This posting will likely piss everyone off

[drwex]

I'm really sick and tired of the obsession over hurricane Katrina. Nonstop updates, speculation, dire predictions. Enough already.

Let me first say that I love the city of New Orleans; I was lucky to be there for a few days earlier this year, once again and though it's gone downhill (into mass commercialization) compared to 10 years ago when I was there before I still think it's a great city to visit. I'll be sad to see it damaged, though I don't believe it'll be destroyed.

I'm also very sorry for the people who've had to evacuate and for the likelihood that they'll return to destruction and loss.

But that said... people seem to be losing sight of two things that I think ought to put this storm into perspective. One: this isn't the first Cat4 (or 5 or 3 or whatever it is this very second) storm to hit the US this season and I don't think I'd lose money by betting that it won't be the last. The situation sucks just as much if you're in the Florida panhandle, or Atlantic coast, or wherever when one of these massive storms slams in and wipes out your life, livelihood, childhood home, or whatever. Yes, New Orleans is a magical city, but I don't think it means more to the people who grew up there than homes do to people all along the coast who've had them wiped out by hurricanes this year or last. A misery contest is just stupid.

Second, the fact that we've had this many powerful storms isn't an accident. They're referred to as forces of nature and in one sense they are, but hello, we (humanity and particularly the industrialized United States) have been fucking up Nature for the past, oh, hundred and fifty years at least. Hurricanes are one of the major ways that (excess) heat is transferred from the hot tropical regions to the cooler northern regions. Anyone stop to ask why the hell there's so much excess heat to be transferred? Nope, just turn up the AC in your SUV and applaud the government being owned by the carbon industry. To a first approximation you can model the Earth's atmosphere as a heat pump. When you add energy to a heat pump it runs faster and with more extreme cycles. Hotter hots and colder colds.

Meanwhile people blither and dither about climate change - I'm sure I'll get plenty of response comments from the deniers who, as far as I can see, are in the same position as those denying that smoking causes cancer. OK, fine. If you won't do anything about the sources of the problem (and, frankly, it's unclear to me that any of us individually can, at this point) then that's your prerogative. But please don't get sanctimonious about this because as far as I can see there's a direct line from A to B and it's pissing me off.

If there wasn't any risk to actual human beings I'd be sitting here wallowing in the schadenfreude of the fact that Katrina is going to pound the crap out of refinery row.

Comments

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

One of the advantages of pretty much avoiding most news sources....I sorta realized it was coming, then at some point heard or saw that, yeah, it's gonna hit New Orleans. But I wasn't getting flooded by information or lamentations about it.

I am watching the streaming video now, as it's moving inland and it's going to hit my hometown soon.

And I think some of the coverage and the obsession over it is that Florida gets pounded by these storms all the time, yes. It's a given. It's expected. But New Orleans does not expect this kind of storm. Not like this. This part of the gulf hasn't seen a storm this bad since Camille, forty some years ago. It's almost like...people who live in storm paths are almost asking for it.
"Look honey, what a view of the ocean!"
"But Frank, isn't this area where they get four or five hurricanes a year?"
"Who cares, Flo, we'll just board up the windows, think of the deal we got!"
And people who don't ask for it, they are not ready for this sort of damage and destruction. And, because of it moving inland...that's just insane. No one in Jackson Mississippi was expecting to be hit by a hurricane this year.
While the coastal folks might be used to storms and survived Camille forty years ago and all that...the inland folks aren't prepared. Lots of flooding, that's going to be the worst part and cause the most destruction.


Not that I disagree with or am slapping your hand or anything. Humans suck and Americans in particular are really bad about "Oh, Woe Is Me".

Just being a voice of someone who grew up where destructive weather didn't happen every winter, it just hardly ever happened at all.

[drwex]

I spent the weekend with three folk who seemed to be obsessed about it, so my own personal avoidance of the news was obliterated.

I deliberately elided from the rant the whole section on "asking for it." I don't so much object to that - people are free to be stupid, but I object to the accompanying social philosophy that says loss must be socialized (insurance, charity, governmental assistance) but gain must be privatized (don't you dare tax my earnings, etc) and how that plays out particularly in disaster situations.

But then again, most people already know I'm an unrepentant hippie commie long-haired pinko anyway.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

I get the hippie/longhaired part. But pinko/commie? I don't know enough about politics and the definitions of various thought schools, but I was leaning towards calling you a libertarian, not a commie.

[drwex]

I think the fundamental difference is that a libertarian thinks the government should withdraw support in case of loss (saying people should depend on private insurance/charity only) whereas a pinko/commie thinks it's OK to socialize the gains and keep public support in case of loss.

feste_sylvain and I used to have great free-range debates on elbows around this kind of thing. I'm sure he'll tell me if I've misrepresented that position.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

It's not that government should "withdraw support" in case of loss; the government should never be supporting such things in the first place. (Nor should they be subsidizing insurance companies, nor protecting them from doing their jobs.)

The idea is that, absent such skewing factors as subsidies, insurance as a whole will figure out how often and how hard a given area will be hit with a given disaster, and will set premiums accordingly. When you have multi-million dollar beachfront homes in the Carolinas routinely being bailed out by FEMA after every hurricane so they can rebuild on the same spot, clearly there is something broken with the system.

In the case of New Orleans, it was created where it is because it's an ideal spot for a port. It is not geologically stable, when you factor in the various water tables and such. It has gotten away with being where it is for so long because hurricanes are relatively rare events there. But what with global warming, hurricanes will be more frequent and larger in the area, so rebuilding should be done a bit upstream.

[drwex]

Yes, I was sloppy in using the "withdraw support" phrase. I didn't mean in media res; I meant that you believe it shouldn't be part of the system at all. I hereby elide the usual rehash of our differing positions here; I'll simply say I miss that part of elbows.