[Futurework] Rebuilding the Big Easy: the Big Difficult
This is just the beginning. Dreaming of a New New Orleans. Besides the obvious costly long-term engineering improvements, return to more natural ecosystem, work with technology, rebuild a more diverse creative economy to balance energy and trade economy, build Green and Renewable, consider the Dutch solution to wetland construction. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003425.html Let Katrina be a warning: Here's what the hurricane can teach about handling natural disasters and energy policy better John Carey, Business Week, Sept. 01, 2005 It is a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions for America. But the irony and the tragedy of the killer storm called Katrina is that the hurricane's devastating effects were entirely predictable -- and largely preventable. Engineers have known for years that New Orleans levees couldn't withstand anything above a Category 3 hurricane. Ecologists had long warned that the loss of protective barrier islands and coastal wetlands made everything along the Gulf Coast, from refineries to vacation homes, far more vulnerable to major storms. Scientists have been learning that, for whatever reasons, hurricanes have become more destructive over the past 30 years. And with the world's oil-producing and gasoline-refining capabilities strained, it has been clear that storm-related damage to the highly concentrated Gulf Coast energy industry could be hugely disruptive to the nation's oil, gasoline, and natural gas supplies. HELPFUL PROGRAMS ERODED. Yet not only have these warnings gone largely unheeded but for years government policies have been putting the country at a greater risk of both natural disasters and energy shocks. Along the Gulf, we've had a tremendously irresponsible policy, destroying protective natural features while encouraging risky and precarious development, says Frederick Krimgold, director of Virginia Tech's disaster risk reduction program. And although Congress passed an energy bill in August, it does almost nothing to solve the problems exposed by Katrina. The major lesson policymakers should draw from the catastrophe is just how vulnerable the U.S. is becoming to natural disasters and energy disruptions. In fact, some experts say, Americans have been mistakenly lulled into thinking terrorism is the most pressing threat -- and they argue that the relentless focus on staving off suicide bombers has left crucial gaps elsewhere. Case in point: After the huge 1993 Mississippi River flood, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began buying up floodplain property, preventing people from rebuilding and being swept away again. But that effort, and a larger FEMA mitigation program, no longer exists. And just this summer, the proposed funding for the New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers district was cut by $71 million for fiscal 2006. Shelved, among other items, was a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane. POLICY LESSONS. Americans are already paying the price for these policy lapses in the form of higher energy costs. And inevitably, natural disasters will hit other parts of the nation, in part just because of more development. New York and Washington certainly aren't immune, warns John N. McHenry, chief scientist at Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems, a forecasting outfit in Raleigh, N.C. Says McHenry: It would not take much to flood all of Manhattan. Everyone with an agenda is pushing his pet ideas as a solution. House Energy Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) thinks that our energy woes can be solved with more production. We could be drilling in Alaska right now, he says. On the other side of the political spectrum, activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blames the Bush Administration for failing to push tough fuel economy standards and curbs on global warming. Says Kennedy: Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children. Partisan fulminations aside, there are policy lessons from Katrina on both the energy and the natural resource management fronts. Here's what could be done: Restore natural buffer zones The combination of the Mississippi River levees and oil and gas development has had a devastating effect on the whole Gulf Coast. The levees prevent sediment from reaching the delta. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies have dug channels through the wetlands and sucked oil from underneath, causing the land to sink, saltwater to intrude -- and thousands of acres to submerge. Although reclamation measures were already under way to restore Gulf marshlands, they were too little too late. I'm hoping that one lesson to come out of this is that talk about rolling back protections for wetlands [all across the country] will end, says Yale University ecologist David K. Skelly. Limit development in the most vulnerable areas Experts say it's crazy to keep building casinos and vacation homes on coastal dunes, barrier islands, and other
Re: [Futurework] The Battle of New Orleans and Lake George
* # of days engineers and crews expect to need to dry out NOLA: 36-80 Even after these 36-80 days, most buildings will be damaged beyond repair, if only for the toxic molds that will overgrow every piece of wood in them in that tropical climate. Perhaps NOLA should simply be abandoned and left standing as a memorial for neo-con idiocy and the effects of CO2 still denied by Dubya. * $ Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered the Red Cross: $1,000,000 Not bad, after Pat Robertson's fatwah against Chavez, and the U$ authorities not prosecuting Robertson for it... Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] The Battle of New Orleans and Lake George
A smattering of interviews with refugees from NOLA indicate that they don't want to go back. Time will tell but it from a public policy point of view NOLA should be rebuilt elsewhere. arthur -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 1:33 PM To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: Re: [Futurework] The Battle of New Orleans and Lake George * # of days engineers and crews expect to need to dry out NOLA: 36-80 Even after these 36-80 days, most buildings will be damaged beyond repair, if only for the toxic molds that will overgrow every piece of wood in them in that tropical climate. Perhaps NOLA should simply be abandoned and left standing as a memorial for neo-con idiocy and the effects of CO2 still denied by Dubya. * $ Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered the Red Cross: $1,000,000 Not bad, after Pat Robertson's fatwah against Chavez, and the U$ authorities not prosecuting Robertson for it... Chris SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword igve. ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework ___ Futurework mailing list Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
RE: [Futurework] Well, No Free Trade in Cuba
Amid the reams of copy devoted to the flood story, the day's most insightful remark came from an unlikely source: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who said, How can a city under sea level not have an evacuation strategy? In the months to come, such simple questions will be central to understanding the events of the past few days. from Maisonneuve MediaScout [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Cordell, Arthur: ECOM Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 10:48 PM To: Christoph Reuss; futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: RE: [Futurework] Well, No Free Trade in Cuba Mayor Nagin is getting a bit too much favourable press. He is emblematic of the Big Easy. Ordering a mandatory evacuation and overlooking the 150,000 or so who had no way of leaving NO. Criminal. This man is the mayor. The top public servant. This event will show the complete failure of governance in that area. I have yet to see on TV a press conference which has the Mayor, the Chief of Police and the Fire Chief. Where are the latter two officials? Why did the police desert their posts in large numbers? NO has long been seen as a corrupt place. The events before and after the hurricane seem to substantiate this view. arthur -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 3:28 PM To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: [Futurework] Well, No Free Trade in Cuba [Before anyone cries Commies!, let me say that Switzerland's civil protection also includes 100% of the population. Ain't protectionism terrible?] http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml The Two Americas By Marjorie Cohn Saturday 03 September 2005 Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go. Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge, said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis. Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable in Cuba, Valdes said. Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin. They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff, Valdes observed. After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does. Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction. Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq. An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain, which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees. This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide, said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps. Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure
