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Monday, September 05, 2005

The Debate Is Over: Katrina Changes Everything

As knowledgeable people struggled to convey to our callous uncomprehending Administration the epic scale of the disaster unfolding in New Orleans and the wider region tormented in Katrina's Greenhouse Tantrum, I remember that time and time again the horrified people who saw the writing on the wall, even well before Katrina's catastrophic landfall from across the superheated Gulf, were urging that this was "a perfect storm," a "once in a life time event." I understood the urgency that compelled the phrase, but in my heart of hearts I knew the reality was incomparably worse: Katrina was very likely the shape of things to come. We have entered the era of heavy weather, indeed, we have inhabited it now through years of devastating denial, and it is an era that confronts a pampered saucer-eyed society with a heavy, well, whither?

Alex Steffen over at my favorite blog WorldChanging has posted a great piece that puts a number of the puzzle pieces together. I quote the opening to seduce you into clicking the link and reading the whole thing:
Now that the tragic chaos in New Orleans is finally being brought under control, the time has come for us to step back and take a good hard look at the situation in which we find ourselves.

This tragedy was no "Act of God" -- some utterly unforeseen tragedy about which nothing could be done. This was a completely predictable (indeed, predicted) unnatural disaster. For years, scientists and engineers have been warning of the danger New Orleans was in. For years, nothing was done.

We also know that Katrina was just a foretaste of what we should expect in the coming years. We are changing the weather with the pollution we spew from tailpipes and smokestacks, and the bill for that irresponsibility is starting to come due.

Katrina was a watershed moment. From here on out, the debate is over. Everything has changed, at least as dramatically as in wake of 9-11. From this moment forward, there is simply no ethical way to debate the need for a new, holistic, worldchanging approach to tackling the planet's biggest problems. As we begin thinking about how to rebuild New Orleans, we need also to recommit ourselves to a new vision for the future of the planet as whole.

We now live in a post-Katrina world. It's time for our thinking to catch up.

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