here's a link:

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/31/83553/8973

profgoose, The Oil Drum

I recall sitting on a balcony in the French Quarter on Bourbon Street watching a huge ocean liner float past above street level. Everybody in New Orleans has known this was coming for a long time. In Seattle, we are busy upgrading for the big earthquake we know is coming. Much of the damage in New Orleans proper is partially the result of not being adequately prepared for the inevitable. Maybe it is time to take a lesson from the Netherlands. In the mean time, the citizens are in trouble and could use our charity. Their leaders, on the other hand, should be tarred and feathered.

*Sarcasm alert


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." -- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana

New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002331.html

[And the Louisiana National Guard was in Iraq.]

How much economic growth is curtailed when whole cities are wiped out?  

No jobs, no money earned, no mortgages payed, no stores shopped at, no factories operating... and so forth.

This is why global climate disaster from fossil fuel combustion will cost 100s of trillions in economic growth over the next century.

Is Manhattan, or any other city, prepared for devestation like New Orleans has experienced?  Of course not!  Even if it were possible to plan for it somehow, would a totally corrupt bottomline, corporatist serving, lobbyist run system like the US has become do that?

Not on your, and millions of your fellow citizens lives.  Just as there is no homeland security, it was a sham to loot the federal treasury,there are not even any  substantial  evacuation plans, much less any recovery plans.

And with completely unregulated insider trading and market manipulation run rampant could gas hit 5 dollars tomorow or next week?  Yep.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

STOP AND THINK; have we at any other time in the past in a natural emergency not opened the closest public facility for evacuation?  The govenor of the State of Louisianna goes on national television and tells the whole world that New Orleans is being evacuated, the television shows what seems to be miles of bumper-to-bumber cars exiting the city but THINK, where are they going?  Where is almost half a million people going?  Are they going to civic centers set up for their care?  Are they going to municipal buildings, shcools, churches?  NO, they are disappearing in the sunset like the happy ending of a Gene Autry movie!  

STOP AND THINK, that exodus has no destination--no way to get more gas when their money runs out, no way to pay for the motels and hotels, no way to pay for food.  What unimaginable failure of public planning coalesced to permit this fiasco?  Is the most important aspect of public planning for emergencies being able to ignore what requires federal dollars and support?  

We hear daily on the tv that millions of tons of water and foods stuffs are being shipped into New Orleans, the city that is being evacuated.  Where is that food going to be stored?  Why wasn't it sent to a nearby base that should have been opened up as emergency shelter?  

The stupendous goof that has led to forwarding the refugees of the flood from a building used to shelter them from the storm, the Superdome, to the same kind of immediate crisis shelter 350 miles away in Texas, boggles the mind.  Any kind of emergency planning at all whould have identified housing far ahead of any crisis.  

FEMA, prior to being swallowed by the new agency of Home Care, had the best record of any federal agency; the most dedicated people, the most capable shock teams.  After the roll-up, FEMA became the whipping boy for one mess after another.  An outstanding federal agency doing outstanding work thrown on the trash heap of do-gooders the administration seems determined to weed from its garden of GM monster plants.

If I was in New Orleans, I would refuse to get on the bus.  I would insist that I be provided housing for the long term, not just another stop-gap measure.  I would insist my child be able to attend school.  I would insist I have access to health care.  This is not pie-in-the-sky talk; we are the most technologically advanced, the richest nation on the planet.  That does not give us the right to ignore what should be common sense.  That does not give us the right to act without responsibilities; the Bush administration seems to think politics is best conducted without any input from social agencies as to how to provide for its citizens.  

So, after the gas tanks run empty, what?  After bussing Louisiannians 350 miles so they can sit on hard chairs without any privacy, what?  What collossal failure of thinking is allowing this unfolding tragedy?  Where is the forward thinking that will allow the refugees a destination?  Somebody answer this question?  Where are the centers that people can go to and stay---where are the military bases that should have been opened up for the evacuees?

Look at the FEMA largesse heaped upon Florida, the state that made the 2000 coup, compared to the response to New Orleans.

And from the mass media?  Scenes of looting, that feed into the wing nut talking point diatribe all about shooting looters on sight and that's what one can expect from inner city democratic voters.

These talking points are becoming more than just an undercurrent.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Let's get to the roots of the problem.  The answers are overpopulation and development where it doesn't belong, the latter also being at least partially a function of overpopulation.  New Orleans is below sea level because far too many people have been sucking far too much water out of the ground, causing the city to sink below sea level.  Then, greedy developers convinced politicians to build levees so they could destroy wetlands for development.  If New Orleans were still above sea level, the wetlands were still there, and there were no levees to break and flood the city, this wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad.  And I didn't even mention global warming, which almost certainly caused this hurricane to be far worse than it would otherwise have been due to the unusually warm Gulf water.

Jeff Hoffman

you can't prove that a particular cigarette nor a particular vodka tonic gave you the tumor in your lungs, or the bleeding ulcers, nor the hypertension that facilitated the stroke, etc... so why is this the discussion you're wasting so much time on?  the point is this:  cigarette smoking and alcohol hurt human cells and in excess  kill.  

changing the climate, upon which life as we know it is based, is also harmful and in excess kills.  so why waste precious time & energy on, "is a particular storm scientifically attributable to global warming?" when we know we are heating the globe and its consequences are certain disaster for many people?

thankfully the medical stance to alcohol and smoking weren't based on linking a particular Camel Light or 40 oz Schlitz Ice to your ancestor's death.

furthermore, isn't the first step to recovery admitting you have a problem?
so let's admit we're warming the planet with carbon emissions and its consequences are profoundly lethal---  then we can begin focusing on how to kick our addiction to fossil fuels and fix the problem.