Publications and Research
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
Fall 9-15-2025
Abstract
Disaster resilience requires acknowledgment and preparation to be normalized or integrated into normal life. But denial without preparation normalizes disaster by leaving it out of normal life. In Disaster Resilience and Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack explores the normative and factual dimensions of a Climate Change Paradigm, through a global scope. Apart from the normative issues of who is responsible and who should pay for mitigation, the facts of Rising Average Earth Temperatures and more Intense and Frequent Disasters must still be faced.
But facing those facts has always been voluntary for powerful signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and participants in the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act–– there is no world climate government and nested national and local governments have varyingly effective public policies. Zack lucidly distinguishes between rising earth temperatures and their effects that scientists predict will worsen and continue for many, years. However, scientific information can be vague and probabilistic, without exactly tying rising temperatures to their effects in fire, storms, and floods, at specific locations. Zack ties together such problematic factors, including: limits to resilience, obstacles to preparation, liability, practical responsibility, and disaster trauma. The poor and vulnerable will suffer and die most, already evident in Africa, South Asia, and small island nations. But eventually, everyone will be affected. Without united effective will to face climate change, not facing it becomes part of that disaster. This book provides needed assessment of our shared normative and factual realities of climate change.
Comments
This book was published open access by Trivent Publishing.