Three recent event clusters demonstrate that the disaster
narrative that shapes contemporary U.S. environmental responses is not working.
These are 1) the impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; 2) Donald
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; and 3) Michigan’s March, 2017
federal settlement, which fails to guarantee Flint’s water safety until 2020.
In each case, authorities deployed the “disaster” (or “emergency”) trope, but
it did not effectively illumine the dangers posed by environmental events.
Disaster narratives, forms of legal reporting that warn of environmental
hazards, seem irreplaceable as movers of necessary policy. Yet the narrative’s
power can overwhelm legal actors by goading them to find catastrophic risks
“beyond imagination.” The narrative also allows authorities to shrug off
environmental issues as hysteric and ignore their own roles in compounding
damage. Furthermore, vulnerable populations often find their suffering
exacerbated by the narrative’s essentialism. Speakers will debate the disaster
construction and its alternatives on this Hot Topic panel.