A warning sent but left unheeded
Tim Rutten
September 2, 2005
Los Angeles Times calendarlive.com
As commentators and public officials survey the morass of loss and desolation that once was a great American city called New Orleans, one of the words we hear and read over and over again is "unimaginable."
In fact, the tragedy that this week destroyed a vibrant metropolitan area that was home to 1.4 million people and the city proper that was a national cultural treasure was not simply imagined but foreseen with a prescience that now seems eerily precise.
[...]
Three years ago, New Orleans' leading local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, National Public Radio's signature nightly news program, "All Things Considered," and the New York Times each methodically and compellingly reported that the very existence of south Louisiana's leading city was at risk and hundreds of thousands of lives imperiled by exactly the sequence of events that occurred this week. All three news organizations also made clear that the danger was growing because of a series of public policy decisions and failure to allocate government funds to alleviate the danger.
[...] Read the rest at the Los Angeles Times' calendarlive.com: http://tinyurl.com/7pk6w
An October 2004 article in the National Geographic magazine, Gone with the Water, was among the many articles dredged up in order for environmentalists to say "I told you so." Well, they did, and they were right. Here's the URL to the article: http://tinyurl.com/7oarm
© Virginia Metze
September 2, 2005
Los Angeles Times calendarlive.com
As commentators and public officials survey the morass of loss and desolation that once was a great American city called New Orleans, one of the words we hear and read over and over again is "unimaginable."
In fact, the tragedy that this week destroyed a vibrant metropolitan area that was home to 1.4 million people and the city proper that was a national cultural treasure was not simply imagined but foreseen with a prescience that now seems eerily precise.
[...]
Three years ago, New Orleans' leading local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, National Public Radio's signature nightly news program, "All Things Considered," and the New York Times each methodically and compellingly reported that the very existence of south Louisiana's leading city was at risk and hundreds of thousands of lives imperiled by exactly the sequence of events that occurred this week. All three news organizations also made clear that the danger was growing because of a series of public policy decisions and failure to allocate government funds to alleviate the danger.
[...] Read the rest at the Los Angeles Times' calendarlive.com: http://tinyurl.com/7pk6w
An October 2004 article in the National Geographic magazine, Gone with the Water, was among the many articles dredged up in order for environmentalists to say "I told you so." Well, they did, and they were right. Here's the URL to the article: http://tinyurl.com/7oarm
© Virginia Metze
Starmail - 7. Sep, 14:19
