E-mail a friendMike Tidwell
airdate September 9, 2005
Mike Tidwell has been active in DC-area environmental causes for more than a decade. He's director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to fighting global warming, which he founded in '02. In his book, Bayou Farewell, he predicted the hurricane disaster in New Orleans and, in the documentary, We Are All Smith Islanders, explores how global warming is changing the Chesapeake Bay region. His newest book, The Ravaging Tide, focuses on Katrina and global warming.
Mike Tidwell
Tavis: Mike Tidwell is an author and filmmaker who, two years ago, wrote a book detailing the impending crisis on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. He says, had the government invested in a plan first put on the table back in the mid 1990's, the disaster in New Orleans could have been avoided. His book is called "Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast." Mike Tidwell joins us tonight from New York. Mike, thanks for being here.
Mike Tidwell: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: I want to start with something I heard you say -- actually something I read that came from you some time ago with regard to this crisis where you suggested that -- these are your words -- "assuming that New Orleans is rebuilt." Assuming that New Orleans is rebuilt. What did you mean by that? Is it possible that it might not be rebuilt?
Tidwell: I think that it's still perhaps an open question. I know that I hope that the city is rebuilt. I think that this nation is not emotionally or psychologically or economically prepared to abandon New Orleans. However, the task at hand is a serious one and it's going to take a lot of focus and we're going to have to do everything right. We can't drop the ball anymore if we're going to re-inhabit New Orleans and restore that coast of Louisiana to its previous functions. It would be a mistake.
In fact, it would be criminally irresponsible of us as Americans to fix a single broken window in New Orleans, to pick up a single piece of debris, repair a single cubic foot of levee without at the same committing as a nation to a rapid, all-out national effort to rebuild the Barrier Islands that used to be out there in the Gulf protecting New Orleans, to replenish and rebuild the marshes that at one time provided a buffer against hurricanes just like Katrina.
The fact is, we're calling this a natural disaster, but in terms of the impacts on Louisiana, it's not entirely a natural disaster. So much of what's happened, so much of the suffering, the people who have died, the property that's been lost, the million Americans who are refugees right now, the staggering cost of rebuilding, could have been avoided because human beings intervened to create a runway for Katrina to land on New Orleans.
Tavis: It might be criminal, to use your word, of us to not do everything you've just suggested so that these evacuees can go back to their homes in New Orleans. But when you started listing those things, I thought you were going to stop about twenty seconds before you did and you kept going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny, and as you're going and going and going, I'm seeing dollar figures add up and add up and add up. So it might be criminally negligent of us to not do everything you've just suggested.
But one, that means there's a whole lot of money that's got to be put on the table to make this happen, number one. Number two, you've got to get the folk in Washington to agree on a political agenda that those environmental issues that you just raised are deserving of that kind of money. Can we do both of those things or either of those things?
Tidwell: There's no question in my mind that there's going to be a rapid government commitment to restoring the coast of Louisiana and the reason there's going to be one is because it's going to dawn on the country -- it's even going to dawn on the Bush administration -- that you can't re-inhabit this city without, at the same time, addressing the environmental crisis that led to this problem.
When the French first settled in that giant crescent of the Mississippi River that we now call New Orleans 300 years ago, there was between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico vast, dense hardwood forests. And after those forests further south, there were freshwater marshes and swamps. And after those, there were endless saltwater marshes. And after that, you had this whole network, this formidable network, of tall and broad Barrier Islands. All of that protected New Orleans from Katrinas in the past and made the city inhabitable. But the levees of the Mississippi River have caused all that land to disappear especially in the last hundred years. Why? Because in any river delta system anywhere in the world, you have two major phenomena at work.
One is flooding. Everybody knows that rivers flood. That's why we have that fan-shaped landform at the mouth of every river. The river floods. It takes two-thirds of the nutrients and sediments in the water from two-thirds of America and over-tops its banks every year in the spring usually for seven thousand years and builds the whole land plot from south Louisiana. That's one phenomena that happens in a river delta. The other is something called subsidence, or sinking. That same soil that builds that land platform is very fine, unstable, silky, sandy soil, which, over time, compacts, shrinks in volume and sinks. It's just the nature of the soil.
