The Economics of Catastrophe

Pay a Little Now, or a Lot Later. But the Bill Always Has to be Paid.

“So what you’re saying,” remarked my friend Chadwick, “is that it’s like the vig.”

He’s a professional gambler. I’m a vampire in a leather jacket whom the sunlight can kill. Just normal guys, walking our puppies at the park.

Ben, the grizzled London copper, chuckled. “It’s hardly Ocean’s Eleven, mate!”

“Well,” I said, considering all this, “he’s right. It is like the vig. Just like the vig.”

“What’s the — the big?” chirped The Kid Kieran. Sweet kid. Walks a dog for a nice enough couple. Could talk the ears off a bored grandma. In a pre-pubescent voice like a maniacal hummingbird.

Ben sighed. Chadwick laughed. I took a deep breath.

Think about the world today. Take Coronavirus as an example — maybe the example. It’s just one of a long series of catastrophes that are about to hit us. Us as in the human race. Think of the last year or so. Six months ago, Australia was on fire. Then the Amazon and California. Asia flooded. Meanwhile, huge swathes of life — insects, reptiles, bees — are dying off.

All that is creating what I sometimes call the Long Catastrophe. Decades that are going to feel like now. We’re locked down at home due to the pandemic. Tomorrow, when continents burn and cities flood — maybe we won’t have homes to be locked down into. Today, we queue at the grocery stores to get basics — tomorrow, as whole ecosystems die off, maybe we’ll queue, and come home empty-handed. Today, we order the things online we used to happily go out and get. Tomorrow, those things skyrocket in price to the point that many of them will become luxuries, mostly for the rich — fresh food, clean water, breathable air, as a start. That’s what they are for the world today, anyways — we in the rich West just don’t see it that way, but we will.

We’re in for an age of catastrophe, in other words. Catastrophe is going to define our lives from this point forward. 2020 will be seen, by our grandkids, as a kind of turning point, away from an age of easy stability.

So what are the economics of catastrophe? How can we make sense of all this — and maybe do our…