There’s a new unit of measurement for government spending, if seismologist Kerry Sieh of Caltech has anything to say about it.

At the AAAS meeting today, he spoke passionately about the earthquake, tsunami, hurricane and other natural hazards facing the planet’s most vulnerable populations. Huge cities such as Tripoli and Tehran are built atop faults that could devastate them. Padang, Indonesia, is at risk for another mega-tsunami. And how much money is spent on research to investigate and protect such areas at risk? Just $2 million a year.

The US is spending $100 billion a year on the war in Iraq. Call that unit, says Sieh, a ‘Rumsfeld’, after former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Thus natural disasters – which could kill hundreds of thousands at any point – get only 20 micro-Rumsfelds.

Which is the true measure of a life?