Filming on the Texas Gulf Coast

It has been a couple of months since I last posted a video of our progress in filming for Planning to Turn the Tide. That last article summarized our film efforts in Jacksonville, Florida, in September 2023, but we had another trip in the offing then, to the Texas Gulf Coast. In between, as noted in a January 1 post, I underwent prostate surgery on September 29, which required at least a month of rest and inactivity at home before venturing out again, in order to ensure successful recovery. But on November 7, I met up with videographer David Taylor at Houston Hobby Airport and we drove to Corpus Christi, where the annual conference of the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association was getting underway. The new blog video presented here was filmed there but edited and produced later.

Devastation in the Bolivar Peninsula from Hurricane Ike, 2009

Despite my own challenges, what compelled this schedule was that conference at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi because it allowed us to interview eight Texas planners who have been prominently involved in efforts to confront and address resilience issues along the Gulf Coast, where coastal storms and flooding remain major concerns. Hurricane Harvey, which struck in the fall of 2017, may be the most famous, and famously expensive, disaster of recent history in the area but is certainly not unique. People with a longer memory can cite Tropical Storm Allison, which struck Houston in 2001, and Hurricane Ike, which devastated Galveston in 2008, as part of the long parade of such events.

It is easy enough to cite shortcomings of the past that made destruction in such storms worse than it needed to be, but it is also important to note the resources that Texas has created to tackle those problems, including Texas Target Communities, a program at Texas A&M University that aids resource-challenged communities. These groups were present at the Texas APA conference, and we interviewed both Jaimie Masterson, the director of Texas Target Communities, and Shannon Van Zandt, a professor of urban planning at the Texas A&M School of Architecture, who has long researched and advocated for better affordable housing solutions in disaster recovery.

Tornado impacts in Van Zandt County, Texas, April 2017. Seven tornadoes struck the area in one evening.

I should also note that disaster resilience has been a consistent theme of the Texas Chapter. Back in November 2017, I spent time in Texas at the behest of the chapter, which asked me to facilitate and keynote a recovery workshop in Canton, Texas, following a series of tornadoes there, but I also worked with their Harvey Recovery Task Force well into 2020. The film trip grew out of that partnership, which extends even further back to my speaking at chapter conferences in El Paso and Galveston after Hurricane Ike. We want to thank the Texas Chapter for their logistical and promotional support during the conference.

Peer exchange workshop in Rockport, February 2020, involving Harvey and Sandy recovery planners. Kim Mickelson, of Houston, with microphone, is moderating this session.

Following our time in Corpus Christi, we drove up the coast to Rockport, the site of the first landfall of Hurricane Harvey, where we interviewed four community leaders, including a city council member, the local newspaper editor, the public works director, and a former president of the local chamber of commerce, about Rockport’s experience in recovery. I have learned a great deal in recent years about Rockport, in large part because of my work with Amanda Torres, the former city planner there, now working for the Corpus Christi Planning Department, and Carol Barrett, a veteran planner now living in Austin, who led APA’s Community Planning Assistance Team in Rockport in 2019. They helped me design the Rockport case study for an interactive workshop, including both graduate students and practicing planners, that is part of a course I teach for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs.

We ended our trip in Houston, which included a tour of largely Hispanic neighborhoods in the shadow of the city’s huge petrochemical complexes, where they face ongoing racially disparate environmental impacts. We were hosted on that tour by TEJAS Barrios, a local environmental justice advocacy group. We hope to return to Houston, but our challenge for now is to raise substantial money to try to complete the film project in the coming year. Fortunately, our core team has grown, with more hands on deck focused on fundraising. If you are willing to help, you can donate here or use the QR code below to contribute online at the APA website.

 

Jim Schwab

Resilience Gains Traction in Florida

How does a regional planning council plan for and demonstrate local climate resilience in a state like Florida? One answer is diligence—establishing clear goals and the means of measuring progress toward achieving them, even in the face of some political skepticism and, in some cases, opposition to effective planning tools. For those of us involved in the film project of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, Planning to Turn the Tide: Creating Resilient Communities, this brought us back to Florida one more time right after Labor Day. The occasion was the annual conference of the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association, which took place at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville from September 5-8.

But first, I wanted to offer a short note for readers on why there has been a longer gap between posts on this blog since September. Two main factors delayed this article, which will, I hope, restore the earlier pace. The first was surgery. I was aware since last spring that medical developments would probably lead to prostate surgery, though I only learned in August what type of surgery and what it would mean. It took place on September 29, and I am still emerging from a variety of activity and dietary restrictions that followed during the recovery period. I may write about that more fully later, but it kept me out of circulation for about a month. The second was a week-long trip to Texas, for reasons similar to the Florida trips, that began with my arrival in Houston on November 7. We recorded additional blog videos in Texas, along with a dozen interviews for the movie, and you will read and hear about that in coming weeks.

Click here for a video summary of our interviews in Jacksonville.

Florida APA annual conference reception at Hyatt Regency Jacksonville

One impetus for our trip to Jacksonville was that the Florida Chapter extended a gracious invitation and welcome to our team early in the summer, encouraging us to attend and film at the conference, and providing accommodations to do so, including a press pass for our videographer, David Taylor, and a room next to the staff office for the conference in which we conducted the interviews. They were and have been fully supportive of our undertaking and helped forge a working partnership with our division that we have used as a model with other chapters subsequently. We are very grateful to Florida APA President Whit Blanton and the chapter staff for their assistance and their understanding of the value of what we are trying to accomplish.

The other primary impetus was a need to fill in the gaps in the story we had already recorded about Florida’s natural hazard challenges and struggle to confront the impacts of climate change, sea level rise, and rapid urban growth. We had learned, for instance, from staff at the Tampa Baby Regional Planning Council that they had borrowed lessons in resilience planning from the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a four-county consortium that was the first to tackle the impacts of climate change on a multi-county regional basis. Their leadership is not surprising when one considers the high stakes of climate change, such as increased impacts of storm surge from hurricanes when coupled with sea level rise, or increased salt-water intrusion into groundwater sources, among other considerations. The potential ramifications involve billions of dollars in climate-resilient infrastructure investments over coming decades. That sort of problem, when faced realistically, absolutely demands visionary planning.

So, we decided to identify and interview some of the best and most experienced planners addressing these issues. The Florida APA conference afforded a certain efficiency in finding many of these people in the same place at the same time, but it also let us learn that the Northeast Florida Regional Council, based in Jacksonville, is adapting its own lessons in resilience in a part of the state that once tended to see itself as immune to the sorts of major coastal storms that afflict most of Florida. Now they are seeking to confront and prepare for such eventualities. In each region that begins to adapt resilience planning to its own needs, experience with such approaches grows, and Florida gets steadily smarter in its strategies for coping with its environmental challenges, even as population growth and new urban development continue to raise the bar. The challenge is relentless, but progress is essential.

To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.

Jim Schwab

Lasting Lessons in Resilience

In the latter half of June 2008, it was hard to imagine Cedar Rapids as the city it had been just one month earlier. A massive flood along the Cedar River clobbered the city with a classic double whammy: About the time existing flood crests that had already swamped upstream Cedar Falls hit Cedar Rapids, a severe thunderstorm reached the city to compound the impact. The river, which runs through downtown in this city of 130,000 people, reached a flood level of 31.2 feet, besting the all-time previous record of 20 feet, reached in 1851 and 1929.

