Lots of people are putting out reports and such. A brief rundown of some things that have come across my desk:
Center for American Progress (PDF). I really like the Center, but I must say I find their recently released hurricanes-and-global warming report a tad disappointing. Oddly, in my view the report is both too incautious with the science and yet also far too cautious when it comes to the policy. The complexities and uncertainties aren't really limned on the science front. And then while there's lots of talk about community-based preparedness measures, nothing CAP suggests (in my reading) would adequately prepare us for the mega-disasters that will result when--not if, but when--intense hurricanes directly hit Houston/Galveston, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Miami, New York--or New Orleans again. Measures at the community level are not going to suffice to protect cities like these. We need big thinking to prevent cities from going under water.
Campaign for America's Future (PDF). The report frames the many New Orleans reconstruction failures as the consequence of conservative ideology. No real policy content, but the Bush administration really does deserve this harsh an assessment.
Mother Jones. By far the best read so far is John McQuaid's three-part investigative series, "Storm Warning." Not only does MoJo give us well-written reporting, but McQuaid paints the big picture in the way others seem not to. As he writes:
The rest of the nation already has plenty in common with New Orleans. For decades, government agencies at all levels have subsidized development in risky areas. Along coastlines and in river plains, this arrived in the form of flood defenses, federal flood insurance, and aid for businesses (in Louisiana, for example, oil and gas drilling and refining). Near fire-prone forestlands, road building and the marketability of nature itself drove construction of subdivisions. Katrina exposed this ad hoc approach as both lethal and unsustainable. The current wrangling over New Orleans is a preview of what will happen over the coming decades. As melting polar ice is projected to encroach on more and more coastal communities, larger hurricanes and powerful rainstorms will send floods rolling over outmoded flood defenses, and heat waves and ecological disruptions may make some now-comfortable locales unlivable. We don't yet have any idea how, or where, we'll draw the last lines of defense. As post-Katrina New Orleans is proving, it's not simply a matter of building levees; far more important is constructing the basic political architecture to decide who will be protected, and how.
McQuaid also discusses how the Dutch have protected their country and what we can learn from them.
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All I can say is thanks to your advance warning on Friday, August 26 (if memory serves), I was a lot more vigilant about the progress of the storm over the weekend, punctuated by Mayor Nagin's get-out-of-town statement.
Monday the 29th was unseasonably drizzly in Portland, Oregon. We gathered at Pioneer Courthouse Square downtown for Gov. Ted Kulongoski's announcement that he was launching the effort to get Oregon to adopt California's "Pavley" clean car standards, designed to reduced air emissions from passenger vehicles and light trucks, including those that cause global warming.
I remember turning to someone and remarking how odd it was that it was raining at the same time as New Orleans was struggling to get out from under what looked at that point to be a very bad storm but not yet a complete disaster.
Then I went home and watched WWL TV on the internet for a month as they covered the real story that the national news would not let on camera for fear that their holy anchor people would lose face time.
The Times-Picayune got a lot of praise for its work from the storm onward, and they certainly deserve it. But WWL's coverage stands out for me, showing that as bad as local news has gotten nationwide, in a pinch real journalism can actually rise to the surface again. WWL broke every rule in the book in the month of Katrina and Rita. That afternoon they broadcast a good 45 minutes of unedited right-off-the-chopper helicopter flyover footage with very little on-air commentary, except a description of the neighborhoods as they went past and anguish at the extent of the devastation. I learned more from watching WWL's coverage and the weather forecasts and explanations of meteorologist Carl Arredondo than every other news outlet combined.
I hope we have learned some lessons in this country. Just like climate change, everyone knows it can happen. But the tendency to put off action as the threat approaches is very strong.
Today, President Bush dined at Dookie Chase's (which is still closed to the public) in Treme with every major politician from Louisiana and got yet another batch of photo ops on his 15th trip to the city since Katrina. History will have to judge this shallow, narrow-minded man. But two years from the event, we can see that when he looked into his heart when the people of the Gulf Coast were suffering, he felt nothing, made his promises in Jackson Square, and moved on.
N.O. council member Shelly Midura put it well in a letter to the president today. (She is a new council member and pretty controversial, but from what I can tell every politicians in the city is controversial and I will leave those judgments to those who live there. But she has some worthwhile things to say to our president. Fittingly, the statement is published at the top of WWL TV's web site tonight. She says:
"We're also grateful for the $116 billion federal allocation for the Gulf Coast. That $116 billion has served you well, as your spokesmen often cite it as an indicator of your dedication to our recovery. But, it hasn't served us as well -- it's not enough, it's been given grudgingly, and only after our elected officials have had to fight for it. So I feel I must correct the record about you and your administration's dedication to our recovery and implore you to take action to make things better."
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl082807jbmidura.7c998423.html
She closes asking for George W. Bush to exercise real leadership in restoring New Orleans and the coast. But of course she knew this was just a formality. The president has no intention of doing any such thing.
What this is about is not only the past and future of a cultural and economic center. It's not at all about Republican and Democrat. When the time came, the Republican governor of Texas and the Democratic mayor of Houston did not hesitate and gave people fleeing from the storm a place to go.
The greatest failing of President George W. Bush is that he fails to understand that the oath of office is a binding pledge, and nobody is above the rule of law and the dictates of conscience. But his time is quickly coming to an end.
The storm was an act of nature and out of our hands. The aftermath is ours to decide. This is about what this nation *is*, who we are. President Bush has only postponed that reckoning.