“We’ve had heavy back-to-back rainfalls before. So I don’t think it’s the new normal. When you talk about a 1 percent chance of happening [in a given year], it can happen. You can flip a coin and have it come up heads 10 times in a row. It’s just, statistically, it shouldn’t happen, but it can.”
— Mike Talbot, then Executive Director of the Harris County Flood Control District (2016)
“Floodproofing needs to be routine for Houston area property owners based on their individual perception of risk. Each property owner would consider their elevation in the landscape, distance from nearby bayous and channels that can overflow, and whether their home or business sits on concrete pads or pier-and-beam foundations.”
— Barry Klein (below)
I live in a 100-year old house in Houston.…
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“Material insufficiency and environmental problems have their benefits, over and beyond the improvement which they invoke. They focus the attention of individuals and communities, and constitute a set of challenges which can bring out the best in people.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 587.
“We need our problems, though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for ourselves.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 588.
The rains from Hurricane Harvey presented a worst-case event for Houston, Texas, and the petroleum/petrochemical capital of the United States. As such, a lesser known part of the Julian Simon (1932–1998) worldview of human progress comes into play.
Simon argued that there was a driving force or condition for human improvement beyond the institutional framework (private property, voluntary exchange, the rule of law), based on the human potential of motivation, effective use of knowledge, trial and error feedback, etc.…
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