Downtown Cedar Rapids undergoing debris removal, late June 2008

Flood waters covered 14 percent of the city, more than 10 square miles. About 10 percent of the city’s population was evacuated from the deluge. Highway ramps became inaccessible, and at one point, a bus carrying prisoners from the county jail stayed just inches ahead of the rising waters to make its escape. City Hall, unfortunately situated on Mays Island in the middle of the river, was underwater, and governmental operations were moved to high ground elsewhere. In the end, nearly 1,300 flood-damaged homes were demolished, many making way for permanent open space as the city used federal hazard mitigation grants to acquire the properties with deed restrictions. Amazingly, as city officials have often said, there were no deaths due to the flood.

Relocated Czech & Slovak National Museum following June 2008 flood, Cedar Rapids

The avoidance of loss of life can be credited to the city and Linn County’s rapid response, which was not limited to emergency management. Within days, the Cedar Rapids City Council adopted a set of recovery goals that guided planning for long-term recovery for months and years afterwards. It shifted outside consulting contracts from riverfront planning to flood recovery. And it moved forward with a litany of creative approaches to business restoration, employment stabilization, and affordable housing development. Cedar Rapids became a living laboratory for community resilience.

For that reason, we made a special point during our Colorado to Iowa road tour for the film Planning to Turn the Tide, the documentary project of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, to interview five essential city staff members on Tuesday, July 18, before closing out our trip by heading back to Chicago. These included City Manager Jeff Pomeranz and Community Development Director Jennifer Pratt.

Click here to hear two Cedar Rapids officials—Jennifer Pratt and Brenna Fall—discuss why they are supporting the HMDR film project.

These lessons have had lasting impacts in Cedar Rapids, which also suffered massive tree canopy devastation, as well as building damage, from an August 2020 derecho whose worst winds, exceeding 140 mph, swept through Linn County, including several suburbs. Taking climate change seriously, the city also last year adopted its own climate action plan. Cedar Rapids has quite probably done more to attack these problems in a forward-looking fashion than any other city in Iowa.

In coming weeks, this blog will feature new video clips from a four-day visit to the Florida APA conference in Jacksonville in early September. Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a November trip to Texas to capture additional content from the Texas APA conference in Corpus Christi, follow a mobile workshop exploring Hurricane Harvey recovery in Rockport, a Gulf Coast city where Harvey first made landfall in September 2017, and visit environmentally disadvantaged communities in the Houston area and record interviews with planners and activists there. Those posts will acknowledge the gracious support we are already receiving from several organizations and institutions in Texas.

To support the HMDR film-making effort, use either the donations link here or the QR code below. We will acknowledge all donors, whose help we greatly appreciate. Make this your film too as we move forward.

Jim Schwab

Recovering Humanity Amid Terror

When I first moved to Chicago, in November 1985, I came alone from Omaha. My wife, who grew up in Nebraska, chose to stay there until the fall semester was over. She was teaching across the river in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, public schools. I needed to settle in with my new job and find an apartment, after which we would move our belongings from Omaha. That happened in December. Jean house-sat for a carpenter friend in Omaha who vacationed in the winter until she too moved to Chicago in late January of 1986.

During those initial weeks, I stayed in a home owned by a widow in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the University of Chicago. She had a spare room to rent. We talked on a few nights as I got used to my new setting, and I learned she was Swiss but had emigrated from Czechoslovakia after World War II. She had married a Czech and was trapped with him in Prague after Hitler’s armies invaded Czechoslovakia.

In Switzerland, she presumably would have been safe. But one night, she told me, the Gestapo took her into custody because her failure to fly the Nazi flag outside their home raised suspicions. During the interrogation, they pulled out her fingernails, an absolutely excruciating torture intended to force her to reveal whatever they thought she knew about something or other, which she maintained was nothing. She simply had not flown a flag. Maybe it was a slow night for the German secret police in Prague. But the nightmare still haunted her in Chicago more than 40 years later. She seemed withdrawn and shy, telling me all this in a low but calm and insistent voice. Perhaps my willingness to listen, a trait developed as a journalist and interviewer, put her at ease about talking to me. I am not sure. It just happened.

After the war, and I don’t remember how, she found her way to the United States and was able to build a new life in Chicago. For her, this nation became a safe haven, an escape from terror.

The point of relating this brief story is that it made a huge impression on me. It made me acutely aware on a very personal level of how trauma shapes and distorts personality and lingers in the subconscious. I could not imagine reliving her experience. Just being a patient listener was deeply humbling. It is one thing to know of such horrors from a distance or from reading about them, quite another to sit across the kitchen table from a person who can share with you how she was subjected to them.

The world is still full of people experiencing such horrors even today. Certainly, the nightmare of the Russian invasion of Ukraine comes to mind, with all the trauma it will leave in its wake even if the Ukrainians succeed in defending their freedom from what clearly is now an insane regime in Moscow. There is also the war in Syria, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the list goes on. Many in America have a profound tendency to compartmentalize, to choose categories, such as white Europeans, with whom we will sympathize, and to exclude from consideration Africans and Latin Americans, for instance, even though the reality of their own suffering is often no less traumatic.

This reality has in recent days become very clear in Chicago, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in his remarkably callous fashion, added to his short list of Washington, D.C., and New York, as sanctuary cities to which he would dispatch unannounced busloads of migrants from the southern border with no preparation for their arrival, in order to protest federal border policy according to his own far-right vision of who belongs in America and who does not. In response, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has welcomed them and called for donations, but that alone will not solve the long-term problem.

With that in mind, a small volume atop a pile of book award submissions from five years ago kept calling to me. Busy with other work, I ignored it, but it would not go away. It sat there atop this small pile on the floor, perhaps getting more attention because I had not yet decided what to do with that pile. I was not ready to cull more books from my collection. That pile was a remnant from the last year I had served as a judge for the Society of Midland Authors book awards contest. It had not made the cut, and to be honest, I had scanned it at the time. There are too many submissions, and too little time, to read every book thoroughly. Each judge uses their own techniques to manage that problem, which can involve evaluating 70 to 100 books in some categories in a matter of two or three months. My approach was to scan the first 20 pages to see if the book absolutely captivated me, then to concentrate on thoroughly reading the smaller contingent that made the cut, so that I could give potential winners the attention they deserved. With three judges on each panel, we sometimes influenced each other, suggesting attention to something that one judge found particularly meritorious. It was a collaborative effort.

None of that means the books left behind did not merit attention. They simply did not make it to the final rounds. Think of it as a preliminary heat in an athletic competition.

So it was with Human Rights and Wrongs, a 111-page collection of true stories by psychologist Adrianne Aron, who lives in Berkeley, California, and somewhat accidentally found her mission in life. She is a go-to expert for lawyers seeking to document asylum claims for immigrants who have suffered more trauma than most of us could handle. Sometimes, they can’t handle it either, but somehow, they made it to the U.S. and are seeking mercy and refuge, which is not always granted. To protect them, Aron does not use their real names, but she conveys very real stories with the flair of an aspiring fiction writer. If only what she relates were fiction. But these are real people, and she displays a unique and very human knack for finding ways to unravel the real story behind someone’s plea for asylum despite layers of fear, emotional numbness, and very often, cultural misunderstanding and language barriers.

