Nineteen years ago, on this day, August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hits Louisiana coast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 380ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that warnings of increased intensity of hurricanes, if not their number, had been around for a while. The more local context was that the things that would protect New Orleans from a hurricane were levees and swamp lands and these were being neglected and drained because there was no money in it. And the US State was busy fighting an oil war in Iraq, and the local developers could always make more money. This was not a secret. The Times Picayune was covering it as per David Rovics’ song. There is a sort of whole false sense of inevitability. There’s also an awful sense of inevitability to the way the racism kicks in. If you’re black, you’re looting, if you’re white, you’re looking for food, and on and on and on.
What we learn And if you want to understand how the 21st century is going to play out, have a look at the monstrosity that was the state response, and the corporate response, and the societal response by and large, to Katrina. That monstrosity shows you what you need to know. So you won’t be surprised.
What happened next, New Orleans was “rebuilt” and gentrified and it’s slowly being eaten by sea level rise.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
See, also Naomi Klein See also Rebecca Solnit Paradise Built in Hell, et cetera.
See also Kim Stanley Robinson’s eerily prescient 40 days of rain imagery!
Also on this day:
August 29, 1990 – The Australian mining and forestry industries threaten to spit the dummy
August 29, 2008 – business tells Labor to go softly (Labor then does, obvs).