Some good has come out of the hurricanes in the US

[Bangkoktraveler]

For those who have been following the news about the hurricanes in the US, it would seem hard to find any good news but there is some. My Thai wife's relatives have concluded from watching the news that where we are it under water and that we are too proud to admit we are in dire finacial straits.

 

All I know is that where we are it has been dry (no rain) with temperatures around about 40 degrees celsius every day!

[short-time]

Yes, as they say every cloud has a silver lining ? in this case there are a lot of people finally waking up and taking a hard look at the current corrupt and incredibly incompetent neocon administration they chose to keep in power. Many are beginning to regret who they voted for.

 

ST

[barflyrex]

Yeh your right there short time, I dont know why this "current corrupt and incredibly incompetent neocon administration" didnt just stop the hurricanes before thay became a danger.

 

Rex

[Mekong]

barflyrex said:

Yeh your right there short time, I dont know why this "current corrupt and incredibly incompetent neocon administration" didnt just stop the hurricanes before thay became a danger.

 

Rex

 

And they should and Could have doe something about it

 

Sorry, Mr President, homilies won't stop the hurricanes

 

We Americans need to get out of our SUVs and learn the harsh lesson of Katrina and Rita: we are all to blame

 

Jeremy Rifkin

Friday September 23, 2005

The Guardian

 

First there was the deafening roar as Katrina bore down at 145 miles an hour on the Gulf coast of the United States. Then the eerie silence as New Orleans was turned into a giant ghost town. Now, a second deadly hurricane, Rita, is hurtling toward the Texas coast with killer winds, forcing a second mass evacuation of population in less than four weeks. And, as more and more people begin to wonder what's happening to the weather, it seems that all of official Washington is holding its breath, lest the dirty little secret gets out: that Katrina and Rita are the entropy bill for increasing CO2 emissions and global warming. The scientists have been warning us about this for years. They said to keep our eyes on the Caribbean, where the dramatic effects of climate change are first likely to show up in the form of more severe and even catastrophic hurricanes.

 

A new scientific report out this past week in Science Magazine, a prestigious American journal, gives fresh impetus to the connection between oceans warming as a result of climate change and the increased severity of hurricanes. Scientists report that the number of major - category four and five - hurricanes has nearly doubled in the past 35 years. Tropical storms, say the scientists, draw their energy from warm ocean water. As the global rise in temperature heats the world's oceans, the intensity of hurricanes increases.

Katrina and Rita, then, are not just bad luck, nature's occasional surprises thrust on unsuspecting humanity. Make no mistake about it. We Americans created these monster storms. We've known about the potentially devastating impact of global warming for nearly a generation. Yet we turned up the throttle, as if to say: "We just don't give a damn." What did anyone expect? SUVs make up 52% of all the vehicles owned in America, each a death engine, spewing record amounts of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere.

 

How do we explain to our children that Americans represent less than 5% of the population of the world but devour more than a quarter of the fossil-fuel energy produced each year? How do we say to the grieving relatives of the victims of the hurricane that we were too selfish to allow even a modest five-cent tax increase on a gallon of petrol in order to encourage energy conservation? And when our neighbours in Europe and around the world ask why the American public was so unwilling to make global warming a priority by signing up to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, what do we tell them?

 

In the coming weeks and months, millions of Americans will reach out to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina with offerings of food, shelter and financial assistance. Natural calamities tend to bring out the best in the American character. We pride ourselves on being there for our fellow human beings when they cry out for help. Why can't we muster up the same passionate response when the Earth itself is crying out for help?

 

Shame on the United States of America and the peoples of other countries - we're not alone - who have put their personal, short-term whims, desires and gratifications ahead of the welfare of the rest of the planet.

 

Of course, even Americans are now paying the price. We're caught up between two storm fronts. On the one hand, global oil demand is, for the first time in history, eclipsing global oil supply. The price of a barrel of oil is hovering at $70 on world markets; gasoline and heating oil are rising as fast as the flood waters in the Gulf states once did, in part because the storm knocked out oil rigs across the Gulf of Mexico and crippled a large portion of the US refining facilities.

 

We are entering the last few decades of the oil era, with ominous consequences for the future of a global economy that is utterly dependent on fossil fuels. While our petro-geologists are not sure when global oil production will peak - the point when half the world's recoverable oil is used up - it is clear to all but the few delusional souls in the oil industry that the beginning of the end is now in sight.