I will offer two examples. One involves a woman from El Salvador whose religious beliefs became the shield against reality that allowed her to avoid becoming detached from reality through post-traumatic stress. The other involves a Haitian man, arrested while defending himself from a drunken attacker, whose (mis)understanding of his rights in American courts was quite naturally molded by the rampantly unjust proceedings he had experienced in Haiti. Judges cannot (or should not) assume that asylum seekers see the world through the highly educated eyes of the social circles in which judges circulate. The need for a more diverse judiciary, in fact, stems in part from the frequent inability of privileged people to understand the world and experiences from which most refugees have emerged.

The Salvadoreña, whom Aron calls “Ms. Amaya,” was a simple mother from a rural community who had a story to tell, but her lawyers feared that, if she told it all, she would not be credible. Yet, not allowing her to tell her whole story would deprive her of the power to tell her own story as she knew it. It would continue the process of disempowering her that had begun in Central America when soldiers came to her house, accusing her of hiding arms of which she knew mothing. The soldiers took her to an army post, where she was gang-raped and tortured for four days before being released. She prayed to the Virgin Mary for salvation for her children’s sake and thanked her when it was over and she was still alive. As the detention wore on with other ordeals, she saw the hand of God in causing soldiers’ lit matches to go out when they threatened to set her on fire, and when their rifles misfired as she expected to be shot. But how could she know this was an intimidation tactic common in Latin America? It fell to Aron, the psychologist, to document the use of such tactics and to show that Ms. Amaya’s deep faith in divine intervention and mercy in fact protected her from the sort of deep psychological damage she might otherwise have suffered from confronting the reality of what was done to her. Religion gave her a belief structure that fit with her culture and afforded her some sense of divine protection.

Having helped make a successful case for Ms. Amaya’s grant of asylum, Aron also thought it wise not to mention in her brief that some of the oppressive tactics used by the Salvadoran military were actually consistent with those taught to visiting Latin American military officers by the U.S. School of the Americas. Challenging the judge’s world view might not have led to the best results for her client. Save that education for another day.

Reprinted from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonton_Macoute.

Louis Antoine was attacked by a drunk one day who stumbled into his path on the way out of a bar. As local police arrived, they saw him striking back. He ended up in the police car; the drunk walked away. Louis peed his pants from fear on the way to the station. After growing up in Haiti, being beaten by the Tonton Macoutes, the murderous gangsters who enforced the rule of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier when he was a child and who had killed both his mother and father, he expected nothing but the worst when hustled into the back of a police car. One obstacle to retaining the political asylum granted him earlier was that he did not understand what he had pled to in court and, speaking Haitian Kreyol, did not understand the proceedings. Nor did he understand that the purpose of the French translator sitting with him was to help represent him because he spoke only Kreyol, not French. Why had he not asked for translation into a language he understood? It was not his experience that the defendant was allowed to understand. In Haiti, the French-speaking elite simply handed down decisions to the less fortunate masses. Simply put, he was unaware of rights in America that he had never experienced in Haiti. The psychologist’s job was to explain all this, based on the horrific injustices that Louis Antoine had experienced in Haiti. The man had shown the resourcefulness to save money and find his way to the United States, seeking a better life, so it was not emotional inhibition or trauma that held him back, but lack of knowledge of how the system worked. It fell to Aron to document his history and make clear where the American system had failed him until she helped reframe his case.

Underlying these and several other poignant stories is the fact that Aron’s techniques were not simply a matter of professional expertise, but of her very human willingness to listen, to find effective interpreters, and to probe deeply enough to make sense of it all and restore voice and agency to people who had mostly experienced distance and disempowerment from those who determined their fate. The American system has the potential to dispense real justice, but only when staffed and supported by people willing to invest the time and moral imagination to make it work.

For that very reason, although the book is now five years old, every story it tells retains a powerful relevance to current circumstances. We remain a nation that must rise above its petty prejudices to bestow mercy and live up to the very promises that brought Aron’s clients here in the first place.

Jim Schwab

 

Do We Need a Gun Victims Memorial Day?

VOA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Memorial for Robb Elementary shooting victims.

I am going to keep this short and simple for two reasons. One, I am writing on the morning of Memorial Day, and I want to celebrate the holiday and spend time with my family. Our grandson Angel, who is graduating from high school on June 6, and from a Chicago Police and Fire Training Academy program on June 1, is coming with his father to earn $20 from me for assembling the brand-new outdoor grill I bought Saturday at Menard’s, and we will plan his graduation party. So, there is all that. Two, the coverage of the mass murder of school children at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has received nearly wall-to-wall coverage in the news media, so it’s not clear I need to add to all that, other than to note that the tragedy of gun violence was perpetuated just yesterday by some shooting in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, that wounded six teenagers and sent yet more police officers into a scramble to sort out who did what and to rescue the victims. Gun violence comes in various forms, not just mass murders, but one wonders when it will end and what it will take to wake up the most stubborn defenders of indefensible views of Second Amendment rights. Those rights are real, within limits, as all rights are, but they do not and should not tower above all other rights in a civilized society. If, that is, we are willing to consider the United States of America in 2022 civilized.

It is all getting old, very old. Consider the lineup of just some of the major incidents with mass murders in the past decade:

The Mother Jones site from which I pulled the above data lists 129 such events dating back to 1982 with three or more fatalities, of which I used only those since 2012 where the dead numbered in double digits. Although Mother Jones does not offer an overall tally, the numbers climb well into the hundreds of dead and hundreds of injured, and well, at some point, what’s the point of counting. There may well be more next week. There were only ten days between the most recent incidents in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, which alone produced 31 deaths and 20 injuries. It is a terrifying tally.

America’s problem, moreover, is not limited to mass shootings, which unquestionably produce the most news coverage. But gang shootings in cities big and small (yes, including but hardly unique to Chicago), domestic violence, suicides, arguments in bars, and heaven knows how many other circumstances involving people with firearms produced, according to the Pew Research Center, more than 45,000 deaths from gun violence in 2020, the most recent year for which complete data have been compiled. Add that up over a decade, and we have numbers that rival the sacrifices of American military heroes in the largest and most violent wars this nation has ever fought, including both World War II and the Civil War.

That leads me to a modest proposal, probably one that is well ahead of its time, but the fight for a holiday to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., took three decades to become a reality. On Memorial Day, however controversial my suggestion may be, and I expect some pushback, I must wonder if the time has come to begin to consider a Gun Victims Memorial Day. Someday, if we are in fact the civilized nation we imagine ourselves to be, we will look back in amazement that we tolerated all this for so long, listened to inane arguments against even the most basic proposals for gun control, such as banning assault weapons or at least raising the age requirements for purchasing such weapons, or instituting universal background checks, and wonder, as other nations do, as we still do regarding racial equality and civil rights, why we ever had to fight so hard for something so sane and so simple. And a Gun Victims Memorial Day would help us to tell each other at that time in our future, “Never again.”

It does not matter what day we choose. Gun violence happens every day in America. The dates of various mass murders pile up almost weekly now. The National Rifle Association, governors and senators and other public officials enslaved to the NRA, all repeat the same tired assertion that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, as if just anyone with a butcher knife could rain down terror on a school or a concert in mere minutes, as if . . . . well, one could go on, but as I say, what is the point of repeating the obvious? Let’s get to work removing the obstacles to justice from public office. That is the first step toward honoring the memory of so many who have died so unnecessarily, so gruesomely.

