katrinacoverage
Climate, power, money and sorrow: lessons of Hurricane Harvey.
Through the power of Katrina, Sandy and, now, Harvey, we get a view into how a changing climate may play out in the real world — beyond arguments and abstractions.
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Climate, Power, Money And Sorrow: Lessons Of Hurricane Harvey
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September 6, 20179:56 AM ET
ADAM FRANK
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A pile of debris sits outside a business damaged by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey on Sept. 5 in Spring, Texas.
David J. Phillip/AP
I get a lot of "climate" hate mail.
Whenever I write a piece on global warming, someone will email to call me a "lie-bra-tard," or something similar, and tell me I should be in jail.
Sometimes I try to engage these folks and see if they might be interested in how the science of climate change works and what it has to tell us. Mostly, they aren't. Mostly, what they really want is to score some points. What they really want is an argument.
That's what climate change and climate science has become after all these years.
It's just another political football getting tossed around on an already crowded field of political game playing. Immigration, health care, Russian hacking — climate change just gets tossed onto that pile. Then everyone watches to see who has the best zingers on the next CNN or Fox News panel.
But in the wake of Hurricane Harvey we can now see what climate change is really about. It was never about clever arguments but, instead, something much more elemental: power, money and human suffering.
We've all endured endless faux public debates over the question "is human-driven climate change happening?" These were never real debates because the scientific question got answered more than a decade ago. But climate denialists held tight to their positions because they did not, or could not, imagine what is first and foremost at play in climate change: power.
We're not talking here about anything as puny as political economic power. No, climate is about something far more terrifying it its capacities: Climate change is about planetary power.
Now let us be clear (and the point of science is to be as clear as possible): There is still uncertainty on how climate change will affect hurricanes. What is clear, however, is that greater warmth means more moisture in the air which means stronger precipitation. And while asking "did this specific event happen because of climate change" is the wrong scientific question, it's all about trends and the movement toward dangerous "never seen before" kinds of rainfall — one that scientists are seeing.
By altering the chemistry of the atmosphere, we've unbalanced forces that are literally astronomical in scale. It's the flow of energy from the sun that we've inadvertently redirected, channeled through the Earth systems of atmosphere and oceans. Even small changes in those systems are enough to unleash events that dwarf our civilization's ability to control or respond. These are events like "never been seen before" explosive rains that transform a city into an inland sea in just a few days.
But civilization will, by definition, have to respond to the sky-spanning forces we've unleashed. That's where money comes in. We've been delaying action on climate change for decades now. A big part of that delay has come because we've been told the costs of averting climate change are too high. But even before the waters have retreated, Hurricane Harvey is looking to be the most expensive disaster in U.S. history. Projected costs may run north of $100 billions. The fighting in Congress has already begun over who will pay for it — or if it will be paid at all.
As never-seen-before weather events are seen more regularly (the National Weather Service had to add more colors to its rainfall map for Harvey), it's now becoming clear that averting climate change will be less expensive than responding to it.
More than anything, though, the images from Hurricane Harvey catapulted us past equating climate change with clever ideological arguments. From the elderly residents in a flooded nursing home to first responders racing in boats across wave-tossed rivers that were interstate highways the day before, we all saw the ultimate reality of climate change as nothing less than concentrated human suffering. It was millions people in the jaws of desperation. And if we turned our eyes to Bangladesh, India and Nepal, we could see millions more at peril.
We've gotten so used to thinking about climate change in the abstract that we've forgotten why exactly anyone should care about it in the first place.
Unbalancing those planetary forces unleashes the Earth's potent and devastating powers. Once engaged, those powers are literally unstoppable by anything we humans have at our disposal. The heavy rains and heat waves (currently the most clear consequence of climate change) bring misery and loss. And after those rains move on and the heat waves abate we will not have the resources — the money — to continually pick up the pieces.
That's the truth about climate change that Harvey lays bare. It's never been about politics or ideology. It's never been about Al Gore or James Inhofe. It's not about arguments on Facebook or zingers on cable news.
Katrina, Sandy and, now, Harvey — with each of these powerful storms we get a view into how a changing climate may play out in the real world beyond arguments and abstractions.
