The Lesson of the Storms

[Coastie for Truth]

Another summer, another series of weather catastrophes worldwide. Monster rains kill hundreds in India, a gigantic area of Siberian permafrost melts, northern Europe floods while southern Europe experiences its worst drought ever recorded.

And now Katrina, which could well turn out to be the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the United States, and a terrifying warning of worse to come. As I write this, the governor of Louisiana is saying that the situation is "worse than our worst fears" and 80 percent of New Orleans is under water.

At virtually the same time, the House of Representatives, at the request of the Bush administration, cut 70 million dollars from the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for the New Orleans District. Last year, it essentially ended disaster planning for the region by transferring the chore to a private company, IEM Corp., and giving it a $500,000 budget. Now, it has shelved a study that was to determine ways to protect the city from a Category 5 hurricane.

These decisions were made because global warming is "just a theory" and its therefore senseless to plan for such an unlikely event. Additionally, New Orleans is the Christian right's 'sin city,' as evidenced by emails I received from fundamentalists after publishing a request for prayer two days ago in my website's newsletter.

There were hundreds of responses, most of them expressing their own hopes and prayers for the city and the region the storm was impacting. However, there was also another sort of response: "how dare you pray for that evil place. Jesus Christ is killing evil, it is purefication (sic)" and "God hates places like that, Whitley. You shame yourself by asking Him to help whom He despises."

New Orleans also votes heavily Democratic. So the administration therefore had three reasons to ignore the open and obvious needs of the city for proper disaster planning: it was on the wrong side of the political fence; the Christian community doesn't like it; and, anyway, global warming is just a theory.