Jim Schwab

The Struggle for Climate Sanity

It is Sunday evening as I start this blog post. Whether I finish it tonight is less important than simply getting it done. I had intended to get it done earlier, but other matters intervened, including a death in the family, so I am doing it now.

Part of my motivation is that I feel a small sense of empowerment from a successful start to a two-month series of Adult Forum discussions of climate change at my own church. I became the volunteer coordinator of the Adult Forum, which is the adult discussion group that meets during the Sunday school hour, in 2017, just in time for the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation. That is no small thing at a Lutheran church. Last week, introducing the moral and ethical questions surrounding the biggest existential question of our times—the radical environmental changes produced by humans in the industrial age—we had eight people in attendance, not huge but remarkably good as church attendance struggles to regain traction after two years of pandemic lockdowns and fears of new waves of COVID. Our congregation has taken the pandemic seriously, and many of the elderly and the immunocompromised watch the weekly services online. This week, Adult Forum attendance grew to ten. Most people seem committed to the series. And they have lots of questions and paid rapt attention. I supplement what we do in our one-hour discussions with email distribution of links and attachments to additional material.

We started on the first Sunday by focusing on Katharine Hayhoe’s new book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. My choice was deliberate. Before we tackled the science and the social and planning issues of climate change, it seemed important to consider how climate change became such a divisive issue for American society and the world. And there seemed no better place to start than with this excellent book.

Roots of Division

Why and how did climate change become such a divisive issue? Part of the answer is that climate simply became one of several issues that provided potent material for political polarization, which has also infected debates about racial justice, immigration, and a frequently paranoid distrust of science that has hampered efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, the larger political environment swept climate change into the cauldron of this hostile partisan warfare. Consider the timing. Newt Gingrich’s right-wing uprising in the Republican party during the Clinton administration, a predecessor of the later Tea Party during the Obama administration, came along just as climate change was emerging as a topic of serious scientific debate. In due course,

Source: US EPA

looking at the data, an overwhelming percentage of scientists in relevant fields came to accept the basic premise that human activities of the Industrial Age are the only credible cause of the warming effects we are seeing today, but the political discourse on the right largely dismissed the evidence. That discourse of dismissal was heavily supported by the fossil fuel industry and a public relations campaign to muddle the issue, a matter discussed in 2010 in the book by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt.

However, there is also the fact that climate change poses a long-term threat that many people find difficult to recognize as a more immediate crisis, at least before it is too late to reverse the damage. History is replete with examples of people failing in this way, and George Marshall, in Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, published in 2014, explains why we are prone to disregard distant threats in favor of the problems immediately in front of us. Of course, in recent years, as evidence of the more visible and tangible impacts of climate change has accumulated, our attention to the larger problem has grown. But so, too, has the denial in some quarters, fueled in part by the growing distrust of science and scientists, who used to enjoy much higher regard in most quarters of modern society. But that was before they inherited the thankless task of explaining what Al Gore two decades ago called “the inconvenient truth.”

A Matter of Values

Katharine Hayhoe is one of those people who has found a mission in life. Such people are blessed because a positive mission, even or especially in the face of challenges, serves to help clarify one’s values. Hayhoe is clear about hers. An evangelical Christian from Canada, now working at Texas A&M University, she is committed to caring for the poor, the hungry, and the sick, but also to the truth, which means that, for her, facts matter. They matter greatly. She also likes to discuss what faith can teach us and how we communicate with each other in a civil and loving manner, something that is not always easily achieved. There are, in fact, times when the only option in a hostile conversation is to walk away.

The central point is to understand who we are and what we stand for as we undertake to persuade others not only that climate change exists and matters, but why it matters. And so, at the very outset, Hayhoe provides a chapter titled “Who I Am.” It is her suggested inventory of self-assessment:

  • Where I Live
  • What I Love Doing
  • Where I’m From
  • Those I Love
  • What I Believe
  • Be Who You Are

The underlying point, she stresses, is that people will care about climate change for different reasons, their own reasons. People, she notes, generally already have the values they need to care about the issue but often have not connected the dots. The only way those of who do care can help them connect the dots is by first inquiring about those values they share, and then listening. Without listening, we are largely talking past each other, which yields more tension than progress.

Photo from Shutterstock

As an example, she cites the day she spoke to the West Texas Rotary Club, whose banner declared “The Four-Way Test.” The test was, first, Is it the truth? Second, Is it fair to all concerned? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? And fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? She reports that she skipped the luncheon to spend the next 20 minutes reorganizing her presentation around those principles, noting, for example, that nearby Fort Hood, a military base, now draws 45 percent of its power from solar and wind, “saving taxpayers millions.” She won over some skeptics because, once they connected the dots, the whole proposition of confronting climate change became more meaningful in terms they understood and accepted.

Facts and Tribal Loyalties

Facts are stubborn things,” President John Adams once wrote. They don’t bend to our preconceptions or political wishes. Nonetheless, people like to be able to choose the facts they embrace while ignoring those that fail to confirm their biases. To varying degrees, this probably describes all of us because human nature is seductive about illusions, but reality can be harsh when it asserts itself. The role of education is, in large part, to help us learn how to learn and, in the process, be willing to confront our biases. Learning is a life-long challenge.

One crucial bit of learning regarding opinions on climate change is that not everyone is on one side or the other. There is a spectrum between the polar opposites. While completing work on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation several years ago, I discovered the work of two researchers, Tony Leiserowitz and Ed Maibach, who had produced a journal article titled “Global Warming’s Six Americas.” They systematically described six camps, or tribes, of people with different perspectives on climate change. Two, one on either end of the debate, corresponded with our common tendency to divide people into “pro” and “anti” factions. One, the Alarmed, are those who see a serious and near-term threat to the planet from climate change. Another, the Dismissives, reject any mention of climate change and are most likely to buy into conspiracy theories and misinformation.

But between them are four other groups:

  • Concerned, who accept the premise of climate change but see the threat as less immediate;
  • Cautious, who still need some convincing but are open to persuasion;
  • Disengaged, who “know little and care less”; and
  • Doubtful, who don’t see a serious risk.

I was pleasantly surprised that Hayhoe introduced their work in her first chapter, noting that the percentages of Alarmed had grown in the past decade, basically siphoning some numbers from the Concerned. The two groups combined form a narrow majority, while the Dismissives constitute about 7 percent. The percentage of Cautious had remained at about 20 percent.

The most important fact emerging from the survey work of Leiserowitz and Maibach is that those totally dismissing climate change as a reality are in fact a distinct minority. One conclusion that flows from that is that those working to educate the public on climate change have a large field to work with and can reasonably sidestep the Dismissives. Arguing or even talking with them is likely to prove a waste of time.

The Futility of Guilt

One approach that Hayhoe almost categorically rejects is laying guilt trips on individuals over consumer choices, in part because the tactic seldom includes a realistic assessment of the alternatives that people face in deciding how to live their lives and get things done. She particularly dislikes what she calls purity tests. For example, she notes that one British colleague questioned why she flew to a speaking engagement in Alberta instead of taking the train from Texas. The problem is that no such direct train route exists. Hayhoe calculated the time, hours, and expenses involved in even attempting this approach through roundabout scheduling and found, for one thing, that the miles involved in driving to Oklahoma City to catch a train east and north into Canada from New York City, in order then to use the Canadian rail system to cross the country from Toronto were enough to get her colleague from London to Irkutsk in Siberia. It would also take several days in each direction. It simply was not a practical option.

