{"id":445,"date":"2005-09-30T21:13:31","date_gmt":"2005-10-01T02:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=445"},"modified":"2010-11-11T21:09:32","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T02:09:32","slug":"some-lessons-of-katrina-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=445","title":{"rendered":"Some Lessons of Katrina So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0 Next Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0<\/address>\n
<\/address>\n

Some Lessons of Katrina So Far<\/h2>\n

\u00a0Published in the Maryland Daily Record September 30, 2005<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Channelizing and frustrating natural flooding only kills deltas temporarily.\u00a0 The Mississippi will have its delta back someday.\u00a0 The seas will pare back and pare back the depleted land until the floods return and heal the delta.\u00a0 It is only a question of how long and stubbornly we try to prevent the inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As a corollary, therefore, it would be madness to rebuild much of New Orleans.\u00a0 The next Katrina and the one after that will overthrow our levees, however high we build them.\u00a0 It is showing no disrespect for the poor, those who occupied the lowlands most devastated by the catastrophe, to say that the lowlands should never be reoccupied; it is only showing a proper respect for what nature will inevitably do in the future.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As another corollary, we need to find some other way to handle the commerce that relies on the artificial shipping channels we have carved in the Mississippi riverbed \u2013 channelizing that has helped weaken protections even for the parts of New Orleans which ought to be preserved.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preparedness for disasters that will threaten masses of poor people is unworthy the name of preparedness if it does not include detailed plans of how and where to evacuate the poor.\u00a0 Otherwise, only the better-heeled, those who own their own transport, will get out, and only the affluent will have places to go.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cNot In My Backyard\u201d will doubtless often be spoken and whispered now that the poor must be relocated.\u00a0 So many of us have chosen where to live on the principle that we did not wish to be near the poor.\u00a0 We will not easily accept the disappointment of finding them nearby after all.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pity for the poor evacuees will soon give way to resentment.\u00a0 Conservatives are not entirely wrong in maintaining that poverty is not simply a condition imposed upon the poor by the absence of opportunities.\u00a0 There is usually a self-inflicted component to poverty that is very hard for the better-heeled to understand or forgive.\u00a0 The anger of the well-to-do at the poor often is resolved by a wrong-headed determination to ignore them. Katrina has made the poor visible and frustrated our society\u2019s ignoble attempt to ignore them; but Katrina has also called attention to the spiritual pathologies of the poor.\u00a0 It would be wonderful, if unprecedented, if both problems were addressed in Katrina\u2019s wake.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A nation at war does not have military resources at home to cope with great disasters in satisfactory time and on satisfactory scale.\u00a0 And great disasters require military interventions.\u00a0 Great disasters destroy infrastructure, and once infrastructure disappears, lawlessness beyond the coping powers of any mere police force will always ensue.\u00a0 This is one reason among many not to have unnecessary wars.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With adequate taxes, we could have built up the levees further and postponed (though not permanently averted) the catastrophe, and we could have planned to bring timely resources to bear upon containing the tragedy once it began.\u00a0 We could even have done something about the poverty that mired so many of Katrina\u2019s victims before they became victims.\u00a0 But our nation has been starving itself of needed taxes too long.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is sickening, therefore, to watch the tax-cutter-in-chief at a photo opportunity tenderly embracing the victims of his very own policies.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not that George Bush bears most of the blame.\u00a0 He may have continued and exacerbated the long-standing environmental and social policies that made us vulnerable to a blow we knew nature was bound to strike sooner or later, and probably sooner.\u00a0 The only blame that falls uniquely to him and his administration was for the slow deployment of available resources once the blow had fallen.\u00a0 It will be fascinating, during the inevitable Congressional inquiries, blue ribbon panels, grand jury investigations, and litigation that will come, to learn the untold story of the help that didn\u2019t come for five long days, while the bureaucrats whose job it was to assure the flow of help mouthed platitudes and lied.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is heartening to see and hear so many journalists asking angry questions of those bureaucrats.\u00a0 Ordinarily the dance of the negligent official and the mainstream media interviewer is one of momentous questions met by evasions in which the questioner acquiesces.\u00a0 There was mercifully less acquiescence this time.\u00a0 But we in the audience are also aware of how easily this kind of confrontation can descend into schtick on the part of the interviewer.\u00a0 The bureaucrats will never admit the truth because that is not their thing.\u00a0 True journalism will largely consist, as it always does, of finding the real answers elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Real answers often came from do-it-yourself journalism.