The silver lining in New Orleans is an example of a worldwide trend: Globally, the number of deaths from natural disasters, which fluctuates sharply from year to year, has trended way down in recent decades. That’s true in absolute terms, and even more so when calculated as a percentage of global population, which has dramatically increased during the same period. Humans are smart. We can adapt and learn to protect ourselves.



Within limits, of course—and there is no question, as the recent IPCC report made plain, that climate change is probing those limits. It’s intensifying hurricanes in the Gulf, for example, and intensifying drought in California and elsewhere in the West, which makes the fire season there