Many potential alternatives for reducing our carbon footprints must first be created through the political or economic system before individuals can be held accountable for failing to use them. In many parts of the country, people lack the ability to meet online efficiently because our nation has yet to make adequate or high-quality broadband available. One cannot use options that one does not have. People cannot be blamed for driving a car to a meeting in a location where mass transit is not available. It is small wonder that people often feel their efforts do not matter when they are faced with a paucity of individual consumer choices, especially when powerful forces have worked to ensure that more desirable choices cannot be implemented. Understanding this fundamental point is essential in recognizing why the debate over infrastructure policy is a debate about what future we wish to create for ourselves. Once upon a time, our nation chose to facilitate nationwide mobility by creating the interstate highway system. Today’s debate is in part about creating a network of charging stations that will make driving electric vehicles feasible for the average motorist. Societal choices dictate many individual choices, and focusing guilt on individuals is in most cases an exercise in futility. We could better spend that time moving mountains on Capitol Hill.

Why Everyone Matters

There is a great deal more to the book than I am recounting here, as is the case with almost any book that is well worth reading. The important conclusion Hayhoe offers, however, is one that should be common sense but suffers from a surfeit of wishful thinking. Basically, climate change is a situation wrought by humankind and, ultimately, fixable only by humans. Hayhoe makes clear that, in her belief system, it is illogical and irresponsible to expect God to intervene to solve the problem because God has given us agency to tackle problems of our own making. She quotes Proverbs: “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.”

Our failure lies in not realizing that we are simply subject to the rules of physics. Put another way—one perhaps more akin to Eastern philosophies–we have not aligned our lifestyles and social systems with a sound understanding of natural systems. As Hayhoe states, “If humans increase heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the planet warms. Pretending we can defy physics by putting our heads in the sand or cultivating a positive attitude will merely keep us slightly happier until (and more surprised when) the axe falls.”

False hope is often fatal, and at the very least self-destructive. Hayhoe prefers rational hope, wherein we recognize risk and understand the stakes involved in the situation we have created, noting that this requires courage but also provides vision. Ultimately, vision is not simply some magical gift from the Almighty. It flows from the hard work of clarifying our goals and beliefs and acting on those beliefs. It is the hard but rewarding work of empowering the willing.

Jim Schwab

2020 Vision

In two days, those who have not yet voted by mail or in person at an early voting site will have their last chance to express their views on America’s future. It is by far the starkest choice in my lifetime, and I will add that Harry Truman was in the White House when I was born. I have participated in presidential and other elections since 1972. The Twenty-sixth Amendment, which prohibited age discrimination in voting for those 18 and older, was ratified in 1971, while I was a junior in college. I have never taken that right for granted In five decades since then.

But I find it a curious coincidence that we face this choice in a year that can be pronounced Twenty-Twenty, the optometric formula for perfect vision. I first experienced the joy of 20/20 vision without glasses after my cataract surgery last year, so it has special meaning for me after growing up attached all day long to serious eyewear. But as I noted in my introductory blog post more than eight years ago, as a writer, scholar, parent, and student of life, I have also learned that 20/20 vision can be a metaphor for simply seeing the world clearly by sorting facts from fiction. It may thus be little surprise that, in a poetic post a few weeks ago, I used a hall of mirrors as the lens for viewing a current popular addiction to conspiratorial world views that have led many into the snare of our current U.S. president.

This is, first and foremost, an election about decency, honesty, and democratic norms. Simply put, one side observes them, and one side does not. I have never said that before about major party presidential candidates. Both sides have typically understood that a functioning democracy requires that standards exist that are not controverted, lines that are not crossed. Even Richard Nixon eventually acceded to such norms when he resigned the presidency in August 1974, following the Watergate scandal. Perhaps reluctantly, he acknowledged his own mistakes and shortcomings, and for the sake of the country left us all in the hands of Gerald Ford, a conservative but mainstream Republican who thoroughly embraced the need to respect institutional norms. When he, in turn, facing the headwinds of the era, lost a close election to Jimmy Carter, he conceded and moved on, as did Carter four years later. And so it has been throughout the vast majority of American history. Running for any office inherently entails the possibility of losing and accepting the verdict of the voters. I faced the same verdict myself In a city council election in Iowa City in 1983. Looking back, I can honestly say that, while raising some serious issues, I headlined a campaign that was less vigorous and convincing than it might have been. It was definitely a learning experience. Within two years, I was married in Omaha and found a job in Chicago. In a legitimate democracy, holding public office is a privilege, not an entitlement. Life moves on.

But apparently not for Donald Trump, for whom wealth and power seem an entitlement, and truth and honesty merely convenient fictions in a transactional lifestyle. Books exploring this megalomania, including one by his own niece, Mary L. Trump, have virtually become a cottage industry. I cannot think of another U.S. president whose own psyche has been the subject of so much close examination, hand-wringing, and concern about his grip on power—and I have read at least one biography of every single president in U.S. history. The problem is that Donald Trump is one of the least introspective presidents we have ever seen, and his obsessions are a legitimate source of concern.

Those fixations and projections have introduced elements into the present election that leadership skills alone, on the part of previous candidates, have suppressed for the public good. In 2008, John McCain notably rejected the efforts of some supporters to make race an issue against President Barack Obama. In 2000, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that many regarded as blatantly partisan and unfair, Vice President Al Gore, who had won the popular vote by about 500,000 votes, nonetheless sought to tamp down partisan anger for the sake of constitutional and institutional stability. Trump appears ready to do no one such favors. It is all about his ego.

Take, for example, his campaign’s ridiculous demand that a winner be declared on election night, viewed against a backdrop of baseless complaints about massive fraud in voting by mail (which I myself did this year, without a problem, to avoid being in a crowd amid a pandemic). This demand has absolutely no basis in American history, which is replete with instances in which it has taken well past midnight, and in 2000, several weeks, before a decision was clear. Even a modicum of reading in U.S. presidential history reveals, for instance, that in 1948, it was the morning after the election when the Chicago Tribune printed the famous headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” which Truman subsequently waved as a badge of honor when the final tally proved otherwise. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy won the popular vote by a razor-thin margin of 0.17 percent, Nixon did not concede until the following afternoon. These are hardly the only such cases.

However, before the era of television, the public rarely expected to learn the results on election night. This quick determination is a result not only of modern communications, but of the willingness of broadcasters to lure viewers with even the hint of making the first announcement of the apparent victor. What is different in 2020? Obviously, in a year of pandemic, early voting and mail-in ballots have far exceeded numbers seen in past elections; in Texas, such votes have already topped the entire voter turnout of 2016, perhaps because Texas is finally seen as competitive. Clearly, this high voter turnout is an indication that many more Americans have decided that the stakes are very high this year. But the false claims about fraud resonate with conspiracy-minded followers of the President, and combined with notable voter suppression tactics by several state Republican parties, they serve to undermine public confidence in the system to the advantage of no one but the incumbent. As I said, for Trump, it is all about Trump.

