Today's Forecast

Another pretty freakin' nice day. Mostly sunny, high of 80, with 49% "maximum" humidity. Ah.

So the NYTimes says the U.N. now wants to focus on helping developing countries improve their weather forecasting technology in order to prevent future disasters--Typhoon Winnie in China in 1997, Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 1998, the 1999 Venezuelan mudslides. Sounds good, right? They've even established a relatively unknown department called the World Meteorological Association to head up this charge. But call Gothamist a cynic (or a bit of a lefty), but apparently the cats who decided this would be a good idea were none other than the World Bank, who were left sniffling at the hits to those countries Gross Domestic Products:

"This is not just a natural phenomenon and there's nothing to do about it," said Margaret Arnold, a hazard management official at the bank. "There is a lot you can do."

Mr. Jarraud said such devastating losses made it urgent to take action. "We have to get out of our box and look at things from a wider perspective to help these countries," he said.

1. Hazard Management Official? "Meg, I'm really disappointed that you weren't able to thwart the advances of the earthquake when clearly our seismology team knew it was on its way. I'm afraid I'm going to have to move you off of Hazard Management and on to something a little less sexy. Meg, meet Chad, the head of our Hunger Management team."

2. "Not just a natural phenomenon"? Wow, isn't that what the Army Corps of Engineers said when they built all of those Mississippi River levees that "prevent" flooding but also cause South Louisiana to lose miles and miles of coastline each year due to erosion?

3. "Out of our box..." *pukes*

Don't get Gothamist wrong: people in severe weather zones deserve all of the help the world can give them. The article mentions that 98% of the $65 billion tab that natural disasters accrued last year came at the expense of the world's poorest nations--that sucks. But it seems a tad Come-on-Haliburton-let's-rebuild-Iraq! to argue that these nations deserve help not because they're human and they experience crises but because, damnit, we can't have that Gap factory in Tegucigalpa drive up the prices of thong underwear in Phoenix, not now, now when we're just breaking into the thong market, and not just because of a little flooding.

Surely there's an MBA (or MS) student doing a thesis on weather's impact on economy. Or at least someone who's read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents and can tell me if he covers this topic?