Virtual Residency Day Forty-Five, Geomorphological Recrimination

I have been thinking about the outpouring over Katrina one year later. Yes, it is good to assess what has changed and why or why not. But what I see is a fair amount of sensationalism: re-runs of floating dead bodies, excuses & promises, blame & retribution. What I want is calm analysis and thoughtful assessments.

The best thing I heard was from an engineer who said the task is nothing more or less than rebuilding the entire coast. That is very expensive work. It was avoidable before all this. It is probably unavoidable now.

The truth is, we have destroyed the geomorphology of large portions of the world, mostly the critical coastline habitats. The effects of Katrina, the extent to which it was the inevitable result of global warming rising sea level temps. and the continued problem of over-extraction causing subsidence to the land, is still not being adequately addressed.

As far as I can tell, the reason for that is human intransigence in the face of change. What is required is monumental flexibility now.

Large governments, global corporations, entrenched institutions are not noted for moumental flexibility. What is required is faith in doing the impossible. As much as the physical geomorphological questions need to be addressed, just so must we address human geomorphologies.