But it gets worse, as we have seen. By winking and laughing and refusing to insist that his own supporters observe at least the most basic democratic norms, Trump has enabled behavior that would be outrageous under any circumstances. For example, the Biden campaign was forced to cancel an event in Austin, Texas, when the campaign bus was surrounded on the highway by a caravan of dozens of cars of Trump supporters who slowed down in front of it, blocked its path, and in one case, rammed into an SUV belonging to a Biden staff member. Historian Eric Cervini, driving nearby, noted that the cars “outnumbered police 50-1.” This type of intimidation would have been both totally unacceptable as well as inconceivable in any campaign of the past. But not for Trump, who is probably amused. Where is his urgent call for law and order when his own supporters are the violators? Apparently, it is as ephemeral as it was after 14 men associated with a Michigan militia group were indicted on state and federal charges for plotting to kidnap the Michigan governor and put her on “trial” for what they imagined to be crimes related to protecting the public against the spread of COVID-19. Truly, we are operating in a funhouse reality when public health measures intended to save lives are viewed as crimes worthy of kidnapping and possible execution by vigilantes.

I could go on, but the point is already clear. Patriotic Republicans who still believe in democratic principles and in the value of American institutions of governance have already supported efforts like the Lincoln Project, which is backing Biden as the only means to return this nation to a semblance of sanity, in which presidents no longer mock science but listen carefully to experts and make reasoned decisions based on realistic perceptions of the threats to our nation’s health and security. One can be well-informed and skeptical of specific scientific findings, in part because science functions through a constant questioning and reanalysis to determine if inherited wisdom is sound or merits reexamination. As with everything from Joseph Lister’s development of sterility guidelines for surgery in the late 1800s to Albert Einstein’s theories concerning relativity to modern knowledge of the workings of DNA, that does not make science false. It is simply a process of making it better—far better than the silly ramblings of someone who would speculate about injecting disinfectants into the human body as a means of curing a coronavirus infection. We have huge challenges ahead in regaining our bearings on all these matters, and the fact is that the only viable alternative to Trump is former Vice President Joseph Biden, who benefits from long experience in the public sector and a healthy dose of humility, compassion, and empathy for his fellow human beings.

But I want to close on a special note for my friends and readers who may be independents or Republicans, or even Greens and Libertarians, or whatever other options may exist. I am not speaking here as a Democrat, although I will confess to that leaning. Throughout my life, especially in races below the presidency, I have been willing to cast aside partisan arguments to make independent judgments in cases where I felt specific public officials simply did not deserve my vote. This happened most often in cases of corruption, though ineptitude could also be a factor. I have, on occasion, voted for Republican and even third-party candidates when I felt the need to do so.

The most prominent example occurred in the 2006 gubernatorial election in Illinois. The tally would indicate that most Democrats supported Gov. Rob Blagojevich for re-election that year against Judy Baar Topinka, a Republican and former state treasurer. I had already begun to form a jaundiced view of Blagojevich’s infatuation with power and his own public image, and his frequent posing as a populist savior of the common man and woman. Something struck me as just plain wrong. In the end, I opted to vote for the Green Party candidate, but in retrospect, I should have just crossed the aisle to support Topinka, who was an honorable public servant. Disagreements on some issues were less important than a commitment to decency and honesty.

Subsequently, Blagojevich, following Obama’s ascent to the presidency, was charged and convicted on various charges of corruption, including an attempt to sell Obama’s seat in the U.S. Senate. He was impeached and removed from office by the Illinois legislature, and convicted by a federal jury and sent to prison. He is now out of prison because President Trump commuted his sentence, and as an act of gratitude, this Democrat who once appeared on The Apprentice is campaigning for Trump. Surprised? Not me. They are two peas in a pod. This year’s election is ultimately not about partisan affiliations but about public standards of behavior and decency in the White House. Which side are you on?

Harking back to my theme, this year is about viewing the options with 20/20 clarity. We can afford nothing less.

Jim Schwab

Isolated Adjustments

I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain.

Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave.

A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds, Mayor Lori Lightfoot may have been praying for rain to enforce the stay-at-home, social distancing restrictions in effect throughout Illinois. If so, she got her wish over the weekend, but the weather is changing already, and Chicagoans are likely to take advantage of it. That’s okay, as long as we use those big park spaces that are still open to maintain social distance and help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Alex at a closed entrance to the 606 Trail.

Quite frankly, just one week ago, after picking up my bike from a nearby shop that performed the tuning, I used it to ride a portion of the 606 Trail, feeling the liberation that comes with such a small adventure. That was Monday afternoon, and the closures came on Thursday. I was not surprised. The 606, which is a great community-building amenity in normal times, seemed far too narrow and crowded for public safety in these times. I have not returned. Future rides will be on winding paths in the 700-acre Humboldt Park, where one can move past other human beings without encroaching on personal space. And I can still invigorate my body and spirit with some healthy exercise.

Humboldt Park is open, but the playgrounds are closed.

So, what is this blog post about, exactly? It is about adjustments in the time of COVID-19. But let me be clear. I am sharing the adjustments being made in our three-member household, and everyone else is making their own. Each set of adjustments is unique, yet many of us can learn from one another. I am also painfully aware that we are safer and in a better position financially than many people who have lost jobs or are suffering lost income, or have a sick family member. I can empathize, while knowing their experience will unquestionably be very different. And I wish such people the very best. Our nation is in for one tough slog against a ghastly microbial enemy.

My wife and I are both in our early seventies, but our three-member household includes an 11-year-old grandson, for whom we assumed guardianship two years ago. His mother has long faced mental health challenges. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed, and as of now, they will remain so until April 20. After that? Who knows? At first, the closure was for two weeks, but that would have ended today. Officials at all levels of government have underestimated the scope and duration of this problem, but the important thing is that they are learning daily and adjusting strategies, as we all are. Universities have suspended semesters and moved classes online. A friend of mine who teaches at an area community college admits to being “dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century” as he learns online teaching skills. I, on the other hand, have already been teaching online for the University of Iowa. My one class each year occurs in the fall, so the question is whether we enroll enough students to move forward by August. The odds seem good, but so much changes so quickly. Again, who knows? I will have to wait for the answer.

I practice what I call “alleged retirement,” which involves a part-time mix of teaching, consulting, public speaking, and writing. At worst, my wife, Jean, a retired teacher, and I can live off our pensions and Social Security. We would have to retrench if I had no outside income, some provided by the university, but we could survive. That makes us feel far more secure than I know is the case for gig workers, restaurant and hospitality workers, travel and tourism workers, and many others affected by shutdowns and restrictions aimed at containing contagion.

Jean in front of Moos School, now closed because of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, precisely because she is a teacher, my wife works with Alex on reading and math, so that lost school days do not translate entirely into lost learning. But that has involved its own learning curve. In the first week, we both noticed Alex’s ability to refocus his time on television and video games. We were busy figuring things out in that week of canceled St. Patrick’s Day events and the Illinois primary, in which Jean was an election judge. But we discussed the situation, and Jean quickly began to insist on specific hours for learning exercises. I am grateful, and hope Alex is, for her knowledge of teaching methods to keep him fresh on everything from multiplication to vocabulary expansion. I can only imagine what single mothers with four children no longer attending school must be doing to cope with the situation. Many in Chicago or rural Illinois or throughout America do not have Internet, or lack personal computers, and lack daily connection with the schools that kept their children busy until just recently. We have a 16-year-old grandson who is a high school sophomore. He is staying with his father, who works long hours in a warehouse to pay the bills. While we provided Angel with a small laptop at Christmas, I have noticed that CPS is not updating information on Aspen, its grade- and assignment-tracking online program, so we have no idea what, if anything, he should be doing in his classes. I used to help him with courses like Spanish, but now I have not a clue what he should be doing. It is as if CPS just vanished into thin air. The only solution from a learning perspective may be to extend the school year in June—but only if we have coronavirus under control by then. Otherwise, you could take his lost opportunities and multiply them by the tens of thousands across the city.

