From The Times-Picayune, we get the third installment of the series on the loss, destruction, & ignoring of the wetlands of south Louisiana.
Right smack in the center of Louisiana's fragile, sinking coastline, a river gives birth to new wetlands every day.
The Atchafalaya River flows freely through the middle of Cajun country to the Gulf, depositing life-sustaining sediment into the interior wetlands along its path and the shallow bays at its mouth, creating a rich new delta.
The river's natural land-building ability contrasts sharply with the Mississippi River, which politicians and engineers long ago confined inside levees and jetties. That prevented the inundation of the cities, towns and industrial infrastructure along the river, but it also stifled the annual floods that had nourished the wetlands with fresh sediment.
....
"We can't go on for many years before we cross a threshold" beyond which the coast can't be saved, Groat said. "The scale of catastrophe and impact on the state and on the people -- on the entire country -- are all affected by the delta."
Emphais added.
The lesson of the the Atchafalaya River was/is lost on most of the commercial, i.e., business, interests. Their bottom line is not the resurrection of the delta, but maximizing shareholder value. & that's why we have this huge problem to begin with. Along with, of course, this whole notion of having dominion over the earth.
The lesson of the the Atchafalaya River was/is lost on most of the commercial, i.e., business, interests. Their bottom line is not the resurrection of the delta, but maximizing shareholder value. & that's why we have this huge problem to begin with. Along with, of course, this whole notion of having dominion over the earth.
16 comments:
Maybe if you actually believed and studied the Bible instead of citing Wikipedia, you would realize that dominion implies stewardship.
OK... laying aside all the feminine touchy-feely emotion that so saturates our modernistic culture, and applying a dose of cold, clear logic, look at it this way:
New Orleans is kind of like a human settlement in the heart of Africa. Africa's denizens are dangerous, and many of them kill humans or eat everything they try to raise for food. Imagine trying to build a garden fence to keep elephants and lions out. It comes down to a choice... what do you love more? Africa or Africans?
The Mississipi Delta is like Africa. It can be wild and dangerous for human inhabitants. What do you love more, the Mississippi Delta, or New Orleans? You can't have it both ways.
If you put up levees, build houses below sea level, and constantly pump water from beneath the silt, problems will inevitably ensue. Poor stewardship. Don't blame God for man's stupidity.
This so patently racist that I will no longer reply to your backward thoughts until you apologize & seek to understand something outside of your own head.
If you think that is RACIST, you are either a flippin' moron, or throwing up smokescreens in typical pansy-ass liberal fashion to hide your own inability to think logically and rationally.
Ignorance is bliss sayeth whom so ever. Apples and oranges Mr. Craig list the delta and NOLA are not the same place go look. NOLA is in the delta and that does not make the crazy African analogy valid really go look. Google earth is a free down load go look. Enlightenment often comes in bits and pieces but this one might be a biggy. Go look NOLA is a manmade industial heart of America. That is where America ships its produce from and has for two centuries. The coastline surrounds NOLA go look. NOLA is part of the fabric of America history and culture go look. RLK
My simple analogy is that regardless of how you choose to define it, NOLA is a man-made artificial creation in an area subject to the wild forces of nature (like a village in Africa). When man interferes with the forces of nature, imbalances happen, often to the detriment of those places and creatures we treasure as wild and beautiful. When human populations multiply in such areas, something has to give. Our very presence changes things. When we LIVE THERE in large numbers, we can no longer preserve and treasure the wild beauty that is forever gone. The balance and forces of nature are disrupted. Hence, "what do you love more... Africa or Africans?"
I stand corrected on the "Mississippi Delta. However, the entire area is fed by a maze of numerous rivers and streams and is a low-lying area dependent on flood sediments for the "preservation of wetlands." By modifying the environment to make it more "people friendly", we have interfered with a vital process of renewal and preservation.
For example: some of my relatives still live in the Nation River valley of Canada. Two generations ago, the river flooded every year, and the sediment enriched the fertile farmland upon which my forebears depended for their livelihood. Since the annual flooding of their homes got to be a real nuisance, the River was tamed. Now, the farmland has seriously deteriorated in productivity.
In the NOLA story we have a unique community both natural and manmade America will not abandon the ability to use cheap transport to bring the products of the entire midwest to the world. The port has over 200 years created a vital cultural community. Like wise the surrounding delta is rich in natural products and should not be abandoned. Throughout history mankind has made great accomodations in the natural world this should be ours. There is a great read on the river problem called "The Control of Nature" by John Mcphee. We were very fortunate the storm went East instead of North. Had the Mississippi be released their would have been unimaginable loss of life and property. RLK
Whenever you try to control nature, you’ve got one strike against you.” ... John McPhee
"It was the "ambiguity" of the subject that attracted (John McPhee) to writing about human efforts to control the elemental forces of nature", Mr. McPhee said in a telephone interview from Princeton, N.J., where he lives. He thought of the title of his new book when he read an inscription carved on an engineering building at the University of Wyoming that read "The Control of Nature," and it occurred to him that the phrase could be read two different ways with diametrically opposite meanings.
Although he uses the word "hubris" and he believes that "nature is going to win these battles," Mr. McPhee said: "My book is not an editorial. It is a description of people defying nature. They may have no choice." Good read available here:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/05/specials/mcphee-control.html
Oops... that link doesn't work. Just Google "The Control of Nature by John McPhee" and select the New York Times Book Review entry.
Don't need to hombre I read the book. Remember I brought this up. RLK
Yeah, but if you read the review, you would find out what the author said about his own book, along with some interesting details about his life , history, and philosophy. I gathered that you had read the book. I "ain't stupid". I just thought you would enjoy the review.
Yes the comment you refer to are in the forward of the book. McPhee has an outstanding list of writings with an out door focus I would recommend "In Suspect Terrain" and "The Crofter and the Laird" RLK
I got "Whenever you try to control nature, you’ve got one strike against you” from the book ad. The rest of it came from the review, which I assumed was not in the book, because it would logically be reviewed after publication, and not included in the book unless the book had a subsequent print run. Since I don't have the book, I read the review to see if I could get some sense of the general drift of it. Sounds like a good one. Meanwhile, I've been sorting out the info on the recent history of the Red River, Old River, and Atchafalaya River. Sounds like the Mississippi would have eventually found itself a new channel as the natural course of nature, but the Army Corps of Engineers hastened the process by removing a 30-mile log jam on the Atchafalaya, enabling it to capture the Red River in the '40's. So now the Mississippi is trying to die sooner rather than later, with worse results than if it had been left alone, since there won't be any more silt deposit by distributaries to protect the coast. But that siltation process had already been compromised by the earliest efforts at flood control, which messed up the river's distributaries. So I'm back to square 1. Am I missing something? I don't see a way to have both "Africa" (unfettered nature) and "Africans" (modern civilization) without conflict. It's easy to criticize the Army Corps, but what is the solution?
Re: the "dominion" thing:
God and Satan have a difference of opinion on the proper implementation of the command to "have dominion". God divided the nations, for very good reasons. BushCo serves as Satan's minions in destroying the nations. Here's an outline:
http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/september2004/200904newmap.htm
Exerpt: "to realize their hellish vision of globe wide war against "the Gap," they need we of "the Core" to willingly yield up to them our blood and treasure, continuously and without interruption, for years, even decades to come. 9-11 was a cynical, spook-sponsored psychological operation designed to manipulate we Americans into doing exactly that."
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