What it's always been about are the truly awesome powers inherent to planets and the real human consequences of altering the balance of those powers. Luckily, there's still time to marshal our own great and creative powers and chart a saner course.
Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a self-described "evangelist of science." You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4
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Louisiana flood victims deserve better — and now.
The question of whether the greater fault lies with the state or the federal administrators has splintered along partisan lines, but there is enough blame to go around.
The one thing certain is that the government has failed the victims of last summer's torrential flooding in Louisiana. The question of whether the greater fault lies with the state or the federal administrators has splintered along partisan lines, but there is enough blame to go around.
The crucial issue moving forward is whether Louisiana's initial stumbling -- what the state's own junior U.S. senator has called a "Three Stooges-like performance" -- has made it impossible to persuade Congress to provide additional aid.
The state is currently seeking $2 billion in additional recovery dollars from Congress, even though Louisiana homeowners have yet to see a penny from the $1.6 billion the feds have already appropriated.
The blame game was in full flower Wednesday (April 5) as Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards appeared before the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform.
"I am convinced we did a very good job," Edwards said when asked to rate his administration's response to the disaster, deciding on a grade of B+.
That seemed like some serious grade inflation to committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Calif.
"I don't think any of you could look at this and assess it as a B+, or highly successful or anything other than a total utter failure from top to bottom," Chaffetz told the governor.
That set both the tone and the format for the hearing, with Louisiana officials and committee Democrats pointing to bureaucracy and red tape for delays while Republicans, including those from Louisiana, questioned the state's competency.
Edwards said the state took action as soon as the rains ended in mid-August, calling on then-President Barack Obama to declare the flood a federal disaster so that Louisiana could get additional federal aid through disaster relief block grants under the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Congress agreed to send $438 million in September, and another $1.2 billion in December.
Why that money has yet to reach victims is one major point of contention. Baton Rouge Rep. Garret Graves, whose district was hit hardest by the storms, has criticized the Edwards administration for much of the delay.
"At end of the day, this whole thing is about people,'' he said. "A lot of these decisions can't be defended."
Edwards blamed the delay on federal regulations.
"You cannot distribute money before you have it,'' Edwards said. "There is nothing we could have done that would have made that money available any faster."
The state's culpability is harder to defend when it comes to an embarrassing delay in awarding a $250 million contract to a management firm to oversee a rebuilding program.
The state had to restart the process two weeks ago after it was learned that Licensing Board for Contractors attorney Larry Bankston's opinion disqualifying the top two bidders had pushed the $250 million contract to a firm affiliated with his son's employer.
Bankston said he was unaware of the connection, but his credibility may not be the best. He went to federal prison for racketeering in 1997 after violating the public's trust in his role as a state senator. He was convicted of using his position as Senate committee chairman to help his friends in the gambling industry expand their video poker holdings. He was paid $1,550 a month in bribes disguised as rent on an Alabama condominium that the senator owned. Bankston got 41 months and was fined $20,000.
Bankston was released from prison in 2000 and readmitted to the bar four years later. He was hired by the state Licensing Board for Contractors in 2016.
The contracting debacle prompted U.S. Sen. John Kennedy to compare the Edwards administration to crude slapstick and note that, "Members of Congress and their staff read newspapers too. And the stench they have been reading about hurts our cause mightily."
He is right on that. Navigating the federal disaster recovery process is hard enough without these kinds of unforced errors that raise fundamental questions about the state's ability to efficiently and honestly oversee federal aid.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Shreveport, cut to the heart of the matter when he said that Louisianians have been forced to get good at disaster recovery in the face of government ineptness and incompetence.
"The reason we do recovery well in Louisiana is not because of the federal and state government; it's because of our people because they're very resourceful," he said. "They're survivors. Communities work together, neighbors band together. ... They take care of one another often in spite of the federal government, not because of it."
And they deserve much better government than they are getting.
Tim Morris is an opinions columnist at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at tmorris@nola.com. Follow him on Twitter @tmorris504.
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This New Orleans neighborhood is fighting flooding by welcoming it.
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, planners and designers realized they could protect the city by reintegrating water into the urban landscape, instead of pushing it out.
