Katrina's Lessons: Blowin' In the Wind

How many deaths does it take till we know
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...
---Bob Dylan

By far the worst natural disaster in American history, Hurricane Katrina's statistics are grim: New Orleans under water, two states under martial law, thousands dead, perhaps a million people homeless. It may take months before order is restored and years before rebuilding is complete.

Katrina also seems to have generated her own category 5 political spin, with Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of inadequate planning and incompetent response. Incredibly, right wing media pundits have actually blamed the victims for failing to evacuate. FEMA officials, now under the aegis of Homeland Security, said that they couldn't respond in a timely fashion because the Governor of Louisiana didn't go through proper channels. Proper channels when all hell was breaking loose? Senator Hillary Clinton has called for a congressional inquiry. George Bush operative Karl Rove has counter-punched by placing fault with state officials. Then Bush took out political insurance by replacing his FEMA director and promising hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild. Stay tuned to see how this plays out in the next election cycle.

Whatever the spin, the Bush administration looks guilty of diverting FEMA money to the Iraq war instead of reinforcing Louisiana levees. "Are you safer now than you were four years ago?" Safer from what? Several years ago scientists had warned about the dangers of a Katrina-magnitude storm. And global warming has made future Katrinas much more likely. Like New Orleans, Amsterdam is also below sea level, but the Dutch government had made sea-wall protection a top priority. Where was our leadership? Our Nero was fiddling while Atlantis sank!

Why were emergency preparations so woefully inadequate? When natural disaster strikes in Castro's Cuba, an impoverished country where few of us would choose to live, the army helps shelter its citizens and offers to protect their possessions in guarded lockers. Yet here, in the Land of the Free, poor blacks and browns were neglected for days and left to drown. Institutional poverty and racism are so deeply imbedded in U.S. culture that we take them for granted. Now Katrina has blown us off our moral perch, and even President Bush was prompted to admit that "poverty has roots in racial discrimination."

And there is little profit incentive in emergency preparedness. The New York Stock Exchange held firm in the wake of Katrina's destruction, expressing confidence that a wide variety of industries would benefit greatly from the rebuilding effort. From the perspective of capital, the disruption, misery—even the major loss of life—is incidental, off the books. This is not cynicism, just corporate capitalism.

The day after Katrina, conservative commentator Paul Harvey noted that damage was so great that "126 Wal-Mart stores had to be closed." Harvey added that despite Wal-Mart's own troubles it was donating $1 million toward relief efforts. Magnanimous? With quarterly profits exceeding $2 billion, that's the equivalent of a person earning $80,000 making a tax-deductible donation of $10. Hardly newsworthy, except for the fact that Wal-Mart happens to be one of Mr. Harvey's sponsors.

Within the week Wal-Mart had upped their donation to $15 million. Better. The real generosity, however, has been pouring forth from private citizens who have opened their hearts, homes, and checkbooks in an unprecedented relief effort. The international response has been reassuring as well; even Castro offered to send medical doctors. Did Mr. Harvey mention that in his broadcast?

Unfortunately, Katrina is no isolated case of unpreparedness. Consider what might happen in California after a magnitude 8+ quake. Beyond the oft-described danger to life and property, the dirt levees protecting the Central Valley may also liquefy. Reverse osmosis would then suck seawater into the Valley, stranding perhaps 100,000 residents, ruining vast acres of prime farmland, and damaging major aqueducts, leaving 24 million Southern Californians without a source of drinking water. How many helicopters would it take to airlift bottled water to the entire state? In what country will our National Guard be stationed at the time?

Katrina should be California's wake-up call. The impending California disaster could be averted if the Central Valley levees were fortified with concrete. However, this would cost many billions and no politician wants to risk alienating taxpayers with this proposal—yet.

Right now there's a political mandate to rebuild New Orleans, but why repeat past mistakes? Let's build a green city, a showcase of sustainable living! Let's mix open space with clustered housing, establish live-work multi-use zoning with ample public transportation. We could improve urban lifestyles while actually lowering energy consumption! When the Louisiana levees are reinforced, additional funds should be allocated to restore Gulf Coast wetlands, too. Coastal wetlands not only preserve wildlife but also slow storms before they can ravage urban centers. And to borrow a mangled phrase from President Bush, "Make the pie higher!" Some buildings should be raised but much of the population should probably be relocated to higher ground. Will we have to wait until rising ocean levels and new Katrinas threaten New York, Atlanta, Charleston, and Los Angeles before this message finally sinks in?

As bad as Katrina was, it could have been much worse. The storm damaged several Southern oil refineries and almost destroyed a major gulf port pipeline network supplying 18% of our nation's oil. We came "this close" to a crippling gas shortage, not just outrageously priced gas. Mass media has conditioned us to worry about how we'd pay to fill our SUV's when we'd do better to conserve and downsize our rides. Or ask why we're so damned dependent on cars in the first place. Rather than colonizing oil-rich countries in the name of "democracy," our government should be helping to develop renewable alternatives. This would reduce global warming and, of course, diminish terrorist threats as well.

What big lesson can we learn from Katrina? A sustainable technological culture simply cannot survive without long-range central planning. Katrina should put to rest once and for all the neo-con myth that government should be "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Governments may wither, but it was the poor people of Louisiana who drowned. Beyond quarterly profit statements, beyond 5-year and 10-year economic plans, our leaders need to be savvy, humane visionaries who are capable of millennial planning.

Government's first responsibility is to protect its citizens—all its citizens—but Katrina has shown that the richest country in the history of the world is woefully inadequate. We must do better. We The People must demand leaders with an environmental ethos and a commitment to sustainable development. History is filled with stories of dead civilizations that failed to heed these lessons.

---Bart Brodsky, Publisher
OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE

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