Thanks For Caring
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
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Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and–now–Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.
While it’s easy for irresponsible people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to say the things he says, we also need to keep this disaster in perspective. While Hurricane Katrina has inflicted unprecedented damage to the Gulf coast, there is no evidence for anyone to use “global warming” as the reason for this hurricane. While many will argue that the sheer number of hurricanes this season is the result of “global warming”, now is not the time for that. Experts agree that it could have been much worse, and stronger storms have hit our nation many times in the past.
On Sunday, meteorologists watched in awe as one of the most powerful hurricanes they had ever seen churned northward over the Gulf of Mexico on a direct bearing for New Orleans. Fed by unusually warm waters in the central gulf, Katrina easily pumped itself up to a Category 5 monster, with top winds approaching 175 mph. That afternoon a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft flying through the storm pegged its minimum barometric pressure at 902 millibars, making Katrina the fourth most powerful hurricane ever observed.
But by the time it reached land Monday, Katrina was no stronger than any of a dozen or more hurricanes that have hit the United States in the past century. Hurricane Camille had a substantially lower central pressure when it slammed into Mississippi in 1969. Hurricane Charley blasted the Sunshine State with higher winds when it came ashore near Tampa last year.
When we are sure that all of the refugees are safe, when we are sure that every child has plenty of fresh drinking water and a full belly, and when we are sure that the victims of this disaster are no longer in harms way, then, and only then, should any of us focus on anything else.
There is so much more that I want to say about Mr. Kennedy’s article, but I will not. Not now, or ever. Suffice it to say, I think he is irresponsible for his actions, and heartless for his words.
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But if he said it two months But if he said it two months from now, who would listen to him?
And if no one is listening to him and he can’t jump in front of a camera to say it or grab the op-ed page, what’s the point?
It never ceases to amaze me the depths to which people will sink in the name of getting in front of the camera or getting their name in the paper. :roll: