Carrying the Lantern

Bill R.: One week on, the news is still dominated by Katrina. Dave Winer and others are right when they speak of Katrina and 9/11 in the same breath. And while the effects may only be felt for a year or so (speculation implying only weeks or months are ridiculous IMHO), the re-building efforts will take years. Even the decision process on WHETHER to rebuild will occupy us for months. There's a business reality at work here. The longer it takes, the weaker the business case is for bothering. The question then becomes can we, as a nation, measure the worth of New Orleans in more than just a monetary sense?

The heart-felt words of Dave Slusher in his latest Evil Genius Chronicles podcast episode entitled "The Drowned City" touch my very soul. I can't help but realize I've never been to New Orleans, and now I never will have the chance.

Katrina dies.

National Hurricane Center's final advisory:

AT 11 PM EDT...03Z...THE REMNANTS OF KATRINA HAVE BEEN ABSORBED INTO A FRONTAL BOUNDARY IN SOUTHEASTERN CANADA AND A CIRCULATION IS NO LONGER DISCERNABLE.

- Posted by William A. Riski - 8:38:47 PM - comment []

From Doc Searls ...

Prophesies.

From Gone with the Water, in National Geographic, October 2004:

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level‹more than eight feet below in places‹so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't — yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

The article spreads blame all over the place, but the common cause is an utter lack of what when I was growing up we called conservation, a value that was then also tied without irony to conservatism, a movement that has since moored itself to short term economic growth at all costs, political paranoia, military adventurism and a narrow understanding of markets as arenas where large companies fight over political and economic spoils, and human values (such as paying living wages to employees) are punished.

This event will change the country as much as 9/11 did, and perhaps even more so. After Katrina, we will again begin investing in real homeland security, real infrastructure, real caring for the civilizing natures of vital cities and family farms, of small towns and real communities, sustained by governments that care more about their people than the high-dollar sources of election funding.

This event won't have ripple effects. The consequences will be tidal: on transportation, on agriculture, on lumber and other supplies, on retailing, on churches and on citizens across the country who will need to take on the burden of caring for refugees and helping others start new lives.

Katrina also force us to face a subject even Demoncrats have stopped talking about, although it lurks beneath everything: class. When the dead are counted, most of them will have been poor. Count on it.

This thing is a huge reset button on politics as usual. Along with everything else.

- Posted by William A. Riski - 8:38:01 PM - comment []