We can't actually stop hurricanes or tsunamis or other extremes of nature. But ... we can avoid a lot of unnecessary human and economic losses.

Scientists have to get involved with the policy-making community right from the beginning and try to understand what the constraints on policy-making are.

We have an opportunity right now right after disasters while governments are more receptive to influence policy from the start.

It's time to change the mind-set that natural disasters are inevitable.

It's time to change the mindset of governments, who tend to plan too little for natural disasters.

The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes. ("Interim")