Earth is our home: August 2005 Archives

It sounds like the warnings of ancient Semitic deity, but alas it is a government agency-the Weather Bureau.

NOAA says:

HURRICANE KATRINA
A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED
STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

(click on images to enlarge)


MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...
PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF
OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF
AND WALL  FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...
LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS
WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.
PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE
IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING
APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED.
CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...
INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS
WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...
A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE.
ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...
AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES
AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED.
THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS
...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...
AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED.
WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES
WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...
BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.
FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN.
LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS
WILL BE
KILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR
HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE
CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS. ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on a region that has experienced years of environmental abuse.  The Gulf Coast evolved over millennia as the terrain and ecology that welcomed the renewal that came with the tropical storms, recovery was rapid, and drainage was natural.  For tens of thousands of years people lived in harmony with the cycles of nature, with the storms, with hot summers, and warm winters.  But the ecology has been violently impacted since the European conquest of the area.  The Europeans came to this place with a practice of systematic misuse of the land and waterways.  Cities are built where cities will be destroyed, and the land is so paved over it floods, destroying habit for plants and wildlife.  The destruction is not the result of human impact, it is the result of the impact of humans with a destructive worldview, people whose real religion involved manipulation and violence against "Mother Nature."

There is an awakening to what we have done, and more and more people seek a new relation with the earth.  Meanwhile, the Bush administration is working overtime to embarrass our people in the international arena.  The latest bit of stupidity involves an upcoming draft statement of principles to be agreed to by 175 heads of state and government attending a Sept. 12 United Nations summit, devoted to poverty and U.N. reorganization.  The draft contains a statement of "core values" which contains the following language "respect for human rights, freedom, equality, tolerance, multilateralism and respect for nature."  The United States wants the delete "nature" from the list of things to respect.

Ric Grenell of the U.S. mission to the United Nations said the phrase is "too broad a subject, and if we had to define the multiple ways the U.S. government respects nature, the document would be too long and way of its original intent."  Other delegates to the U.N. were puzzled by this explanation,  Yuri Fedotov, a Russian diplomat said "Nature is something which needs a lot of respect."  One would think that the Russian would not have to say that, but given the U.S. delegation he gets the prize for prophetic utterance.

Last night I was worried, and prayed for New Orleans and the North Central Gulf Coast.  Now I am scared.

New Orleans is six feet below sea level.  A direct hit will mean thirty feet of surge coming of the Gulf up the Mississippi, flooding the lakes.
Category Five winds are close to 200 mph.

I am hoping that this scare is a false alarm.  Last year in Florida the UU Trauma Team spoke of the post traumatic effects of false alarm scares, we went through a few false alarms, and two direct hits in Stuart.  I recovered quicker from the false alarms.

If this storm does not change course:

€¢ Lots of housing in the city will be lost.  Human life will be lost, evacuating a city that size is a logistic nightmare beyond imagining.  Rescue forces are already being set up.  Rescue teams are coming from all over the country so that they will be on site for the after shock.

€¢ One third of domestic production of gasoline will be unavailable next week.  The pump prices will go up.

As I write this Katrina is a Category 3 Hurricane churning away in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico about 250 miles from where I sit.  Hurricanes are generated by the warm ocean waters,  without them the sea life would die from overheated water.  Hurricanes cool the waters.  The sun warms the waters, and the sun and the waters create hot air which rises higher and higher.  Cold air meets the rising hot air, creating winds that form a cyclone around the hot air.  The cyclone performs convection cooling pulling more and more heat energy into the atmosphere and generating more and more whirling wind.  The heavy rains from a hurricane that comes ashore to flood rivers, soak mountains, and renew ecological systems.  It is wisdom that hurricanes are part of nature, necessary for the balance of sea life, and beneficial to the ecology of earth bound life systems.

Katrina crashed through Southern Florida Thursday night, causing damage and loss of life to the metropolis that stretches from Miami to Palm Beach.  She then crossed the everglades and exited Florida into Gulf.  She is now taking aim at New Orleans.

There are six hurricane vulnerable metropolitan areas in the United States, cities where a direct hit could cause catastrophic loss of life.  Galveston, Tampa, Miami, Charleston, Long Island's south east coast, and New Orleans.  Katrina was blowing at 85 mph when she blew through Fort Lauderdale, Florida two days ago.  It looks like she will be blowing at 140 mph when she comes a shore again.

They are evacuating southern Mississippi and Louisiana as I write.  Last year we were in the midst of evacuation of Tampa and St. Petersburg.  I pray that that map is off, way off.

For years the tobacco companies took the position that there was no evidence that smoking "caused" lung cancer.  The petrochemical industry and the Bush administration are taking a similar tact.  They claim that there is no global warming, and then they dispute the charge that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to the buildup of carbon deposits in the atmosphere.  But some appears that the evidence from the ground is becoming to obvious to deny.  Expect global warming to be the subject for debate in upcoming elections.

click on image to enlarge

What is happening in the ecology and economies of the North is becoming to apparent to ignore.  Dan Lashof, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a respected Washington-based group, told The Independent: "People in Alaska are starting to freak out. The retreat of the sea ice allows the oceans to pound the coast more, and villages there are suffering from the effects of that erosion. There is permafrost melting, roads are buckling, there are forests that have been infested with beetles because of a rise in temperatures. I think residents there feel it's visible more and more, more than any other place in the country."

Unitarian Universalists have been part of the conservation movement for generations, for a long time we thought "being green" was about saving wilderness.  But now we coming to understand, "being green" is about saving our planet from our own system of power and privilege that has made consumers of us all.