New Orleans

It's a terrible tragedy. It's hard not to look behind the devastation and discover the causes of why the area has been so terribly affected, but it's also completely understandable why the place is in such a mess with thousands dead and anarchy looming. New Orleans has a large proportion of poor people living in it - when the order to evacuate was given, many of them had nowhere to go.

In my opinion, while the hurricane itself can be explained away by the hurricane cycle (the National Geographic magazine published an excellent article on it here), its effects must surely be down to global warming and mankind's impact on his surrounding environment - as the Independent reported yesterday:

"The worst has happened in New Orleans and not everyone is surprised. For years, specialists have warned that the city, built partly below sea level and in an area of radically depleted wetlands, was a natural disaster waiting to happen. And when it did, they said, we would have no one to blame but ourselves.

"That the Crescent City is where it is does not make sense in the first place. But the first European settlers, in 1718, made the same calculation that generations have made ever since. The site was right for commerce, and commerce means dollars. In the battle between dollars and nature, you know who wins.

"What has happened in recent decades has made matters worse. Not just in New Orleans but all along the Gulf Coast, human encroachment has accelerated without pause. This has meant taming natural water flows - including the gradual straightening of the Mississippi itself - and draining wetlands."

The problem is, these lessons have not been learned, and will continue to be ignored. Therefore we are left to deal with their consequences, which is what the citizens of the Gulf states in the US must do now.

Elsewhere, I'm glad to see Christian groups in the UK are backing the move to try and combat global warming (see here). It's a stark contrast to the actions of right-wing American fundamentalists who think we should assassinate left-wing rulers in South American countries because we're "right" and they're "wrong" (of course, the presence of oil there wouldn't be an incentive would it, Pat?). This is why I'm anti-religion, because if these people are somehow reflective of their deity, I don't want a part of it, even if that condemns me to whatever fate I'm left with (on that front, Monbiot posted an interesting article on the subject here).