\u00a0 Blogs reported on the looting by the New Orleans police alongside the urban poor in real time.\u00a0 Brave if perhaps crazy amateur cinematographers captured the storm surge up close.\u00a0 Until the cell towers died, people on the ground told their tales by cell phone.\u00a0 It was a great day for the unofficial Fifth Estate.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Katrina made it plain how central communications are to the infrastructure.\u00a0 Once the power failed, it was somehow far easier to get information out (except, apparently, to FEMA) than it was to get information in.\u00a0 And the lack of information in, be it word of the arrival and timing of aid or simply the comforting feed of CNN or cellphone communication with near and dear, was instrumental in the emotional devastation of the victims.\u00a0 We need to plan ways to keep information coming in even without centrally-distributed electric power flowing through the wires.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The storm surge, of course, did its worst not to New Orleans\u2019 urban poor but to the seaside folk of Mississippi who often were the resort rich and the working folk who tended to their needs and entertained them.\u00a0 Or at least so the media depicted it.\u00a0 It won\u2019t be easy for anyone, but they will doubtless find it easier than poor New Orleans dwellers to rebuild.\u00a0 It makes no sense to rebuild the lowlands of New Orleans; it may make greater sense for the leveled Gulf Coast to rebuild if its owners choose to do so.\u00a0 But they should do so at their own expense and risk.\u00a0 No seaside location on earth is now safe enough for the financial risks to be legitimately spread to others (except perhaps to other seaside dwellers) through government subsidies or insurance.\u00a0 If the persons or businesses choose to set up housekeeping by the seaside, they should do so in full awareness the odds are against their homes, bridges, hotels, casinos, and the terra firma beneath them surviving over the long term.\u00a0 And they should bear full financial responsibility for the consequences.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The misery of Katrina has been spread up and down our SUV Nation at the gas pump.\u00a0 But our gasoline prices have been too low to start with, far too low, to encourage conservation.\u00a0 A century from now, historians will be at a loss to account for our nation\u2019s lemming-like refusal to limit gasoline consumption or to pursue effective substitutes for fossil fuels.\u00a0 Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are going away, and yet as a civilization we are acting as if they were permanent, and permanently plentiful.\u00a0 To preserve our access to the Middle East\u2019s oil, we have engaged in reckless efforts to establish an imperium that, inevitably, has brought down the wrath of the empire\u2019s subjects upon us.\u00a0 In order to withstand that wrath, we have diverted far too many of our nation\u2019s military resources and civil defense resources.\u00a0 Whatever the full explanation for the help that took five days to arrive while all hell broke loose, part of it will inevitably be that our National Guard was largely deployed abroad and Homeland Security was too absorbed in preventing terrorism. And so, with utter predictability, out of our effort to protect low gas prices and plentiful supplies of gasoline has come our diminished ability to cope with Katrina.\u00a0 And out of that diminished ability has come — higher gasoline prices.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the weeks and months ahead, we will learn much, much more.\u00a0 But Katrina, has already shown she holds huge lessons for us, and they are both perennial and urgent.\u00a0 We should be respecting nature more, and not trying so very hard to bend it to our commercial purposes.\u00a0 We should be recognizing the coming demise of a fossil fuel economy, and ending the kind of foreign and military policy that will leave us undefended against nature\u2019s worst.\u00a0 We should be waging war on poverty again, and not on the poor, and we should be demanding accountability of the rich, not giving them further tax cuts.\u00a0 There is nothing new in these lessons, but there is doubtless something newly urgent.\u00a0 They say that hurricanes are increasing in size and frequency; Katrina\u2019s kin will be calling again soon.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0 Next Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katrina holds huge lessons for us, and they are both perennial and urgent. We should be respecting nature more, and not trying so very hard to bend it to our commercial purposes. We should be recognizing the coming demise of a fossil fuel economy, and ending the kind of foreign and military policy that will leave us undefended against nature\u2019s worst. We should be waging war on poverty again, and not on the poor, and we should be demanding accountability of the rich, not giving them further tax cuts. There is nothing new in these lessons, but there is doubtless something newly urgent. They say that hurricanes are increasing in size and frequency; Katrina\u2019s kin will be calling again soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[537,542,548,529,545,544,527,540,236,530,546,547,551,549,536,235,541,538,528,552,531,539,535,534,533,543,550,532,214],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture","tag-alternative-media","tag-amateur-cinematographers","tag-casinos","tag-channelization","tag-cnn","tag-communications","tag-deltas","tag-disaster-coverage","tag-fema","tag-flood-control","tag-flood-insurance","tag-flood-zones","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-gasoline","tag-infrastructure","tag-katrina","tag-looting","tag-mainstream-media","tag-mississipi-delta","tag-national-guard","tag-new-orleans","tag-news-coverage","tag-nimby","tag-not-in-my-backyard","tag-poverty-policy","tag-power-failures","tag-price-of-gasoline","tag-rebuilding-new-orleans","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}