Did Climate Change Cause The Haiti Quake?

No.

But some alarmists in the media like to think it did. Reports have been published that point the blame to a combination of deforestation and hurricanes. The far-fetched claim is that the huge deforestation schemes ongoing in Haiti have left hillsides vulnerable to erosion. Geologist Shimon Wdowinski of the University of Miami argues that Haiti’s hillside degradation is enough to destabilise the earth’s crust. He says that the quake was instigated when a large volume of eroded land mass was shifted to the Leogane Delta from the mountainous epicentre. Perhaps this degree of mass movement could trigger local tremors but I’m hesitant to accept it could wield enough power to unleash such slaughter.

A more convincing reason behind the destructive magnitude 7.0 quake lies in the simple fact that Haiti sits atop a an active transform plate boundary – where the Caribbean plate meets the North American plate in a system known as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault. Media scaremongers display the fact that Haiti has not had an earthquake in over 220 years as proof that modern day climate change must be the culprit. Since earthquakes in Haiti are rare but not unheard of, surely this is merely the return period of seismic events in this region? Is it not likely that after two centuries of built up lateral stress the fault was ready to release the strain?