It is not prepared for fires, nor for storms, nor for blackouts, nor for prolonged droughts. It is not prepared to deal with any large-scale disaster. What happened with Storm Kristin was not an isolated episode, it was a symptom. The response was improvised, uncoordinated, clearly insufficient. It not only reveals operational failures, it reveals a lack of structural planning.
We have known for a long time that Lisbon runs the real risk of suffering a major earthquake again, similar to that of 1755. The studies exist. Scientific knowledge exists. What does not exist is a consistent public policy that transforms this knowledge into prevention, preparation and organized response. We know much more than what we do with what we know.
Science has been clear for decades about the effects of climate change. More frequent storms, more violent extreme phenomena, cumulative impacts on infrastructure and populations. Still, the political debate continues to treat climate prevention as an ideological nuisance. Just look at recent proposals from the liberal right, which devalue or secondary the climate issue, to realize that the problem is not a lack of information, it is a lack of political will.
When calamity arrives, it is to the State that we look. Not as a father, but as a partner. We give you a significant part of our income every year, we accept a high tax burden and, in return, we demand planning capacity, investment in prevention and responsibility in risk management. Speeches about cutting, losing weight and weakening the State can be effective in campaigns. In an emergency, they prove disastrous.
No government has perfect answers. Politics is made by people, with agendas, limitations and mistakes. But the degradation of public service, the devaluation of planning and indifference towards scientific knowledge are not inevitable. They are choices. And here the responsibility is also ours. We elect for lack of alternatives, we do not demand consistent civic organization, we do not build debate with collective ambition. We debate to establish a position, to gain reason, not to build solutions.
We live in a form of unintelligent violence, made up of noise, misinformation and impoverishment of thought. Perhaps that is why it is surprising that democracy still resists. Qualified people move away from politics, there remain a few resisters driven by conviction and a majority settled into comfortable mediocrity, who prefer tired, ill-informed and resigned citizens.
Thinking about the future today is a double urgency: to prevent climate-related calamities and to prevent undemocratic political drift. A country that is not prepared to respond to natural disasters is also not prepared to respond to political disasters. The erosion of democracy does not happen suddenly. It happens in the same logic of improvisation, lack of responsibility and refusal to face reality.
We needed to be already organized for what’s coming. Seriously, with knowledge, with democratic commitment. Without this, we will remain vulnerable to everything. And the complaint, however legitimate it may be, will not save us.
*Journalist and writer
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