For decades, New Orleans fought to keep water out of the city. In the city's new resilience district, with projects that will break ground later in 2017, the goal is to let water in—which paradoxically can reduce flooding.
The plan was developed as part of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative; New Orleans's strategy launched in 2015, and last year, the city was awarded $141.3 million through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Natural Disaster Resilience Competition to further the implementation of the plan. "What Katrina exposed for us is that we cannot just rely on manmade, engineered systems . . . you have to have a more resilient system that has redundancy and multiple different flood protection features in order to protect the city," says Jeff Hebert, the city's chief resilience officer. "The second thing is that we really have to go back into history and learn how to live with water in a city that is so wet."
Prior to the 1930s, development in New Orleans was tightly constrained by water: With the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other, and swamps and other wetlands in between, housing was limited to a small footprint. Levees built by the French protected the city from river flooding.
But by the late 1930s, the city was beginning to drain water out of swamps to make it possible to build more homes on lower ground. The Gentilly district, north of the French Quarter, was one of the first swamps to be pumped and drained to become a neighborhood. Now, in a series of projects in the area, the city is bringing some of that water back.
"This is the first time where we're taking a lot of the learning that we've done since Katrina and putting it over a distinct geography to show that we can reimagine the way New Orleans lives with water," Herbert says. "Then we can take that approach and do it in the next districts of the city."
After Katrina, the city also strengthened traditional engineering, spending billions on a massive new surge barrier. But in a heavy storm, the city's drainage system can quickly become overwhelmed. The projects in Gentilly will add more protection by diverting water into the landscape, taking inspiration from similar designs in Dutch cities like Rotterdam.
On the site of a former convent that was destroyed in a fire after Katrina, a new "water garden" is designed to store as much as 10 million gallons of rain in storms. Vacant lots will capture more water. Along major roads, some medians will be replaced with permeable sidewalks and plantings. Playgrounds and campuses will get new green infrastructure.
All of this can help reduce flooding, while also recharging the underground water supply. When water is pumped out of the area, the dry soil begins to sink, making foundations and sidewalks crack. "Everything starts to collapse," Herbert says. "You have to have a certain amount of water and that type of soil in order for that not to happen."
The resilience projects will also make the neighborhood a greener, more pleasant place to live. The city wanted to focus on Gentilly in part because it's a diverse neighborhood—not a tourist attraction, but a place where locals live. It also looks like other midcentury neighborhoods, so the lessons learned here could be useful elsewhere.
"We wanted to create something that could be transferable to other parts, particularly in the United States, where you had postwar suburban development," Herbert says. "This neighborhood could be an example for neighborhoods in Houston that look exactly like Gentilly and have the same flooding issues."
It also will be an example for the rest of New Orleans. The city is already beginning to plan pilots in other neighborhoods, and those efforts will scale up in about two years.
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New Orleans agrees to pay $13.3 million for police post-Katrina killings.
New Orleans offered apologies and reached settlements totaling $13.3 million in civil rights lawsuits brought against the city for the killings of residents by police in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the mayor said on Monday.
New Orleans agrees to pay $13.3 mln for police post-Katrina killings
by Reuters
Monday, 19 December 2016 23:20 GMT
(Adds comment from civil rights lawyer)
By Jon Herskovitz
Dec 19 (Reuters) - New Orleans offered apologies and reached settlements totaling $13.3 million in civil rights lawsuits brought against the city for the killings of residents by police in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the mayor said on Monday.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the city reached deals with 17 plaintiffs to settle all claims in the cases that have prompted local police reforms and federal investigation into suspected misconduct by numerous officers.
The settlements included families of those killed on the city's Danziger Bridge in September 2005, where two unarmed people were fatally shot.
"We are here to proclaim from the highest mountaintop that the City of New Orleans, in all of its agony and in all of its joy, can transform itself from a city of violence into a city of peace," the mayor said.
Landrieu held a prayer service with family members and asked for forgiveness ahead of announcing the settlements.
The families have been in litigation for years and their suits alleging misconduct and cover-ups helped to change the narrative of police actions following the hurricane.
The storm led to more than 1,500 deaths in the New Orleans-area.
