E-mail a friendMike Tidwell
airdate August 27, 2007
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's a noted author and filmmaker whose 2003 book, "Bayou Farewell," served as an eerie and accurate prediction of the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina. His latest book is now out in paperback. It's called "The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities." Mike, nice to have you back on the program.
Mike Tidwell: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: It's a scary title.
Tidwell: Well, it's one of those books that I hope by making a prediction that's scary, maybe it'll spur us to action to make the prediction not come true.
Tavis: And yet you and a couple of other folk, to their credit, were out front talking about what would happen to New Orleans if X, Y, and Z. And X, Y, and Z did happen and it was called Hurricane Katrina, and now here we are now wondering whether or not that city will ever get back to its former glory and even greater than that. How's it feel to be the guy who was at the top of the hill, screaming and yelling, and nobody listened.
Tidwell: Well, it was a disaster that was completely foreseen. The Katrina disaster was as certain as tomorrow's sunrise because of the loss of coastal barrier islands and wetlands, because we knew the levees were not 100%. It was clear this was coming, and unfortunately in life sometimes we have to learn things the hard way.
The problem with Katrina is we did - something hard happened, but how much have we learned? Because the Army Corps of Engineers now says that we don't even have - they're not even going to have levees equal to category three hurricane protection until 2010. So there's a lot more that needs to be done, and the question is why is it taking so long?
Tavis: How do you answer that? You've just raised two questions - now you're doing my job. You've raised two questions that I want you to answer, the latter first. Why has it taken so long?
Tidwell: The most costly natural disaster in U.S. history - 1,800 people dead, 1.3 million people displaced. Many of them haven't even come home yet. You could go on and on - $100 billion in total losses. Why in the world didn't President Bush appoint Jim Baker to be coastal Katrina recovery tsar, or Colin Powell?
Instead, it's Donald Powell. How many people in Congress have even heard of Donald Powell, much less the American public? A great retired general, he's doing a good job, but he doesn't have that pull in Congress. I think the fact that the president hasn't given this the attention it needs, and there are many who think that the president really thinks that we don't want people living in some of those neighborhoods in New Orleans.
We don't want to save them, it's too expensive. Compared to what, I don't know. But there is such a thing as a policy of inaction. When you do nothing, that becomes your policy, and I think the official policy of the Bush administration is essentially do nothing and be inactive. And it's too bad, because it's not just people in the Ninth Ward and Lakeview that are in danger; it's also our natural gas and oil infrastructure along the coast, a third of our domestic seafood, the great cultural heritage of New Orleans, etc., etc.
Tavis: Now to your former question. What have we learned? Here we are now, two years later - have we learned anything?
Tidwell: That's a good question. A lot of lessons were taught. How many were learned is an open discussion. The Army Corps of Engineers has just said that they're going to double the amount of money they're going to request from Congress to rebuild the levees in New Orleans from $7 billion to almost $15 billion, which is good.
The problem is again, it's going to take a long time. And the one thing that we haven't learned is that New Orleans is a (unintelligible) in terms of climate change, in terms of global warming. Because if you wanna see what Miami's gonna look like, lower Manhattan's gonna look like 50, 100 years from now if we do nothing about global warming, go to New Orleans today.
Because sea level is rising. People are going to live and work behind levees, below sea level in Miami if we don't stop global warming - same in lower Manhattan. So we've learned that - or at least the lesson is taught that this was a natural disaster that can be replicated across all our coastlines unless we one, rebuild the levees, rebuild the barrier islands and wetlands, and stop global warming.
The thing is, John F. Kennedy in 1961 went before a joint session of Congress and said, "We're going to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, bring him home safely again." What was amazing about that was not only the tight deadline but the key technology needed to get a man to the Moon and back didn't exist in 1961. We had a national policy, didn't have the technology, still came in on deadline.
With global warming and saving New Orleans? Completely the opposite. We have the technology. We have the hybrid cars, the windmills, the levee technology; we can rebuild the barrier islands and wetlands. We don't have a policy. We don't have a national commitment to get the job done.
Tavis: All right, there are two things you've said now that really strike me as barriers. Not that they're insurmountable, but as barriers to accomplishing the task that needs to be accomplished that you raised in this book, "The Ravaging Tide." In no particular order, number one, your point about a lack of policy. To the extent that we don't have a president, a Congress, and the sort of policy to deal with these issues that you raise - those that we control - that is to say, the levees, which we build, and the wetlands, which we of course can restore.
That's one issue, the issue of a lack of policy. The other issue, though, is a lack of traction on the conversation about global warming, so that if you can't get good public policy through Congress with support of the White House, that's a problem. But on top of that, if you can't get a conversation about global warming, which you're telling me now is the coming threat, then you got a real problem.
And I don't know - I don't want to be pessimistic here at the second anniversary, but I don't see either one of those things really taking hold right now. The conversation about global warming is like a volley. You got some scientists saying it's real, others saying it's not. How do you get traction on that?