Tavis: It sounds to me like, with all due respect to the folk who love the city of New Orleans and live there and visit there, that New Orleans should never have been built to begin with. Are you suggesting that? If what I'm hearing you say about how the building of that city and the building of the levees is in part what has destroyed what nature designed for that part of the country, then maybe there should never have been a city called New Orleans built in that bowl.
Tidwell: Well, first of all, we get back to something I call the law of unintended consequences. When the French first started throwing up levees three hundred years ago, they did it for perfectly rational reasons. They didn't want their children to drown; they didn't want their crops inundated; they didn't want their homes destroyed; so they threw up levees. They had no intention of destroying the whole land platform of south Louisiana in the process over the next few centuries. They had no intention of seeing up to 10,000 people perhaps, God forbid, die in New Orleans in 2005. They just wanted their children not to drown.
But the law of unintended consequences says that, in any major natural system anywhere in the world, if you profoundly disturb and change any one major element of that system, in this case, the flooding in the Mississippi River, you disturb every other element of that system and you get, as a result, this profound sinking and land loss.
Tavis: So let me ask you then. Is it possible then -- I think the answer is yes, but let me ask it anyway. Is it possible then to rebuild in New Orleans in such a way where all of that can in fact be accomplished? Is it possible to do that?
Tidwell: Yes, I believe it can be done and I think it can be done fairly quickly. We can divert -- there's been a plan on the table since the mid-90's and especially from 2001 forward that the Republican and Democratic governors of Louisiana have been begging the White House to fund. That's a plan called the Coast 2050 Plan. Anybody can read it at www.crcl.org, which stands for Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
This $14 million dollar plan, which is now chump change compared to what we're going to spend, basically the cost of the Big Dig in Boston, one month of spending in Iraq, a $14 million dollar plan to take the water from the river in a controlled way by building what are called control structures, dam-like structures, right into the levees of the Mississippi River, and letting that water out in a controlled way into either canals that surgically make their way to where we need the land-building the fastest or through pipelines that would take sediment-rich water and literally take it right where we need to take it. We can do that. Nobody questions whether it's doable. We just haven't had the funding. To do that, you can inhabit New Orleans.
Tavis: All right. We can do all of that for the price -- I thought I heard you say -- of one month in what we spend in Iraq.
Tidwell: That's right.
Tavis: All right. Let me ask you then, outside of New Orleans, if there are other cities, New York, San Diego, Miami, any other cities potentially given what we have done unnaturally to the natural environment, any other cities in danger of something like this happening? I ask that because this whole racial element, as you well know, this element of class has come into this discussion not enough by my standards, but certainly the issue of race and class are alive on the table for discussion I hope in the coming days and weeks about what happened to New Orleans and the response or lack thereof, given what happened in New Orleans.
I suspect though, having said all that, if there were other cities that did not look like New Orleans, that are in danger of something similar happening, maybe that would get the attention of the folk in Washington. So I ask, are there other cities that don't look like New Orleans that might be in danger of something similar happening in the future?
Tidwell: The answer is yes. And the answer is yes because, according to the Bush administration, according to their own data and studies, which they ignore as well, we are about to turn every coastal city in America into a New Orleans. Savannah, New York, Miami, San Diego. Whatever the color of the people who live there, whatever their economic status, New Orleans is coming. Why? South Louisiana sank between two and three feet in the twentieth century because of those levees as I described before. Literally, the land sank two to three feet in one hundred years. The result was the Barrier Islands, the marshes, all that buffering coastal land, disappeared. We created a runway for Katrina to land on New Orleans.
Now according to the Bush administration, because of global warming, we're going to see in the next one hundred years up to three feet of sea level rise worldwide. Now whether the land sinks three feet per century as in New Orleans or the sea level rises three feet per century worldwide, we have the same problem. You have cities that are now vulnerable to hurricanes. You've got subway systems in New York that are going to be inundated. You've got property in Miami that just ain't going to exist a hundred years from now. So we are basically turning every coastal city in the world into a New Orleans and the Bush administration is ignoring the warning signs on that in the same way they ignored the warning signs about the levees and the Barrier Islands in Louisiana.
Tavis: Mike Tidwell, author of "Bayou Farewell", I thank you for coming on. Nice to have you on the program.
Tidwell: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: My pleasure. That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local radio listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.
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