Mary Howell, a civil rights lawyer who represented families of victims, said the settlement marked a change for the city which typically settles without admitting wrongdoing. She said the apology was deeply appreciated.
"It has been a tortured path to this point," Howell said in an interview.
Those gunned down on the bridge included Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old with the mental development of a six-year-old. He had seven gunshot wounds in his back. James Brissette Jr., 17, was also fatally shot, court documents showed.
Five ex-New Orleans police officers pleaded guilty in April to charges in connection with the killings. Four other people were seriously injured in the bridge incident.
The bridge incident victims, all black and unarmed, were trying to survive the hurricane's wake when a group of officers, believing they were racing to the scene of a police shootout, barreled toward them in a commandeered truck.
The death of Henry Glover was part of the settlement. A few days after the storm, he was fatally shot by a police officer, who was eventually acquitted. Another officer was convicted of setting Glover's body on fire.
The settlement included the case of Raymond Robair, 48, who local media said was beaten to death by police about a month before Katrina. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, additional reporting by Ronnie Greene; editing by Alan Crosby and Mary Milliken)
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Hurricane protection project underway near New Orleans.
The federal government will pay a firm more than $7 million to tear out and replant trees in a forested part of Avondale, a task intended to complement the West Bank's hurricane protection project.
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Army Corps spends millions to begin West Bank mitigation projects
Army Corps mitigation projects in West Bank
This map displays the area of land that the Army Corps of Engineers has purchased for a mitigation project. Avondale's NOLA Motorsports Park is located approximately one half of a mile from the eastern most side of the site. It is south of U.S. 90 and east of the St. Charles Parish border. (Image via United States Geological Survey)
Wilborn P. Nobles III, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Wilborn P. Nobles III, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
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on October 07, 2016 at 1:25 PM, updated October 07, 2016 at 1:30 PM
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The federal government will pay a firm more than $7 million to tear out and replant trees in a forested part of Avondale, a task intended to complement the West Bank's hurricane protection project.
The Army Corps of Engineers awarded the contract to project management firm Hernandez Consulting, LLC, on September 27. The work consists of restoring nearly 960 acres of bottomland habitat, which includes timbers and other trees native to the region. In that area, "920 acres of predominantly invasive and nuisance species would be eradicated" with herbicidal treatments, according to a project report from the Corps.
Churchill Farms and Bayou Verret Lands, two companies owned by Joseph Marcello, sold more than 1,000 acres of the vacant land to the Corps for $13.5 million in August. Avondale's NOLA Motorsports Park is located approximately one half of a mile from the eastern most side of the site, according to the Corps report.
One major thoroughfare, U.S. 90, is located north of the project. It is east of the St. Charles Parish border and the nearest residential area is located nearly one-half mile from the project site. The Corps said Avondale Garden Road is the nearest major thoroughfare.
Construction vehicles and debris could potentially increase traffic, but the Corps expects these impacts to go away once mitigation ends. The U.S. Geological Survey, the government's scientific agency, said bottomland habitat is known for its storage of floodwaters, water quality improvement, and the provision of wildlife habitat.
Jason Monzon, regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-West, said the mitigation project is expected to begin in spring. The Corps expects the work to be completed by the end of 2019.
One environmental liability the Corps report acknowledged was an active producing oil well within the project. A petroleum product pipeline crosses the features and may also be considered a potential liability, the report said. Three plugged and abandoned dry hole oil wells are also located in the area. Monzon stressed that the area is a prime location for mitigation.
"In our part of the world, it's kind of hard to find suitable sites to replace bottomland hardwood," Monzon said.
This map displays the Corps' ongoing mitigation efforts in parts of southeast Louisiana.
Army Corps of Engineers
Once the mitigation project is complete, Monzon said the Corps will turn the project over to the West Jefferson Levee District for operation and maintenance. Those tasks include cutting the grass and ensuing invasive plant species do not return. The flood authority was created in 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, to take over the West Jefferson Levee District and the Algiers portion of the Orleans Levee District.
The Corps project report says no endangered animals are expected to be found in the area, although "a great variety" of animals are in its vicinity. Wildlife present during the project "would be temporarily displaced" to nearby habitat due to noise, movement and vibration, but the Corps said "slower moving species may perish." They nonetheless expect wildlife to return once construction ends.
