Articles by David Roberts

Rebuilding: what to do with New Orleans

I hope to write quite a bit on issues around the rebuilding of New Orleans. It's a bit overwhelming in two ways, the first logistical and the second political:

• The issues involved are just incredibly complex, in terms of social and physical engineering.
• The Bush administration is almost certain to run this the same way they ran the rebuilding of Iraq: badly, with maximum inefficiency, graft, and cronyism. Resistance is futile.

But just as a teaser, check out a couple of intriguing ideas, both via City Comforts. Both start from the basic problem that much of New Orleans is built beneath sea level, and is sinking (and oh yeah, sea level is rising). So there's two things you could do:

• Rebuild the city as another Venice, with deep canals and elevated buildings.
• Fill it up until it's above sea level, the way they did with Galveston, Texas in the early 1900s.

Crazy, maybe, but then, razing wetlands to build a major seaport beneath sea level is crazy to begin with.

(See also: 5-point plan for sustainable rebuilding.)

Republicans want to pay for Gulf Coast rebuilding with cuts to enviro and social programs

You may have heard, President Bush is trying to bolster his sagging poll numbers by throwing money at the Gulf Coast -- or rather, throwing money at politically connected contributors in the Gulf Coast while cutting wages for the poor saps who work there.

$200 billion. How are we going to pay for that? Well, Think Progress points out that you could get most of it from rolling back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the rich.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

No, seriously, we have to "cut unnecessary spending." And the House Republicans are ready, with their "Operation Offset," a list of cuts (PDF) they say could squeeze $500 billion in 10 years out of the federal budget.

Unsurprisingly, the cuts impose pain almost exclusively on programs meant to help the environment and the less fortunate. Here are a few of the cuts:

• Eliminate the EnergyStar program;
• eliminate state and community grants for energy conservation;
• eliminate National Parks Heritage Areas;
• reduce Amtrak subsidies (how come they never call highway spending "subsidies"?);
• eliminate the high-speed rail and light-rail programs;
• reduce fish and wildlife habitat construction;
• reduce Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management;
• eliminate the Applied Research for Renewable Energy Sources program;
• eliminate the FreedomCar program; and
• eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative.

Note that, as Brad Plumer points out, almost every federal program to encourage clean energy is cut, while the energy bill's recent billions in subsidies to oil and gas companies remain untouched.

There are more -- these are just the most salient environmental cuts. Some 30% of the cuts come from Medicaid. Others would eliminate a variety of foreign aid programs. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be de-funded, along with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Many of the cuts are trivial in terms of the money they save. It's just a chance for House Republicans to take out some of their longtime enemies. It's really a stunning look into their priorities.

If you want to avoid cuts like this, get on the phone with your Congressional representatives.

(There are many, many blogs writing about this. Read around.)

(See also E.J. Dionne on the subject.)

Expert testimony

This Wednesday, the Senate Environment Committee is holding a hearing on global warming.

The lead witness? Michael Crichton.

You really can't make this stuff up.

Now he tells us …

Well I'll be damned. Did our president just encourage us to conserve? He really has lost his swagger!

Matt Yglesias says what needs to be said about this wan little gesture.

(See also Pascal Riche on European conservation programs.)