 

Meanwhile, our biosphere is convulsing from the build-up of CO2, and there is nowhere to hide or escape. Our planet is heating up, and the repercussions are trapping all of us in an unpredictable new period in history.

 

There will be thousands of memorial services in coming weeks to pay respects to the dead and the missing. There will be hand-wringing and recrimination. The public will demand to know why the dykes protecting New Orleans and the Gulfport region failed; why necessary precautions weren't taken to lessen the impact of Katrina and its aftermath; and why the relief effort was too little, too late. Still, what we are not likely to hear from George Bush and the White House or from business leaders - or for that matter from all of us still driving our SUVs - is a collective "We're all to blame!".

 

President Bush has called on the American people in this hour of our grief to rally to the task, to help restore the dykes and the causeways, to patch up the streets and to rebuild the homes and the communities that were lost in the devastation. But to what end, if we leave the demon of global warming unchecked? The danger is that next time it will be a series of category-five storms, or something even far worse and unimaginable.

 

If I could get the ear of George Bush, for just a moment, I would say: "Mr President, if you had looked deeply into the eye of the storm, what you would have seen was the future demise of the planet we live on." It's time to tell the American people and the world the real lesson of Katrina: that we need to mobilise the talent, energy and resolve of the American people, and of people everywhere, to wean ourselves off the oil spigot that's threatening the future of every creature on earth.

 

President Bush, spare us your homilies about American determination to "weather the storm and persevere". Tell us the truth about why Katrina and Rita really happened. Ask us to consider a change of heart about our profligate, energy-consuming lifestyles. Call on us to conserve our existing fossil-fuel reserves and make sacrifices. Provide us with a game plan to move America to a new, sustainable energy future based on renewable sources of energy and hydrogen power. We're waiting.

 

· Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Hydrogen Economy: the Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth

[Old Hippie]

barflyrex said:

Yeh your right there short time, I dont know why this "current corrupt and incredibly incompetent neocon administration" didnt just stop the hurricanes before thay became a danger.

 

Rex

 

The idea is money was requested to repair levies before the storms, thus, they might have broke (but who knows) also, money was requested to aide in evacuation, non was given...decisions which should have been made sooner, were made later etc...a lot of hind sight...but a few things are clear, this administration was very slow to act/react...

 

Additionally, the rewarding of repair/rebuilding contracts to Halliburton, and suspending living wage laws, and allowing foreign labor to come in and do the work, are also pissing us off...

[pattaya127]

general discussion about Thailand?

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

P127, while you are right that this does not belong here, do you think you could actually give the Mods some time to see and move this before adding an unnecessary comment like that?

 

Sanuk!

[vegasdave49]

We have the ability to drop troops, food, water, and medical supplys to anywhere in the world in 18 hours. There is absolutly no excuse for there not to have been that kind of response to this situation. The whole world knew there where thousands in the super dome and convention center.

10 chanook choppers could have done the job. The first wave would carry troops to secure the area. The next waves could have brought food, water, and medication. This could have eaisly happened in the first 24 hours. But to be totaly ignored is inexcusable. There are those that try to place the blame fully on locals, and they do have some responsabilty. But the truth is the president has the authority to send in troops despite what they claim. Eisenhower did it in Little Rock in the 50's and it has been done other times as well.

Since 911 we have spent hundreds of billions on fatherland opps motherland opps I mean homeland security. They have over 180,000 people on staff and all we get is this.

Oh by the way the mayor of New Orleans requested 700 buses, and was given 100 before the hurricane. Just one small example of an unwillingness of the govt. to respond. It makes no sense at all. We have in the eyes of the world gone from superpowr to stupidpower, in the course of less than 6 years. It will take decades to recover from this damage. The true disaster.

[Old Hippie]

"...We have the ability to drop troops, food, water, and medical supplys to anywhere in the world in 18 hours. There is absolutly no excuse for there not to have been that kind of response to this situation. The whole world knew there where thousands in the super dome and convention center..."

 

Exactly, that and the fact that no money was given to fix levies, or aide in evacuation...and there is oil off shore in the gulf, you'd think the chimp would care!

[Hugh_Hoy]

short-time said:

 

taking a hard look at the current corrupt and incredibly incompetent neocon administration they chose to keep in power. Many are beginning to regret who they voted for.

 

ST

 

Sorry to inform u, but Louisiana and N.O. don't have "neocons" in power.

 

 

HH