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Some Thoughtful Perspectives

Chip Geller and Dave Roberts from Grist have a nice piece in the 11 September 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Here is an excerpt:

"If we could travel back in time 10 years, even 20, and work to prevent last week's misery and loss, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would be far down the list of pragmatic preventative strategies. We'd start instead with reinforcement of New Orleans' levees, restoration of coastal wetlands, upgrades to regional emergency-response programs, maintenance of FEMA's independence and integrity, meaningful anti-poverty programs and the election of a commander in chief who wasn't so obviously in over his head. The wind and rain may have been natural, but Katrina was very much a human disaster, rotten with racism, willful neglect and criminal incompetence."

Paul Recer also has a very nice essay in today's Slate (Thanks DOK). Here is an excerpt:

"Until the science clarifies, environmental groups that use Katrina as a way to boost their campaign for tougher controls on greenhouse emissions risk provoking a backlash. Exploiting bad news and facile pseudoscience to seek support and fresh donations is a good way to lose credibility. Greenpeace, for instance, looked foolish when it denounced genetically modified foods as "Frankenfoods" that can potentially harm human health. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a respected independent advisory group, concluded in 2004 that foods created by gene manipulation were no more dangerous than crops altered by traditional breeding methods. The animal-rights movement suffered a similar embarrassment when it argued against using laboratory animals for medical research by claiming that computer modeling could accomplish the same research goals as living animals. Donald Kennedy, executive editor in chief of the journal Science, called the claim "a remarkable piece of science fiction."

Environmentalists who want to leverage Katrina are on far more solid ground scientifically and economically in going after the state and federal rules that permit people to build in harm's way. Population growth along the U.S. coastline has exploded in recent years-13 million people now live in Florida's coastal counties alone compared to only about 200,000 a century ago. A USA Today study concluded that about 1,000 people move into U.S. coastal counties each day. The denser population makes the areas more difficult to evacuate: Officials told the Washington Post that it now takes twice as long to evacuate Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., as it did 10 years ago."