http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-catastrophe11sep11,0,3071424.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion
We asked for it
Beachfront condos and a flotilla of casinos won't protect us from
future Katrinas.
By David Helvarg
David Helvarg is president of the Blue Frontier Campaign and author of
the revised and forthcoming "Blue Frontier -- Dispatches from
America's Ocean Wilderness." He also edited "The Ocean and Coastal
September 11, 2005
THERE'S A 9/11 waiting to happen in the oceans if we let it," retired
Adm. James Watkins, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy,
warned two years ago. With Hurricane Katrina, we let it happen. A huge
natural disaster was hugely magnified by greed, folly and a refusal to
respond to a situation long recognized as critical.
In its final report issued last fall, the ocean commission cautioned
that if New Orleans' protective levees failed during a storm surge,
"the city and surrounding areas could suffer upward of $25 billion in
property losses and 25,000 to 100,000 deaths by drowning." Luckily,
because these failures occurred after the hurricane passed, the real
casualty figures will probably fall short of those numbers while still
proving catastrophic, though property losses won't.
Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune has been writing
about the risk of a category 4 or 5 hurricane striking the city for so
many years that his editor started calling the stories "eco-porn."
But many politicians and officials, including President Bush, claimed
that disaster relief was slow in arriving because Katrina was an
unprecedented event. Actually, there have been a number of storms —
Hurricane Camille in 1969, for one — that blew with similar force. The
difference is that 36 years ago the Gulf of Mexico had far more
protective wetlands and less risky development along the coast (and in
coastal flood plains). Also, until recent decades, it was not in the
footprint of fossil-fuel-fired climate disruption.
Flying over the bayou, I've seen shredding islands of brown spartina,
or salt grass, crosshatched with canals built by oil companies and
flood control channels and levees built by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers. Historically, the Mississippi River's flooding deposited
sediment that built up the delta. Now these hydrologic speedways flush
that sediment out into the deep Gulf. Oil drilling has caused land
subsidence, and the burning of coal and oil has raised the sea level
by more than a foot. All this has shrunk the wetlands by about 35
square miles a year in recent decades.
"The Army Corps has given us a levee system that's traded periodic
Mississippi River flooding for permanent coastal flooding, and that to
me is a bad deal," Mark Davis, director of the Coalition to Restore
Coastal Louisiana, told me years ago.
Did he believe that he could mobilize enough popular will to turn
around the forces of sprawl and development, not to mention the Army
Corps?
"If our advocacy is inadequate to the task," he said, "then a
hurricane will make the case for us."
When New Orleans was built in 1718, there were more than 150 miles of
protective wetlands between it and the Gulf. Every few miles reduce a
hurricane's storm surge by a foot. When Katrina veered to the east of
the city, less than 30 miles of wetlands remained.
At the same time, cities such as Biloxi, Miss., filled in their salt
marshes with waterfront casinos. Today, 17 of the United States' 20
fastest-growing counties are coastal, including many in
hurricane-prone Florida and along the Gulf.
Ironically, since 1968, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's
flood-insurance program has driven much of this coastal sprawl. It now
covers $763 billion worth of property, about half of which is in
Florida and along the Gulf Coast. Before government insurance became
available, banks refused to provide mortgages for construction on
barrier islands and in flood plains.
Today, there's so much money to be made in coastal development that
even destruction on a massive scale may not prevent future high-risk
reconstruction. After Hurricane Ivan destroyed Gulf Shores, Ala., last
year, the mayor (who is also a real estate developer) envisioned the
disaster as an opportunity to convert his "Redneck Riviera" into a
more desirable "Gulf Coast Resort Destination."
At $42 billion, last year's hurricane season was the most costly in
U.S. history. This year, the number of named storms set a record. Then
Katrina came along and blew all these statistics — and probably
thousands of lives — away.
And this year's season has two months to go.
Along with the upswing of a natural 25-year cycle of hurricane
intensity in the Atlantic, a warming of the world's oceans, a rise in
sea level and erosion from human-caused climate disruption are
contributing to ever more extreme weather events.
A recent study by Swiss Reinsurance, one of the world's largest
insurance companies, estimates that global losses as a result of
climate change will run around $150 billion a year by the end of the
decade. The largest property reinsurance company in Britain projects
that, unchecked, the effects of climate change could bankrupt the
global economy in 65 years. Even in a $3.5-trillion economy such as
ours, the effects of a single storm are already evident.
There are things we can do to prevent the horrors that victims of
Katrina have experienced. These include wetlands restoration, sensible
coastal development and a commitment to a major transition from fossil
fuels to carbon-free energy systems.
The European Union is already moving in this direction, with the
low-lying Netherlands a potential model for the Gulf Coast.
The Dutch have both breached and strengthened levees and converted
hundreds of square miles of farmland back to marsh to absorb the
effects of rising seas. They are also introducing a new generation of
green architecture, including jack-up homes designed for coastal flood
zones. And they are moving rapidly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and develop new carbon-free sources of energy.
After 9/11, there was a moment when Americans seemed prepared to make
sacrifices and embrace change. Instead, Bush told us to go shopping.
The Katrina disaster need not be another lost opportunity. The
recommendations of two major ocean panels — the Commission on Ocean
Policy and the privately funded PEW Oceans Commission — offer
solutions, as does an ocean protection bill introduced in June by Sen.
Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
Sadly, we can no longer trust government to adequately prepare for and
respond to such disasters as Katrina. Instead, we have to help
ourselves, including the poorest among us, if we are going to get
through this crisis and learn the lessons of New Orleans.
If we don't, there will always be another hurricane to make the case.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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