The Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian Earthquake were all acts of nature. The extent of the suffering and damage was worsened by human failings. In hindsight, the loss of life could have been far less if warnings had been taken seriously, but you would have to go back decades to unravel the tangle of bad decisions and events that left people unprotected from natural disasters.

Salon.com has some background on the politics and architecture of Haiti. War, corruption and greed play in to all three of these recent disasters. We know what is wrong and how to fix it, but are we able to trade short-term gain for wisdom?