Tidwell: Well, there are no viable scientists who are really saying it's not happening. Even the president in his State of the Union Address in January said global warming is real, it's getting worse, and human beings are involved. So we know that it's happening, the science is in. It's just a matter of - Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Sometimes it's only on the darkest nights that you can really see the stars."
And I believe right now we're in a dark period when it comes to climate change, when it comes to Katrina, but we see where we can go. We know that there's a better future through clean energy. The multiplier benefits of hybrid cars and wind farms and energy efficiency are amazing. No more wars in Iraq. If Iraq's number one export was broccoli, would we be there?
My 22-year-old nephew gets shot at almost every day in Baghdad with the 82nd Airborne. No more 9/11s, and we solve global warming. And so the stars are there, we know where we need to go. It's a dark period, but I believe we'll get there.
Tavis: Let me press you on that, because I'm not as optimistic. And I want to press you on that because again, the point I'm making here is if we see New Orleans and we see Katrina with our own eyes, we see the damage that was done, we see two years later not enough has been done to put that city back where it was, much less better than what it was.
This is something that we see, and we haven't found the capacity - whatever that means - to deal with it. Now here you come telling me again that the coming threat is global warming, one that most of us, quite frankly, for all the talk, with all due respect to Mr. Gore, it's one that most of us still have not connected to. So if we can't deal with what we are seeing, how do we find the traction, the courage, the political will, to deal with what many people are not seeing, what they're not connected to? That's my concern.
Tidwell: Well, I guess the question is, are we really seeing what's happening with Katrina? You look at the Iraq war, we see it every day. We see the bloodshed, we see the political disagreements, we see it every day. You know why? Because the president's looking in that direction every day, where the president says, this is my focus, this is what's important. That's where the international and U.S. media focus on, and we get doses of it.
What we see is a tragedy. Where the president is not focusing, where he's not pointing at Katrina, where he's not focusing, where he's not pointing, is global warming. If we had a different leader who said, you know what, this Iraq thing didn't work out, here are the real problems. The real problems are we're going to rebuild this great city of New Orleans because it's a matter of right versus wrong.
It's a moral issue. And I'm going to focus on global warming too, because it's all about preserving all our cities and all our peoples in the world, and point to that. Then the media will focus on it and the American consciousness will be focused on it and we will finally embrace these solutions that are within our grasp. It's a matter of focus, leadership, and policy.
Tavis: Let me go back to something else you said earlier about America's coastal cities. There are a lot of folk looking at New Orleans and saying, even two years later, what a tragedy, what a shame, and yet they live in places, to your earlier point, where they may be experiencing the same kind of thing in the future. What do we say to those persons in those cities, and what kind of cities are we talking about?
Tidwell: Well, we're vulnerable, as a nation. Half our population lives within 100 miles of coastlines. You look at Miami, there's almost no part of Miami that's greater than three feet above sea level right now. James Hansen, America's most credible and famous climate scientist - probably in the whole world - says that unless we get off of fossil fuels as fast as we can, by the end of the century we're going to be measuring sea level rise in terms of meters of sea level rise.
So Miami, below sea level. (Unintelligible) levees you're getting hit by bigger and bigger hurricanes. And we know hurricanes are also getting bigger because of climate change. Lower Manhattan, Charleston, Washington, D.C. The Potomac is a tidal river, right through downtown D.C. It goes on and on. We are all New Orleanians.
That is one of the lessons. Whether it's been learned or not, it was taught. We are all New Orleanians now, and if we don't save this city, this great city of New Orleans, who's going to come to save you in lower Manhattan? Who's going to come save you in Miami? Who's gonna save coastal Virginia and Maryland, where I live, if we don't take care of this one city?
And by doing that, again, we have the technology, we can rebuild the levees, we can rebuild the barrier islands, but on top of that whole thing, if we don't solve global warming the levees don't matter. They don't matter.
Tavis: Let me ask you in 30 seconds right quick for - when all's said and done, the story that resonates still for me is the plight of the everyday people in New Orleans. So for everyday people watching right now in these other coastal cities where this is going to happen somewhere down the road, we say to them what about what they can do?
Tidwell: Well, that's one of the bright spots from Katrina, is everyday people went down there by the tens of thousands - faith folks, students, have gone and repaired buildings and rolled up their sleeves and done a lot, and that's the spirit of America. We need a government that matches that spirit, that takes the common spirit of the everyday man in America and uses it in the service of saving everyday people.
Tavis: He's the author of "Bayou Farewell," the book that predicted New Orleans' - that predicted, rather, Hurricane Katrina before it hit New Orleans. Now he has another book out that we should pay attention to. It's called "The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities." Mike Tidwell is his name. Mike, nice to see you.
Tidwell: Thanks for having me.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here.
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