National Geographic article about New Orleans (3 Viewers)

[RJ in Lafayette]

I read the article, and the underlying theme is clear--the city cannot be saved, let's stop wasting our money.

I have not yet seen the Time article, but apparently the slant is totally different.

We--the city, the state--need a new spokesperson to articulate our message. Hopefully, come January, we will have one.

 

[Broadmoor74]

I have not yet seen the Time article, but apparently the slant is totally different.

I just read the Time Magazine article. There is no question of "if?" or "should?" in it. The article is a scathing indictment of the Army Corps of Engineers and its inability to pretty much do anything right.

Couple of high points :

--Points out that New Orleans was not always a city below sea level, as is national perception. The French didn't build hurricane levees......because they didn't HAVE to. We had wetlands back then.

--Says 30% of Louisiana's wetlands have slipped into the sea. If Mexico had seized all that land, we'd be at war. Nice!

--Doesn't place all blame on the Corps. Points out that LA's congressional delegation steered funds to channelize the Red River for barges that never materialized; Also, mentions that local officials fought to NOT have pumps and floodgates built by Lake Pontchartrain...that are now being built.

--Points out briefly the coastal town of Dulac (substitute any coastal town/city including New Orleans) and says that it's worth noting that these people didn't move into harm's way, but harm moved into our way when the coast started slipping away.

--Mentions over and over that the Corps STILL doesn't get it. It seems all they do is build huge obstructions and walls, more in the name of CONTROLLING nature, rather than PRESERVING it.

No mention of the Saints.

 

[BullDawg]

Sounds like the Time Magazine article is more on target. I read the NG article and can see where they did touch on real issues, but as Sparkle pointed out it leads off with a tone that leads to a biased opinion of the rest of the article. The "journalistic flare" overrides the reporting of facts.

 

[SoonerJim]

Here's the Time link for comparison. Time, Inc is devoting an article to Katrina from each of their magazine holdings.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1646611_1646683_1648904,00.html

Both NGM and Time are wholesale subscribers to global warming and its effects. Time magazine is more ambitious in scope, wanting wetlands protection above all. National Geographic focuses more on localized control in NO proper. and accepts the deluge elsewhere.

Robert Bea is quoted extensively in the Time anti-Corps diatribe. But the advantage of extensive reading is gleaned from one sentence in the National Geographic article on page 52, "Bea is an expert witness in a lawsuit against the Corps". Thank you, national Geographic. To read the Time article, the Corps of Engineers is the centerpiece of original bayou sin. The reality is buried in two sentences in the Time article, then ignored. The Corps ultimately gets its marching orders from Capitol hill. In that, the historical outline given in National Geographic, and that in the best book on Katrina, "Path of Destruction".provides the wider context. When you know history, you appreciate the madness.

I was callow in the 1970's and remember the T-P Sunday supplements trumpeting the expansion of the city into the east. MRGO was key to this development, necessary to corral the expats who wanted a fresh start after moving from the decaying city center. The wetlands were converted into slab tracts. The levees were inadequate; who cared? Time magazine confused the egg for the chicken.

The worst component of the current hurricane age is not global warming or graft; it is the concentration of Americans along the coasts and the rebuilding subsidies granted them. New Orleans, regrettably, is an example of a remotely built coastal community which would never have been constructed de novo given the soil conditions. I have always been partial to the first rebuilding plan envisioned which would tailor the city to the original natural levee. Alas, political pressure shot the plan down, so now a patchwork of City Hall bribery, fingerpointing, and fingercrossing has replaced it. As with all government grandiose projects, the next regional hurricane will test all assumptions.

Time magazine is fully vested in global warming. The Corps is a convenient target, being military, not quite wedded to the government officials who fund largess, and without a forceful or visable proponent. The work they do elsewhere is of no consequence. They are an arm of our government, of a same piece with the Corps which built dams all over the nation to float FDR's New Deal. The Corps is not locked into local government to the same extent as it is in New Orleans. After the 1927 levee detonation, control of the levees was decentralized. St. Bernard was not going to pay the price for New Orleans' survival. Efforts to fix the post-Betsy problem foundered on the objections of local industries, fisheries, and environmentalists. Katrina was its offspring.