Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, wrote an amazing piece on the Huffington Post about Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav’s impact on policy, infrastructure and government responsibility.

Here is the beginning of the piece:

Three years ago Katrina devastated New Orleans and upended American politics. Gustav has proved to be kinder, at least so far, to the Crescent City and to the Gulf Coast in general, but it was still a sobering reminder of some basic truths. Its impact on politics remains to be seen.

Truth 1: Hurricanes are big; nature is bigger. Natural systems, not engineered ones, are the only defenses big enough to rely on in a big storm. Hurricanes get their energy from passing over heated water and lose it when they hit land. Storm surge builds in open water but dissipates rapidly in coastal wetlands or barrier islands. One acre of wetlands typically absorbs one million gallons of water.

South Louisiana is in such big trouble because we allowed its wetlands to be starved — courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers — of the natural silt and sand that fed them and because they were then opened up to storm surge and erosion — courtesy of oil and gas drilling. Our first priority on the Gulf Coast after immediate recovery needs to be wetlands restoration. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before the coastal regions become uninhabitable or vanish beneath the waves.

Read the rest on the Huffington Post

https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=905848835&df_id=1086&1086.donation=form1 and donate to the American Red Cross

Related:

Inconvenient Truth of the Day

Hurricane Gustav Coverage