The Corps said the mitigation would also offer better shelter and foraging ground for deer and other species in an effort to preserve the area's biodiversity.
The ongoing mitigation projects come under the auspice of efforts to revamp the levees across the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana. Congress funded the $14.45 billion Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System for southeast Louisiana to reduce the surge risk associated with a 100-year storm, which is a storm surge event that has a one percent change of happening in any year.
The work consists of 350 miles of levees and floodwalls, 73 non-Federal pumping stations, three canal closure structures with pumps and four gated outlets. The West Bank project will include more than 50 construction contracts valued at nearly $3 billion, the Corps said.
With most of the construction complete, Monzon said the Corps is federally-required to begin the mitigation phase of their task.
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US hasn't gone this long without a big hurricane in 150 years.
“Luck is the main factor,” says one prominent meteorologist. “But this year, the U.S.’s luck has changed.” Here comes Hurricane Matthew.
“Luck is the main factor,” says one prominent meteorologist. “But this year, the U.S.’s luck has changed.” Here comes Hurricane Matthew.
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Hurricane Matthew drives big waves off Kingston, Jamaica, Monday. Will the storm carve a path of destruction?
PHOTOGRAPH BY EDUARDO VERDUGO, AP
As Hurricane Matthew slams into Haiti today and heads toward the U.S. Southeast coast, meteorologists are asking whether the powerful storm may become the first to hit the U.S. in more than a decade—a record length of time.
Jeff Masters, meteorological director for the website Weather Underground, says Matthew could become the storm to break the U.S.’s unprecedented luck in avoiding major hurricanes. The last major hurricane—Wilma—struck Key West, Florida, with peak winds of around 120 miles per hour, in October 2005.
That means this has been the longest period without a major hurricane hitting the U.S. since record keeping began in 1851. (A major hurricane, also known as Category 3, is a storm with winds exceeding 110 mph.)
Hurricane Ike—which pummeled Texas when it made landfall in 2008—was below Category 3 status when it came ashore, catching some people unaware. The highly destructive Sandy was also technically just under major hurricane status when it roared into New Jersey in 2012. Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August 2005.
Masters has a simple explanation for the long absence of true major hurricanes, which tend to be the most destructive: “Luck is the main factor,” he says. “The steering currents remained friendly, and there have been a lot of recurving storms. But this year, the U.S.’s luck has changed.”
Matthew began as a tropical depression—basically, a windy rainstorm—at the southeastern edge of the Caribbean Sea on September 28. Then the storm underwent what Masters describes as “jaw-dropping” strengthening by October 1, when its strongest winds briefly reached 160 mph.
Watch: Hurricanes 101.
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Matthew slammed into Haiti Tuesday morning, with 140 mile-per-hour winds and heavy rain.
The hurricane is expected to move northwestward as it crosses the Bahamas Wednesday and Thursday, exposing the islands to devastating winds of from 111 mph to as much as 145 mph for 36 hours.
“It will cruise through the whole length of the island chain,” Masters says. “There will be a lot of damage.”
Wayne Neely, a meteorologist and forecaster with the Bahamas Department of Meteorology in Nassau, said Tuesday that the islands are bracing for a bad time.
“Food stores are filled,” Neely says. “People are getting water supplies.”
Neely said Matthew is expected to enter the Bahamas from the south. That track would likely mean a greater storm surge—a mound of water piled up by the hurricane’s winds and pushed along in front of its eye—than if the storm came in from another angle.
Most of the Bahamas are only about 25 feet above sea level, and Matthew is expected to bring a storm surge of 10 to 15 feet.
Evacuations were declared for South Carolina Tuesday. Coastal residents in North Carolina are wondering what the weekend will bring. A slightly weakened Matthew could come ashore near Wilmington Saturday morning with winds exceeding 100 mph. To the north in the village of Avon on Hatteras Island, Dawn Taylor said she and others are worried that Matthew will do devastating damage to a 144-year-old cemetery they’ve been battling to save from the Pamlico Sound.
Taylor said Outer Banks residents are keeping a close watch on forecasts.
