WSJ: Defy Terrorists, Not Nature

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 28, 2005 | Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

[OESY]

...Americans had good reason for not wanting the cost of private precautions against terrorism to become a giant tax on the economy out of rational proportion to the threat. See what this has done in the sad exceptional case of the airlines: Security hassles have made flying even more of a drag while piling up costly overhead on struggling carriers. But the last thing we need is to subsidize a similar indifference to natural disasters....

You would be rightly surprised to learn that normally disputatious climate scientists are in considerable agreement about the growing destructiveness of hurricanes seen over the past couple of decades. Hurricanes are producing larger and more expensive disasters not because of global warming but because more people insist on populating vulnerable areas, bringing with them more valuable property and possessions....

Louisiana's Sen. Mary Landrieu offered a perfect expression on CNN on Sunday of where the new blank-check compassion is leading us....

To wit, everyone must be restored to their previous status and possessions, or better, at taxpayer expense.

Nobody criticized the handouts to New York after 9/11, which ratcheted up expectations of unlimited federal payouts when bad things happen on a large scale. Victim families got seven-figure checks because their loved ones died in a televised tragedy, though similar bounties aren't bestowed on families that lose loved ones in less visible tragedies.

This precedent has returned to haunt us on a giant scale in New Orleans and its hinterland....

It would be insane, under the circumstances, to extend this safety net to subsidize entire regions that wish to build without making proper allowance for predictable geological and meteorological hazards. This is insurance not for life and health, but for "lifestyle," with the biggest benefits flowing to the least needy....

[Valin]

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