"You are like a Hurricane, there is a calm in your eye." Neil Young, "Hurricane"
Ah Neil, that sure was a vivid description you gave in your song "Hurricane". Artists so often use forces of nature as imagery that we sometimes forget the actual magnitude of the events. How they can affect the lives of thousands, if not millions of people. It's not until something of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina shows up that we begin to understand our insignificance in the grand scheme of things.
Reading articles like the one today at "The Globe and Mail's" web site describing the enforced evacuation of the whole of New Orleans serves only to remind us that we can never leave nature out of our calculations. With a great deal of the city below sea level, New Orleans is dependant on a series of levees, canals and pumps to keep it dry at the best of times. But the potential floods caused by a storm of this strength could literally make it uninhabitable. (For a nice overview of the system of levees constructed in the Mississippi basin check out this post at blogcritics.org by Dr.Pat)
If the worse case scenario plays out, scientists predict that the city could be swamped by a nine-metre cesspool of human waste, toxic waste, and even coffins. Those who can't be evacuated, tourists and the poor, are being bussed to last-ditch shelters, including the Superdome.
Look at the satellite picture up at the top of this post. What a nasty red eye glaring at us. For those of us with an anthropomorphic take on things, it's easy to postulate that Old Mother Nature is right pissed with us. That's the type of eye you'd usually associate with a biker who's been running on cheap speed and booze for a week. Not a person to mess with.
Let's face facts for a change. We haven't been the nicest of tenants. We spill shit all over the place and don't clean up after ourselves; we blow huge holes in things; we make noise all day and night without caring about the neighbours; and when we use up one place we just move on to somewhere new, leaving the old place next to uninhabitable. Any landlord worth his salt would have had us evicted long ago.
But Nature has been really forgiving. She even lets us get away with murder on nearly a daily basis. Hardly a day goes by without some species of life being exterminated. We may not have been the direct cause, going out and actively hunting it down, but the way we live is not conducive for encouraging anyone else's continuation.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Waaaaay too long. You need to work on condensing, man.
2 - Mary K. Williams
Very Interesting -- Thanks Gypsyman!
3 - DrPat
Somewhere between King Canute and a grass hut on the beach is a happy medium for which we should be striving.
The levee system doesn't cause floods and hurricane surges -- it just delays their effects, storing them in a sort of karmic bank, and accruing interest all the while. The mechanism of rivers -- especially really BIG subcontinent-draining rivers like the Yellow in China, the Amazon River, the Mississippi -- is known; and what we know should humble us. We can dam the water, but all our myrmidon efforts cannot reproduce the soil deposition of even a few hundred miles of the Big Muddy.
I don't agree, however, that it should lead us to cease all efforts at control. We just need to be aware that it's a tiger we've got this lease on, and plan for the day it slips its leash...
4 - gypsyman
After consultation with the wondrous Natelie in England I've made a correction and change to this post. The islands referred to in the previouse version as being off of Indonesia are actually off India.
I also decided to not rely on my memorey and go back and find the original article from which I found the refrence to the people who live on these islands. Unfortunately I'm not able to provide a link, because archives are only available to subscribers, so that's why the long quote about the people's.
Interesting folks, when the one man was spotted on the beach he shot at the helicopter with a bow and arrow. They really want nothing to do with us.
5 - cindy
I want to know where I can go to find out why this katrina disaster is happening to people in New Orleans and why the US gov has not taken over control of the city and/or state if the officials cannot run it as is so clearly demonstrated on CNN thus far?????????