“They know we’ll get some impact,” she said. “It’s starting to sink in that we’ll get something.”
Listen to author Willie Drye discuss his IPPY Award-winning book, For Sale-American Paradise, with host Frank Stasio on WUNC radio’s “The State of Things,” and with Joseph Cooper on WLRN’s “Topical Currents.”
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Recovering from Katrina: Will New Orleans become the world′s climate beacon?
An image of dysfunction after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has picked itself up, dusted itself off and is becoming a symbol of resilience in a world where climate change is causing increasing panic and despondency.
A brass band marches along Bourbon street in New Orleans' historic French quarter - one of the areas where victims took refuge after levee failures when hurricane Katrina caused dramatic floods in 2005.
These streets - where just more than a decade ago, bewildered homeless, carrying what was left of their lives on their backs, camped on improvised bedding - are now filled with tourists. Thanks to innovative projects, musicians are once again playing in the bars of the city known as "the Big Easy."
But a thousand deaths and 600,000 displaced households aren't forgotten in a decade. Linger a while to chat with locals and you'll find that everyone has their personal Katrina story.
This includes local tour guide Dominick Musso, who was born in New Orleans and helped rebuild the city after the floods.
Most of the city was pretty much underwater for weeks, explained Musso. "Everything marinated in what was being called toxic soup. The surrounding swamps rose and the alligators and bears came into the city," he went on.
"Of the 900 people that were never found we believe some of them succumbed to animals," he says.
Data demonstrates will to change
Executive director and chief demographer of the New Orleans-based Data Center, a think tank focusing on Southern Louisiana, Allison Plyer, who was also evacuated from the city, stresses the importance of data in times of crisis.
"After a disaster there is lot of uncertainty: people start operating on anecdote," Plyer said. "We put forward data, so people can see what the situation is."
"Then we can start looking at trends, so they can see in what directions things are heading," she continued.
However, after five years of collating data, Plyer noticed that perceptions had changed: the struggle to survive had transformed into a desire to adapt and thrive.
"At the fifth anniversary we shifted - because we realized we didn't necessarily want things back as they were in July 2005, there were a lot of problems in 2005."
"So instead we started looking at our progress towards prosperity and measuring that," Plyer said.
Keeping music alive
Some observers say that the effect of the hurricane was much greater on black and less economically advantaged people, who were more vulnerable and thus had more difficulty bouncing back.
One of the groups that badly hit by the hurricane was the city's musicians - many of whom are black.
The Ellis Marsallis Centre for music in the 9th Ward - where music legends including Fats Domino lived before Katrina - is one of the projects created to address that problem.
Conceived of by saxophonist Branford Marsalis and singer-actor Harry Connick Jr., the center - which provides a home for musicians, and a positive environment where underserved youth can develop musically and academically - has been hailed as "the project that has kept music alive in New Orleans."
According to Plyer, the ability to be resilient in the face of any shock requires that a region have a diverse economy, high proportion of skilled workers and low poverty rates.
New Orleans might not score top marks on all counts. But indicators such as the metro New Orleans entrepreneurship rate, which is 64 percent higher than the national average - along with a surge of investments in youth projects, reductions in crime, and radical improvement in the city's education system - seem to point to the hope of a better future for the city that nearly drowned.
Innovation testing ground
Vitally, too, the city has become a testing ground for innovative water management projects, including the construction of river gates to mimic flooding and create sediment. These will hopefully replace some of the 2,000 square miles of Louisiana's wetlands ecosystem that have disappeared due to erosion.
In addition, the astounding Lake Borgne Surge Barrier - a 26-foot-high, 1.8-mile-long concrete- and steel-wall nicknamed by locals "The Great Wall of Louisiana" - was constructed to block deadly lake surges.
"What's really resulted from Katrina is that now we have a better water management program," Musso said. "I believe that in a post-Katrina world, the right people turned up. I think that the city is going to be better in the future than it's ever been."
In his recent speech, Mayor Mitch Landrieu declared that the city of New Orleans has become "a shining example to all of America of what is possible."
Just over a decade after Hurricane Katrina, with many countries facing their own climate issues, America's beacon of resilience seems set to become a leading light for the world.
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