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Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 22:28:25 -0400 (EDT)
To: improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Daniel Reeves <dreeves &AElig umich.edu>
Subject: katrina predictability
Status: O

This is interesting (forwarded from Kapoo's dad, John Kapusky) on the
boost in credibility of environmentalists.
Of course, it was extremely well-established in the scientific community
in general that this disaster was imminent (which makes the botched FEMA
response and some of the excuses so outrageous).
For more on that, see:
  http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html
    (npr transcript from 2002)
  http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/
    (national geographic article from 2004)
  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000
    (scientific american article from 2001)

Oh, and just to clarify the finders/looters photos:
  http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp

Some delicious satire from the onion:
  http://mobile.theonion.com/content/

If you're looking for more ways to help:
  http://www.vfproadtrips.org/

And while I'm at it, several of us on this list (me, my mom, dad, brother,
Erica, and Bethany) are skating 90 miles to raise money for the National
Multiple Sclerosis Society.  (My mom's biking, actually.)
  http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves/tanglewood/


On to the article from Mr Kapusky:

- - - - - - - - - - -

Published September 6, 2005
http://www.freep.com/sports/outdoors/outcol6e_20050906.htm

OUTDOORS: Katrina disaster was years in making

BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST


Some called them environmental extremists, scaremongers and kooks. But for
30 years they warned that the New Orleans area and the entire Gulf Coast
were ripe for disaster.


They were the people who said that thoughtless oceanfront development and
the concomitant destruction of wetlands and barrier dunes had left that
coast terribly vulnerable to a big hurricane. When they demanded better
environmental enforcement and regulations and remediation of the damage,
they were derided as tree-hugging nuts.


It took only one day to prove they were right.


Now it's up to outdoors people to join the rest of the nation's
environmentalists and demand that plans to rebuild the shattered Gulf Coast
will include regulations to stop developers from building on vulnerable
coastal plains.


We also should clear the wrecked barrier islands and replant them with
mangroves, sea oats and the dozens of other protective plants forged in the
evolutionary crucible of thousands of tropical storms. Only a quick-buck
developer, a politician or an imbecile could countenance rebuilding in most
of those areas, knowing that the same thing could happen again next month or
next year.


Why should we in Michigan be concerned about that? Because a lot of federal
dollars spent to rebuild the Gulf Coast will come out of our pockets;
because we're paying up to $3.50 a gallon for gasoline today, and because
Hurricane Katrina has delivered such a body-blow to the economy that we are
all going to share the pain.


Settlers in New Orleans began draining wetlands 250 years ago and building
on what had been sea and river bottom. Levees often were overrun in the
early days, which was why plantation homes had first floors made of marble
and furniture that easily could be carried upstairs to wait for the water to
drop.


As people got better technology, they built bigger levees that stopped the
flooding, at least most of the time, and a village grew into a megalopolis
of 1.3 million. But it was built on a gamble: That it wouldn't be hit by a
hurricane more powerful than the Category 3 storm that the new levees built
in the 1960s were designed to withstand.


Katrina was a Category 4.


The kooks also warned that a shortcut channel to the Gulf of Mexico, created
by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to save shipping interests a pile of
money, was a disaster just waiting to happen if a hurricane storm surge ever
rolled up it. For 20 years their demands to close the channel were ignored.


Today, we see Interstate 10 literally shattered by the surge from Hurricane
Katrina, adding to the chaos and misery because it was the major route to
bring in disaster supplies.


When I first started roaming the Gulf Coast 40 years ago as a young
Associated Press reporter, there weren't a tenth as many people living
within a mile of the ocean as there are today. The intense waterfront
development that we see, from Texas to Florida, is the product of vastly
increased American prosperity that began in the 1960s.


Highly paid union factory workers and white-collar workers from the North
suddenly had the money to buy vacation homes in the sunshine.


When people lifted by the rising economic tide that swept through the New
South also started living and vacationing there in droves, we started
calling the area the Redneck Riviera. Development got a big boost with the
arrival of casinos in the '90s, and even more hotels and restaurants and
tourist attractions followed. But the casinos and their satellites were
built on land whose ownership still was being contested by the ocean, as was
the housing for people who worked and played in those businesses.


For now, the first priority must be saving the lives of people trapped in
New Orleans and closing the ruptured levees. But people concerned about the
damage done by environmental stupidity should be lining up their ducks for
the battles over culpability and solutions that will be upon us sooner than
we think.


It took 30 years to strip away nature's coastal protection and create the
potential for an environmental disaster of this magnitude. It took nature
only hours to teach us the folly of our ways.


We've heard for decades how important wetlands, dunes and barrier islands
are for the survival of wildlife. Now we know that sometimes they can be
crucial for the survival of people, too.

Copyright (c) 2005 Detroit Free Press Inc.


-- 
Regards,

John J. Kapusky

-- 
Regards,

John J. Kapusky