plan for what happens when every-
one is in crisis at once.
I witnessed so many local emer-
gency managers move mountains
to get their communities what they
needed—ventilators, PPE, testing
sites, vaccines—while navigating
virulent political conditions that
made their jobs harder. As the pan-
demic response dragged on, new
disasters fueled by climate change
piled up: From suburban wildfires
in Colorado to back-to-back hurri-
canes in Louisiana to deadly rain-
storms in the Northeast to heat
waves that led to hundreds of
deaths in the Pacific Northwest, the
extraordinary has become ordinary.
This constant march of disaster
has pushed emergency manage-
ment to the brink and exhausted
the people who make it run. Elect-
ed officials expect them not only to
respond to increasingly severe di-
sasters but to help lead multiyear
recoveries—while preparing for to-
morrow’s crises at the same time.
This is an insurmountable task for
local agencies, many of which are
staffed with a single, part-time
emergency manager. Like health-
care workers, emergency managers
are battling burnout as they fight
to protect their communities with-
out proper resources and support.
When you are surrounded by ca-
lamity, there is an impulse to look
for the silver lining. We like to be-
lieve there are windows of opportu-
nity that open in the aftermath of
disasters, periods of reckoning dur-
ing which time changes can be
made to make people and places
safer. Although most disasters do
not lead to major policy updates,
some—like 9/11 and the levee fail-
ure after Hurricane Katrina—do.
Disaster researchers call these “fo-
cusing events,” and while the ques-
tion of whether the policy outcomes
are “good” or “enough” is a second
matter, they rattle the status quo.
In early 2020 some thought the
pandemic would be just the sort of
focusing event that wakes up world
leaders to the risks of sleeping on
the climate crisis. Maybe they
would use this “window of opportu-
nity” to draw obvious parallels, so
that one global crisis inspired ac-
tion on the other. Perhaps the U.S.
Congress would finally admit the
need to reform—and massively ex-
pand—our emergency management
system to one that prioritizes risk
reduction rather than reactionary
measures. One that meets the needs
of frontline and marginalized com-
munities who experience dispro-
portionate disaster impacts and are
kept from accessing adequate aid.
None of this has happened. Not
only is the government not apply-
ing the lessons of the pandemic re-
sponse to other disasters, but even
within the pandemic itself, many
elected officials have failed to apply
the lessons learned at the begin-
ning. Inadequate COVID testing,
for instance, was a significant prob-
lem early on; when the Omicron
variant emerged, we saw a lack of
access to testing yet again. Month
after month officials have debated
mask mandates and the need for
hazard pay despite clear evidence
that these types of public health
policies minimize spread. For all its
upheaval, the pandemic has not be-
come a focusing event. Instead it is
the latest in a long line of disasters
for which the U.S. is unprepared.
For my entire career, I have ar-
gued that it does not have to be like
this. We have the research and re-
sources to manage disasters more
effectively, efficiently and justly, if
only policy makers would make
that choice. I have always believed
that at some point there will be a
disaster so bad it will drive them to
strengthen our emergency manage-
ment system. Watching the pro-
tracted bungling of the pandemic
response, however, has made me
doubt there will ever be enough po-
litical will to do so—and that is
what has scared me the most. If the
government cannot effectively
manage a single acute surge, I am
at a loss for how the U.S. will be
able to respond to the all-consum-
ing effects of the climate crisis.Samantha Montano is author of Disasterology:
Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate
Crisis (2021) and an assistant professor of
emergency management at Massachusetts
Maritime Academy.Illustration by James OlsteinLockdowns Showed
the Promise of Cities
with Fewer Cars
DURING COVID’S FIRST WAVE, the streets of New
York and other major cities became eerily empty.
Mournful sirens replaced the usual bustle and din.
But urban dwellers also heard something new: an
abundance of birdsong. During walks outside—the
only safe respite beyond their apartments—they
breathed cleaner air. Lockdowns had meant fewer
cars on the roads, and the effects were unmissable.
Levels of nitrogen dioxide—a by-product of fossil
fuels burned in cars and in electricity generation—
were 30 percent lower along the I-95 corridor from
Washington, D.C., to Boston in March 2020 com-
pared with previous
years. Come summer,
people sat at outdoor
extensions of restau-
rants built in parking
zones and moved
around on newly added
bike lanes. These inci-
dental adaptations to
the pandemic allowed
residents to experience
the benefits of shifting
away from the “car is
king” status quo in a
way that policy propos-
als for climate-friendly infrastructure never could,
explains Christian Brand, an environmental scientist
with the Transport Studies Unit at the University of
Oxford. Now, he says, “they know what’s possible.”
Some fought to keep it that way. Paris has been
a leader of this sustainability shift nudged along by
the pandemic. The French capital already had
plans to tamp down car use and encourage cycling
before COVID emerged, but in late spring 2020
some 50 kilometers of pop-up bike lanes, called
coronapistes, were added literally overnight. They
are now a permanent part of Paris’s cycling net-
work, with more in the works.
These strides, Brand says, came in no small part
because of political will. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo
made climate change a focus of her reelection
campaign. Besides providing subsidies for purchas-
ing and repairing bicycles, she emphasized the
health benefits of reducing car emissions, calling
pollutants and a contagious respiratory virus “a
dangerous cocktail.” In other cities, like New York,
changes were more modest or temporary. Shut-
downs may have revealed the possibility of safer,
healthier streets—but it was often a fleeting vision.Andrea Thompson is an associate editor at Scientific American
who covers climate and sustainability.