That's what the cast of the British reality TV show Top Gear asked while visiting New Orleans one year after Katrina:
They also say, "A year had passed since Katrina had blown through, and we sort of assumed that after 12 months the wealthiest nation on earth would have fixed it. But we were wrong." I think, as time passes, we are going to look back on Katrina and realize what a catastrophic failure this was. The overwhelming denial in even acknowledging what has failed to happen following the hurricane suggests to me just how ashamed many Americans are by our lack of virtually any response.
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There are inevitably plenty of typos, but after the jump I've pasted in the transcript of my Science Friday conversation with NPR's Ira Flatow about hurricanes and global warming. Callers raised several interesting questions.
Enjoy.
National Public Radio (NPR)
August 24, 2007 Friday
SHOW: Talk Of…
Here they come, surfing atop the literary swell generated by the upcoming one year anniversary of Katrina: The first two popular books (that I'm aware of, anyway) that put global warming and hurricanes in the foreground. Neither book is exclusively devoted to the subject, as far as I can tell; but…
And yet some still have the unimaginable gall to shout "But what if we lose a city?" at all who would question the extremist policies of the current American government.
Isn't it great that a car show from a foreign country can provide a harder-hitting commentary on this than any of the news shows in this one. What a complete farce the American media is.
I am trying to overcome my outrage fatigue after everything the DoJ and the DoD and the DoInterior and this whole goddamn fucking trainwreck of a sham of a political maneuvering of an administration, but it's so hard. And the center-right corporatist Democratic party is a willing accomplice.
Frankly I'm largely resigned to it.
I think I first read about the extreme vulnerability of NOLA to major hurricanes in the late 1980s.
The warnings went on for decades, and nothing was done.
So I did not - and still do not expect that anything will be done post-Katrina.
And finally .. as I've said on this blog before - Katrina was not a direct hit on NOLA. It was a near miss. Biloxi got 25+ feet of storm surge. Pass Christian got 30 feet (wikipedia says 37, but I haven't seen that number in any other source) . NOLA got mabye 7 feet. If NOLA had gotten what Biloxi and Pass Christian got, Amanda's 'histrionic' post on Katrina would have been and understatemnt.
Sorry, forgot to spell-check that last post. I intended:
'Amanda's 'histrionic' post on Katrina would have been an understatement.'
My brother has gone a couple of times with church-related groups down to southern Mississippi to help with some rebuilding. I am not a big fan of religion, but at least these people are acting instead of talking. We hear almost nothing about the many people outside of New Orleans who lost everything. They have been abandoned by the government and the media, leaving only a very few concerned individuals to use their own resources to try to help. It is a national disgrace that puts the lie to the right wing's claim to moral authority.
The trouble is the savage races that lived in New Orleans. As Darwin predicted, thus proving evolution, the savage races are being wiped out by the advance.
The fit survive, the weak perish.
Quit whining.
Nice work, Galton -- ignorant and racist. Care to make it a trifecta? Oh, never mind, you also threw in stupid.
Top Gear is usually a very jokey sort of show but when they choose to make a serious point - like here - they do so very well. Another rather damning indictment of the USA came earlier in the same roadtrip when the boys were threatened, had stuff thrown at them and basically run out of Alabama(I think?). Their crimes? daubing the slogans "hillary for prez"; "nascar sucks" and "man love rules ok" on the sides of their cars. Deliberately provocative perhaps but no reason for the frankly scary chase seen that followed.