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Pope on Katrina

Sierra Club exec. director Carl Pope writes an alternate history of the last two weeks -- what could have been. But it wasn't:

Incompetence? Oh yes.

But this was not garden-variety incompetence -- good intentions gone awry. This was the toxic harvest of a strategically and intentionally planted seed -- a set of reactionary beliefs to which our nation's leaders have become addicted. Namely: Prudence is for wimps, protecting our communities is morally corrosive, after-the-fact spin can substitute for planning, and the poor and powerless deserve whatever the fates -- or our bureaucracies -- hand to them. It has turned out that when you try, as conservative-activist Grover Norquist said, "to reduce government to the size that you can drown it in a bathtub," it is not just government that drowns. It is the people.

The Republican agenda has been bumped back, but not indefinitely

Just as Katrina has displaced hundreds of thousands on the Gulf Coast, she has also displaced many of the marquee items on the Congressional leadership's agenda ... for now.

Before they left on their August break, the Senate's September plans included taking up permanent repeal of the estate tax, holding hearings on Judge Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court, and getting started on a budget reconciliation process that's supposed to include more tax breaks, cuts in social services and student loans, and opening the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling. All that is postponed, though not necessarily indefinitely.

But less than a month after an energy bill that did nothing to decrease oil consumption became law, Congress is investigating the cause of high gasoline prices.

China Pattern

China may boost use of renewables, efforts to fight climate change Recent developments show China making concerted efforts to boost its use of clean energy and engage the world community in efforts to battle global warming. Late last week, China and the European Union announced a deal that would have the formidable economic powers sharing […]

Bourbon Decay

Officials try to get grip on post-Katrina environmental problems Multiple environmental crises loom in Hurricane Katrina’s wake. New Orleans floodwaters are diluting sewage, chemical, and fuel contaminants right now, but these substances are likely to concentrate and deposit as the waters drain. Some parts of the city may become de facto brownfields, so soaked in […]

Glow Figure

Health fallout from Chernobyl less severe than expected The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power-plant accident has yielded much less harm to human health than initially anticipated. According to a new report prepared for the U.N. by more than 100 experts, Chernobyl will ultimately cause about 4,000 deaths, primarily from cancer — a lot, they concede, but […]

More than you wanted to know about the hurricane aftermath

I suppose I should probably blog about something else at some point, but I can't stop reading about the aftermath of Katrina. It's making me sick to my stomach -- the incompetence, the callousness, the racism. It's a national humiliation, the fallout of which will be with us for decades. Unlike the response to 9/11, about which we are so eager to gush -- oh, the heroism! the unity! -- here we want viscerally to turn away because our own pathologies have been revealed, and those pathologies don't sit well with the American triumphalism currently in vogue.

As you can see, I have nothing but bile and sorrow to add to the conversation. So here are some more reading and listening materials, if you can stand it (sorry, I've lost track of where I found many of them, so the attribution is spotty):

Bush administration finally mobilizing

From tomorrow's NYT:

Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett.

Bush vs. Science

"Is the Bush administration anti-science?" asks Daniel Smith in The New York Times Magazine.  

When Donald Kennedy, a biologist and editor of the eminent journal Science, was asked what had led so many American scientists to feel that George W. Bush's administration is anti-science, he isolated a familiar pair of culprits: climate change and stem cells. These represent, he said, "two solid issues in which there is a real difference between a strong consensus in the science community and the response of the administration to that consensus."

Smith cites a number of other scientists and advocates who are fed up with the right's distortions of and interference with science, including Chris C. Mooney, author of the new book The Republican War on Science (watch for a Grist Q&A with Mooney coming up soon). But Smith also gives a fair bit of space to presidential science adviser John Marburger, who continues to defend the admin's record. Guess which side makes a stronger case.

Quote of the day

FEMA chief Michael Brown has been widely excoriated for his pathetically and tragically inept response to Katrina. But lest you think he came to the job unequipped to lead the nation's emergency-response efforts, Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief, points out that his previous experience as a commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association has come in handy:

"He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm," she told Knight-Ridder.

Americans dying

Six days after the hurricane hit, there are thousands in New Orleans still stranded, their lives in imminent danger from thirst, hunger, and unmedicated illness.

I find it inconceivable.