacson | August 14, 2015
This week provided another important legal decision in the fight to regulate polluted runoff from agriculture. A California lower court on Tuesday ordered the State Water Quality Control Board to reconsider its ineffective regulations on agricultural operations in the Central Coast region. Judge Timothy Frawley of the Sacramento Superior Court ruled in favor of the […]