WHAT is it that compels so many of us to live in places that are so terribly and irredeemably dangerous? We choose, foolishly, to settle in San Francisco or Tokyo, or on the tectonic boundary zones of the Himalayas or the Caucasus, or in the unstable mountain ranges of Turkey and Iran, and put ourselves at the mercy of catastrophic earthquakes by doing so.
Equally incautiously, we opt for New Orleans, a place which may be seismically safe but which as hurricane Katrina has reminded us lies in the path of a relentless chain of extreme weather events. Furthermore, millions…
