BOMBAY AND NEW ORLEANS

[Guest guest]

Dear AAPN colleagues,

Regarding the messages on comparison between Katrina and

floods in Bombay, I found the attached article extremely enlightening on the

situation in New Orleans.

Best wishes,

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Hurricane Katrina and Climate Justice

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12629

by Joshua Karliner, Special to CorpWatch

September 12th, 2005

 

cartoon by Khalil Bendib

For nearly five years George Bush has infuriated much of the world by refusing

to take action on global warming. Instead, he has called for more study. In a

way, he got what he wanted with Hurricane Katrina.

 

One of the strongest storms on record, Katrina provided an epic and horrific

laboratory for observing what happens when corporations and consumers pump more

and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

 

The world’s top climate scientists have long documented the effects of burning

fossil fuels--oil, coal and gas-- and predicted dire consequences for the

world’s climate, including increasingly severe and frequent storms and floods.

 

That future is now. Katrina and its ugly aftermath are harbingers of world torn

asunder not only by global warming’s howling winds and towering waves, but also

by deepening fissures between rich and poor, black and white.

 

Of course, mother nature does not discriminate by race or class. The flood

waters swallowed up plenty of rich folks’ property and billions in corporate

capital. But when nature makes her wrath felt, the wealthy are far more able to

get out of the way and write off their losses, while the poor are trapped in her

fury. In New Orleans, the poorest neighborhoods lay on lowest ground; the people

without cash or cars had no way to evacuate. They are now environmental

refugees--the ones the government utterly failed to help for days; the ones who

will find it most difficult to relocate, to recover, to start anew.

 

The least powerful—whether they live in New Orleans or in the low-lying coastal

areas of Bangladesh, Nigeria, Honduras, or on islands from Jamaica to Fiji to

the Maldives—are the ones who will suffer most from the hurricanes, typhoons,

and rising tides of climate change. As entire coasts come under threat, the

wealthy can buy sandbags and create super levies and sea walls, or just up and

move to higher ground. The poor—tens of millions of climate refugees--will be

stranded; no gas, no food, nowhere to go; up the toxic creek without a paddle.

 

 

It’s the Oil, Stupid

The Katrina tragedy is intertwined with oil. Along with gas and coal, when

burned, oil produces carbon dioxide, which makes up the bulk of the global

warming gases that the world’s people and corporations release into the

atmosphere. The United States consumes vast quantities of these fossil fuels.

With 4 percent of the planet’s population, it is responsible for about a quarter

of all the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Ironically, Louisiana is a major center for refining oil into gasoline and many

other petrochemical products. The area right next to New Orleans—an area

devastated by Katrina—has been dubbed Cancer Alley for all of the pollution its

refineries spew onto adjacent poor communities of color, and for the cancer

clusters found to correlate with this contamination.

 

The people of Cancer Alley have suffered the scourge of oil several times over.

Every day they breathed the filthy air and drank the contaminated water that the

neighboring petrochemcial corporations served up. Many are sick. Some are dead.

Now their homes are gone, swept away by a hurricane likely fueled by global

warming caused in part by the oil refining that poisoned their community in the

first place.

 

On top of this, almost all 140 chemical plants between New Orleans and Baton

Rouge have sustained damage. “At least two hazardous waste sites are underwater,

at least two oil refinery sites in Chalmette are shut down and possibly

flooded,” said Darryl Malek-Wiley a grassroots Environmental Justice Organizer

in Louisiana. Rigzone.com, an oil and gas industry website reports that

refineries and drilling rigs in 13 different sites have spilled tens of

thousands of barrels of oil. A toxic stew of this oil, gasoline, vinyl chloride,

and other hazardous chemicals threatens to profoundly contaminate the area for

generations to come.

 

“In the midst of the flooding, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality

and an ExxonMobil employee claimed that no toxics were being released, "

environmental justice organizer Ann Rolfes of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade told

her colleagues. " These institutions may have faced reality by now. However,

given the woeful track record, the government and industry need monitoring now

more than ever,” she said. Indeed, in the midst of the chaos, the Exxon Mobil

refinery manager abandoned his command post, and only one company employee

remained in town. “This,” says Rolfes, “is what happens when corporate chiefs

with no ties to the community are in charge.”

 

The corporate leaders weren’t the only absentees. “Where was the government in

this hour of need?” everyone asks. Where was the National Guard when the poor

people of Cancer Alley and New Orleans needed rescuing? At least thirty percent

of them were off in Iraq, occupying a land with some of the largest oil reserves

in the world. They took with them heavy equipment, generators, and helicopters

that would have been invaluable to rescue efforts.

 

And soon, the military may also lay claim to some of Katrina’s younger, poorer

victims as they try to get back on their feet. With few options, these climate

refugees may become new fodder in Iraq, helping secure US access to a resource

whose combustion promotes catastrophic climate change and more hurricanes like

Katrina. In the beginning, in the middle and at the end of this disaster...

there is oil.

 

 

Imagining a Green New Orleans

As the 21st century unfolds, the ravages of global warming will only increase.

Certainly if the US government does not dramatically reverse course, the whole

world will be studying the issue from an uncomfortably, and often lethally close

vantage point.

 

There are, however, many things we can do to address Katrina’s impact, to avoid

the scientists’ worst predictions, and to promote just solutions to the climate

change that is already happening.

 

For starters, “This clean up cannot be left in the hands of a state that cannot

protect its citizens from toxics even under ordinary circumstances,” says Ann

Rolfes. Her organization, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade is working to assure that

both industry and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality provide an

honest and accurate accounting of what toxics have been released. And they are

seeking help and funding from experts at all levels to monitor pollution levels

once the floods recede. Such efforts can help protect the short- and long-term

health of hurricane victims while providing important guidance for addressing

issues of chemical safety and environmental justice in the future.

 

Meanwhile, “America, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast have an opportunity to be

visionary and think well into the future in our recovery efforts, " says

environmental justice organizer, Darryl Malek-Wiley. " In rebuilding New Orleans,

and the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast, we can help make America more energy

independent by using green building practices that emphasize energy conservation

and use renewable sources of energy. We can ensure that the neighborhoods that

we rebuild are public transit-oriented and people-friendly. And, we can rethink

how toxic chemicals are stored and shipped through our communities. This is also

an opportunity to take people who have no hope and give them jobs to rebuild

their future while they rebuild their communities.”

 

Rebuilding a more green and just New Orleans and Gulf Coast could be an example

to the rest of the country and the world of how to use clean energy and

environmentally sustainable construction and production to diminish our negative

impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.

 

If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to move quickly elsewhere

as well. We need to transcend the narrow interests of the oil, coal,

petrochemical, and automobile corporations and institute a grand and just

transformation of our economy away from fossil fuels and toward clean,

sustainable energy. In doing so we can both create well-paying jobs and stem the

rising tides of climate change.

 

Unfortunately we are faced with an administration that is not only out of touch

with what’s happening on the ground, but all too in touch with the most callous

side of American society. It abandoned 150,000 mostly African Americans to sink

or swim in flooded New Orleans while continuing to stand shoulder to shoulder

with the leaders of Exxon Mobil and Halliburton who put oil, power, and profits

above peace, justice, and environmental sanity.

 

President Bush and his far-right administration have “studied” the problem

enough. Katrina and the devastation she wreaked clearly demonstrate the need to

take serious action on climate change. Unless he changes course drastically,

history will mark George W. Bush for time immemorial as GW, the Global Warming

president.

 

 

1.Joshua Karliner is CorpWatch’s founder. He is co-author of the 1999

publication Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice