hurricanes are an economic issue

Today's top BBC story is Hurricane Wilma. Thanks to satellite technology (owned by wealthy nations), wealthy people have many days' warning to tie everything down then drive to safety. Then the governments and insurance companies can sort out the mess, and decide whether they should change their plans - e.g. encourage people to no longer live in certain areas, change insurance premiums, etc. In other words, this is a purely economic issue in which significant pain or death need not occur.

Of course poor nations and poor people will experience death and pain. Everything comes down to economics. And the most fundamental feature of economics, the foundation upon which all wealth is built, is land and rent (in the strict economic sense of those words).