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Heartbreaking. The tone of all observers is that this is as much a failure of governance as an environmental catastrophe. As everyone who was at Burning Man le

Heartbreaking. The tone of all observers is that this is as much a failure of governance as an environmental catastrophe. As everyone who was at Burning Man learned, plumbing and drainage is the basis of civilisation. Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
The situation in the UK is already becoming a concern if you look at the news about Lough Neagh.
pjc50 3y ago
It was remarkable how one of the first movements after withdrawing from the EU was to change the rules so water companies could dump sewage and render watercourses unsafe and polluted.
- mymac 3y ago
  The price for that will be felt decades from now. It also tells you something about how the anti-EU lobby was financed.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    But the people who supported Brexit will be dead or close to it when that price will be paid, so they don't care.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  Sounds like regulatory capture was already deeply burrowed in the UK. This doesn't sound remarkable in the sense that you could play industry roulette, and its just another industry could have bought what they wanted instead of the water lobby. The y seemed to bet on brexit and won big. There were likely EU lobby losers on the other side, likely buying influence for years for EU rules to favor them, and we don't know them because they did not happen overnight or they were bigger in scope. So the questions are, 1) what are the flipsides ? Which EU regulatory captures became undone as a result of brexit , and are massively benefitting the brits ? 2) regulatory capture is not new. So what are the brits doing about it ?
hnbad 3y ago
There's a dead comment here about how it was "actually a dam collapse, not a flood" and how no news source is reporting on that. From what I can gather, at a glance, at least the AP, The Guardian and Al Jazeera all state that the flood was the result of two dams collapsing and the cause of the collapse was the storm. Even the article itself states that the two dams were poorly maintained and the collapse is the result of their state as much as the storm itself. Given how many places have infrastructure rotting from either corruption or cost savings, I wonder how many more news stories we will see in the future that follow the pattern of "severe weather event results infrastructure failure killing thousands".
- mymac 3y ago
  Root cause analysis is complex for a reason. Separating out contributing causes from root causes is difficult and sometimes even impossible. Would this dam have failed eventually? Probably yes, on a long enough time-scale. Would it have failed now if not for that storm? Probably no. Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.
  - sebazzz 3y ago
    > Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities. Wasn't there a failure in Scandinavia recently?
    - Jensson 3y ago
      "Dam failing" and "dam failing unexpectedly" are not comparable situations. Floods happens all the time in the west, people dying from floods however is rare since when they happen we know why and how and when it will happen so we can evacuate people. Libya failed to warn the people here, that is why so many died, that is the most significant failure and should have been the easiest part, it shows severe problems with their management of the dam. They should have known how much stress the dam can handle, and that this storm was likely to make it fail, and evacuate the people when failure was close. In the west we would just say "the dam will likely fail due to bad maintenance", the destruction will be costly but lives wont be lost, and in many cases we can prematurely destroy parts of the dam to avoid destroying downstream infrastructure and that way come out of it almost scot free.
thedrbrian 3y ago
>Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management. interesting twitter thread here. https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/1659637753158545414?s=20 https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/1659637753158545414?s=20
- chrisandchris 3y ago
  Twitter threads already were difficult to read. Now it seems I don't get to read anything without an account at all?
  - schlauerfox 3y ago
    Yeah, I just hope people shift to mastodon because I'm not signing up for that site again.
  - greggsy 3y ago
    TL;DR - things only look bad because measurement got better. Just create a throwaway account, complaining won’t change things.
helpfulContrib 3y ago
The human loss is enormous. If only we applied our war resources to recovery instead, it would be extraordinary to see the people of the region granted access to the immense technological prowess of humanity, with intent to heal, not harm. The poor of the region know little more than suffering, already. Worse than us all. If only we had the temerity to drop kettles, not bombs.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

The situation in the UK is already becoming a concern if you look at the news about Lough Neagh.

pjc50 3y ago

It was remarkable how one of the first movements after withdrawing from the EU was to change the rules so water companies could dump sewage and render watercourses unsafe and polluted.

mymac 3y ago
The price for that will be felt decades from now. It also tells you something about how the anti-EU lobby was financed.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  But the people who supported Brexit will be dead or close to it when that price will be paid, so they don't care.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
Sounds like regulatory capture was already deeply burrowed in the UK. This doesn't sound remarkable in the sense that you could play industry roulette, and its just another industry could have bought what they wanted instead of the water lobby. The y seemed to bet on brexit and won big. There were likely EU lobby losers on the other side, likely buying influence for years for EU rules to favor them, and we don't know them because they did not happen overnight or they were bigger in scope. So the questions are, 1) what are the flipsides ? Which EU regulatory captures became undone as a result of brexit , and are massively benefitting the brits ? 2) regulatory capture is not new. So what are the brits doing about it ?

hnbad 3y ago

There's a dead comment here about how it was "actually a dam collapse, not a flood" and how no news source is reporting on that. From what I can gather, at a glance, at least the AP, The Guardian and Al Jazeera all state that the flood was the result of two dams collapsing and the cause of the collapse was the storm. Even the article itself states that the two dams were poorly maintained and the collapse is the result of their state as much as the storm itself. Given how many places have infrastructure rotting from either corruption or cost savings, I wonder how many more news stories we will see in the future that follow the pattern of "severe weather event results infrastructure failure killing thousands".

mymac 3y ago
Root cause analysis is complex for a reason. Separating out contributing causes from root causes is difficult and sometimes even impossible. Would this dam have failed eventually? Probably yes, on a long enough time-scale. Would it have failed now if not for that storm? Probably no. Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.
- sebazzz 3y ago
  > Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities. Wasn't there a failure in Scandinavia recently?
  - Jensson 3y ago
    "Dam failing" and "dam failing unexpectedly" are not comparable situations. Floods happens all the time in the west, people dying from floods however is rare since when they happen we know why and how and when it will happen so we can evacuate people. Libya failed to warn the people here, that is why so many died, that is the most significant failure and should have been the easiest part, it shows severe problems with their management of the dam. They should have known how much stress the dam can handle, and that this storm was likely to make it fail, and evacuate the people when failure was close. In the west we would just say "the dam will likely fail due to bad maintenance", the destruction will be costly but lives wont be lost, and in many cases we can prematurely destroy parts of the dam to avoid destroying downstream infrastructure and that way come out of it almost scot free.

thedrbrian 3y ago

>Letting it go to rack and ruin is storing up misery, so it worries me that in the UK we've had 20 years of government that has effectively "washed its hands" of water management. interesting twitter thread here. https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/1659637753158545414?s=20 https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/1659637753158545414?s=20

chrisandchris 3y ago
Twitter threads already were difficult to read. Now it seems I don't get to read anything without an account at all?
- schlauerfox 3y ago
  Yeah, I just hope people shift to mastodon because I'm not signing up for that site again.
- greggsy 3y ago
  TL;DR - things only look bad because measurement got better. Just create a throwaway account, complaining won’t change things.

helpfulContrib 3y ago

The human loss is enormous. If only we applied our war resources to recovery instead, it would be extraordinary to see the people of the region granted access to the immense technological prowess of humanity, with intent to heal, not harm. The poor of the region know little more than suffering, already. Worse than us all. If only we had the temerity to drop kettles, not bombs.