Jean works with Alex on spelling.

Then there is the drumbeat of coronavirus news to which people can subject themselves if they sit in front of the television all day long. I choose not to do that because I find that one hour of news tells me 90 percent of what I need to know, barring some breaking announcement, and the rest is repetition. I read the Chicago Tribune thoroughly each morning. My wife knows counselors and others who suggest limiting exposure to such news to reduce anxiety. She has taken to using some online meditation one of them has provided, and it works for her. I don’t share the anxiety because I am a different sort of person. My professional experience in the urban planning field is heavy on planning for disasters and disaster recovery. I read the news with an analytical eye, looking for clues to what we, as a society or region or city, can do better, and often turning that into commentary on this blog, but also applying it in various planning tasks. Since I retired from the American Planning Association (APA), many of those tasks have been pro bono activities, such as serving on policy guide task forces and chairing APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. There is no shortage of opportunities, and I am grateful every day for the chance to contribute something through all those channels. It’s not all about earning money. Just helping makes our lives richer; how we do it depends on our skill set and interests.

But clearly, the precautions we are all observing can be frustrating and lead to adjustments. Travel, in most cases, is a non-starter for the near future. Little more than a month ago, I was in Rockport, Texas, assisting the APA Texas chapter with a Hurricane Harvey recovery event that allowed Texas planners to interact with planners from New York and New Jersey who could share perspectives from Sandy recovery. Two weeks later, after a quick recovery from a mild case of the flu, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, speaking at the annual conference of the Nebraska Planning & Zoning Association, sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues there. The first hints of a truly serious public health catastrophe were becoming clear, and that became my last trip so far this year. By March 18, APA had canceled its annual National Planning Conference in Houston, an event that has typically drawn about 5,000 people. Not this year. As a division leader, I am involved in many of the leadership discussions about what comes next in taking many meetings and sessions and other events online, and moving forward. This is happening across the board to numerous organizations of widely varying sizes, with huge impacts on the hotel, airline, and convention industries not only nationwide but across the world. Caught in the maws of this economic and public health earthquake are millions of workers.

Yet, as obvious as this seems to me, with my laser focus on news that matters, I have learned that not everyone is fully aware of its consequences. Alex’s mother invited us to visit her apartment, and Jean declined because we have no way of judging how safe it is. Then, two other people visiting her apartment suggested coming to our house to visit Alex. Again, Jean said that would have to wait, but they seemed only marginally aware of developments like restaurant closures and social distancing. Meanwhile, my mother, whose resilience at an advanced age has been stunning, was released last week from a hospital in suburban Cleveland after a brief non-COVID illness to a rehab facility, where she is confined to her room for 14 days because she had been in a hospital. Visitors are not permitted, as they also will not be when she finally returns to her retirement home. In short, although I have two siblings who live near her, I could not visit even if I chose to drive there.

But that brings me to a closing note. I can stay home not only because I am “allegedly retired,” but because I am not a health care worker. Their adjustments have been the reverse of those of most of us, involving thorough engagement, exposure to life-threatening infection, and long hours of treating growing numbers of patients. And not just in urban areas. As of today, for example, Illinois has 4,596 reported cases, resulting in 65 deaths, spread across 40 of 102 counties. Small towns and rural areas will not be immune. I just heard New York Gov. Cuomo note that COVID-19 has spread to all but one county in his state.

Amidst all our concerns, the ducks in the lagoon at Humboldt Park are blissfully oblivious to human problems with the novel coronavirus.

We’re all making adjustments, most of us in our homes, but our public health workers, doctors, and nurses are making theirs at the front lines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and everything we can do to support them, especially those who have voluntarily returned to work from retirement, or serve in the National Guard, and didn’t have to take those risks. God bless them all, every last courageous one of them.

Jim Schwab

“We’re Yesterday’s News”

That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska of the town of West, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News of November 21, regarding the Trump administration’s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day.

Aerial photo of the west explosion site taken several days after blast (4/22/2013). By Shane.torgerson – Aerial photo taken from my plane Previously published: Facebook and Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25727808

So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days that readers can be forgiven if they do not immediately recall what happened in West on April 17, 2013, but my guess is that many do. Or they may if I nudge them by noting that the West Fertilizer Company suffered an explosion in a storage facility at the edge of this small city of 2,880. The explosion resulted from the combustion of ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizer, which is notorious for its chemical instability. Still, the facility had been there since the 1960s, but West had over the years allowed a middle school, an apartment building (which was destroyed), a nursing home, and other structures to be built nearby. When the explosion occurred, 160 people were injured, 14 first responders (mostly firefighters) were killed, and one elderly man died of a heart attack as the nursing home was evacuated. All that triggered a bit of soul searching about loose regulations at all levels of government regarding the operation of such facilities, their disproportionate environmental impact on vulnerable populations, and how better to prevent future disasters.

One year later, in May 2014, I wrote in this blog about West following my own involvement on an expert panel for the federal Chemical Safety Board, which held a hearing in West on the anniversary of the disaster. I raised some pertinent questions about Texas chemical and fire safety regulation that were of interest to the board.

In the meantime, however, moves were afoot in the Obama administration to respond to the larger questions of chemical facility accidents. According to Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group, in the decade up to the West accident the U.S. had experienced 2,200 chemical accidents at hazardous facilities, two-thirds of which caused reported harm, including 59 deaths and more than 17,000 people injured, hospitalized, or seeking medical care. As a result, President Obama signed on August 1, 2013, Executive Order 13650, “Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security,” which set in motion a rule-making procedure at the U.S. EPA. By July 31, 2013, EPA issued a Risk Management Program request for information in the Federal Register, proposed new rules on March 14, 2016, and finalized the new rule, known for short as the Chemical Disaster Rule, on January 13, 2017, with one week remaining before President Trump took office.

The final rule is a bit complex, using 112 pages of the Federal Register, but among other items specifically required a “root cause analysis” as part of an incident investigation to determine what “could have reasonably resulted in a catastrophic release.” It would also require compliance audits after reported incidents and required all facilities with certain processes to conduct annual notification exercises to ensure that emergency contact information was complete. The overall idea was to improve effective coordination with local emergency responders. One problem that caused fatalities in West was a lack of firefighter awareness of the precise contents and dangers of the facility that exploded. Thus, the requirements in the rule for field and tabletop exercises. Finally, the rule aimed to enhance the availability of information about chemical hazards in these facilities including sharing such information with local emergency planning committees.

The rest is almost entirely predictable. With little grasp of public policy but considerable animus toward anything with Obama’s name on it, Trump put his appointees to work undoing his legacy. That included action by then EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on March 16, 2017, in response to an industry-sponsored petition, to announce a 90-day stay of the Obama-era rules, followed by an extension to 20 months shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Louisiana and 10 other states, including Texas, petitioned for reconsideration of the Obama rules. The delay would last until February 19, 2019. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, responding to a petition from environmental groups, vacated the Trump rulemaking. But now we have a final rule from the Trump EPA officially rescinding the Chemical Disaster Rule.

