Storm Warning: The Unlearned Lessons of Katrina

(((New Orleans, the soup bowl of the climate crisis.)))

Link: Storm Warning: The Unlearned Lessons of Katrina.

"Eroding coastline, sinking land, rising seas; failing levees, poor evacuation planning; a city that would fill like a soup bowl if its flood defenses were breached. In 2002, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John McQuaid coauthored a series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where he'd worked for more than 20 years, that predicted the fate that would befall New Orleans 3 years later.

"Now, in a three-part series for Mother Jones, McQuaid reports that the initial surge of attention to strengthening the Gulf Coast's defenses has ebbed, once again, to complacency. And residents of the Gulf Coast are not the only ones who should be worried. As McQuaid reports, it's not just the levees that are broken—it's the entire political system by which we create disaster defenses. Climate change will bring more storms, floods, fires, and tornadoes, but Washington has done very little to get us prepared. In part one of "Storm Warning," McQuaid visits a New Orleans landfill that is ground zero for understanding what we haven't learned from Katrina...."