The public information aspect of the rule became a target, with the Trump administration claiming it was responding to homeland security and emergency management experts who feared that such information would become a target for terrorists. However, it would seem to me that far more people have been affected by routine chemical accidents than by any terrorist incidents at such facilities. The U.S. EPA also noted that the rules would not have prevented the accident at West because it was ultimately determined to have been caused by arson. It is worth noting, however, that most of the first responder fatalities in that incident were more credibly the result of a lack of training and information on the potential explosiveness of the materials involved, which might have prompted greater caution and different tactics by firefighters. And none of this answers the questions I raised in my 2014 blog post about land-use practices and limitations on fire safety codes in Texas.

So, back to Mayor Muska, who is reportedly disappointed with the outcome, and for good reason. His town has to live with the results of the 2013 explosion, which decimated the volunteer firefighter staff and obliterated a local business (and employer). Muska was mayor when the disaster happened and is now serving his fifth term. I think it is worth sharing the comments he made in the final two paragraphs of the Dallas Morning News story:

“The American people and American politicians, they have a short memory,” Muska said. “They’re going to say everything is fine, and every few years something like this is going to happen again, and ‘Oh, yeah, we need to look at this again.’

“We’re yesterday’s news. It’s not on anybody’s minds as it was in ’13 and ’14.”

Jim Schwab

Aligning Planning and Public Health

Just nine days ago, on November 15, I stood in front of two successive audiences of long-term health care practitioners to present workshops at a conference in Wisconsin Dells discussing, of all things, “Fundamentals of Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery.” Where, some might ask, is the nexus between these two subjects?

Patients who survived evacuations from New York City area hospitals, six in the city itself and one just outside, during Hurricane Sandy would know. People with disabilities, the elderly, the ill are especially vulnerable during disasters, and moving them out of harm’s way is no picnic. They cannot just grab the keys to their cars and drive out of town ahead of the storm. Evacuating them is a major undertaking that must be well-planned.

And so, our fields of expertise converged. I discussed what I knew from urban planning, but I invited input from their experiences in handling such situations. Some had not yet experienced a disaster, but others had, and their numbers in the health care field are growing, as doctors and nurses find clinics and hospitals impacted by wildfires in California, and hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes elsewhere. Mine was not the only presentation related to such concerns. The keynote by Desiree Matel-Anderson, founder of the Field Innovation Team and a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) advisor, detailed personal interactions with disasters. Others focused on emergency management. The audience needed to know about new regulations and laws, such as those promulgated in 2016 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or the Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA), passed in October as a

Photo by Kristina Peterson

rider on the FAA Reauthorization Act. DRRA outlines new responsibilities for the FEMA administrator in providing training to local officials and utility providers in planning for emergencies for nursing homes, clinics, and hospitals, and for the Federal Highway Administration regarding evacuations for these facilities, prisons, and certain classes ofdisadvantaged persons. I told the nurses and administrators in my audience they needed to prepare for these new responsibilities. There seems to be a growing conviction in Congress and federal agencies that health care institutions need to be better prepared to protect their patients during disasters. In the light of events dating back to Hurricane Katrina, that does not seem unreasonable.

To some extent, I believe it is the growing engagement of the urban planning profession with natural hazards that is facilitating a re-engagement of the profession with public health practitioners. I say “re-engagement” because the two fields grew up together, at least in North America. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, industrializing, rapidly growing American cities were often festering incubators for diseases because of pollution, overcrowding, and fire and other hazards. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 laid the groundwork for major reforms related to building codes, helping to create the largely masonry-based architecture now predominant in the city. Activists like Jane Addams inveighed against oppressive health conditions for the working class. There was an urgent need for both better planning and public health measures that would prevent the spread of disease, and the two professions matured accordingly. At the same time, civil engineers took growing responsibility for developing the sanitary infrastructure cities needed, such as sewer treatment systems and effective drainage, a topic I addressed in a keynote in September 2015 in Boston for the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) annual conference. All three professions grew up in the same cradle, addressing urgent societal needs for health care, better urban design, and public sanitation.

Scene on the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy.

All of this is a long, but I think crucial, introduction to a book by Michael R. Greenberg and Dona Schneider, Urban Planning & Public Health: A Critical Partnership, published by APHA Press. I had planned to review it earlier, but recent events expanded the context for its importance. Greenberg, a long-time planning colleague and professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, previously authored Protecting Seniors Against Environmental Disasters (Routledge, 2014), a book inspired in part by his own experience with elderly parents during Hurricane Sandy. He is certainly familiar with the territory. Schneider, also at Rutgers, brings the perspective of a public health expert.

The book reads mostly like a textbook and thus may be of most valuable to instructors willing to acquaint students in both fields with their organic relationship to each other and why the partnership is important today. Admittedly, the problems are not the same. We no longer face the scourge of tuberculosis, and smokestacks no longer belch particulates as freely as they once did. The water is less polluted. But our society is creating other problems of a momentous nature, including climate change and the resulting increased severity of weather-related disasters. Under the Trump administration and various less environmentally friendly state administrations, there have been concerted efforts to retreat from previous initiatives aimed to clear the skies and foster environmental justice. It is thus imperative that we have trained, knowledgeable, and articulate professionals who can advocate for the public interest when powerful political forces push in other directions.

The book makes powerful arguments in this context for the salience of a collaborative assault on the threats posed to our communities by natural hazards, using the tools of both public health and planning to analyze the threats and identify meaningful solutions. Not everything needs to happen at a macro level, either; in fact, planners and public health officials often are at their best in examining trends at the neighborhood and community level to find very geographically specific solutions to localized but persistent problems.

The authors are methodical, laying a groundwork in the first three chapters for understanding the building blocks of the two professions and their integral relationships. One can easily detect the influence of Greenberg’s long and distinguished career on both a practical and theoretical level as he discusses the impacts of various approaches to zoning, such as the use of downzoning to protect open lands and natural resources and the use of special districts, as in Austin, Texas, to protect the environmentally sensitive Edwards Aquifer through measures such as integrated pest management practices, which reduce the use of toxic chemicals that can enter the water supply. And the connection to natural disasters? Even recent history has revealed the vulnerability of Texas to prolonged drought, making the protection of water supplies essential to public health and welfare.

Recognizing the modern context for their focus on this “critical partnership,” the authors have included significant material on the role of risk and hazard mitigation analysis in planning, with a whole chapter on “Keeping People Out of Harm’s Way.” As with much of the book, it leads students on a path through the critical minutiae of planning and public health analysis, including case studies at various levels of analysis—for example, a brief but close look at the Galveston City Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Other sections address critical current issues such as the availability of healthy foods in poor communities, and how that can be addressed through laws, community organizations, and better resources; how to redevelop safe community assets from former brownfield sites; and potentially evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of major regional development proposals. In short, this is not bedtime reading for most laypeople, but it is solid instructional material for aspiring young professionals and may be useful as well to community advocates who are willing to learn the nuts and bolts of using planning to achieve better public health results in their neighborhoods and communities. As such, it is a timely and needed addition to the literature.

Jim Schwab