Scott Dodd's Blog: The Media and the Environment

Watching Gustav, remembering Katrina, worrying for the environment

2008-08-29T05:01:49Z

On the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast states are stocking up water, readying the National Guard, and preparing to evacuate as another storm heads their way. As of 8 p.m. Thursday, Tropical Storm Gustav, expected to regain hurricane strength after weakening over Jamaica, was on track to pass over Cuba and head into the Gulf of Mexico this weekend.

The current most likely scenario from the National Hurricane Center predicts that Gustav could become a Category 3 storm and threaten Louisiana by early next week (although the track is starting to look more like Hurricane Rita's than Katrina's). If a Cat 3 comes within 60 hours of making landfall on New Orleans, officials plan to order a mass evacuation, the Associated Press reports -- with no Superdome or other citywide shelter for those left behind this time.

All of this compels me to relive some rough memories. As Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore three years ago, I was one of the few people crazy enough to be driving full speed into the storm.

My newspaper chain had dispatched me -- then a reporter at The Charlotte Observer -- to the Gulf Coast, along with a photographer. We were headed to the newsroom of The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., where all but a handful of staffers had evacuated with their families. The stalwarts needed reinforcements, and we were the first wave.

Patrick and I had covered several hurricanes along the Carolina coast, so we had at least some idea of what to expect. We rented the biggest SUV we could find, filled it with four shopping carts full of food and supplies from Wal-Mart, strapped several loaded gas cans to the top, and headed south. (My wife likes to tell the story of how she packed a little cooler for me with snacks, having no comprehension of what it really meant to head into a disaster zone.)

We left the night before Katrina struck, spent a few restless hours at a hotel in Alabama, then drove the rest of the way on Monday as the storm came ashore. We took turns driving, each of us struggling to stay on the road as powerful gusts and sideways rain slammed against the side of our vehicle. We saw road signs and tree branches flying across our path, but we managed to avoid getting hit. During the worst of it, we pulled off the highway and sheltered at a fire station.

We arrived in Biloxi just as night fell. The storm had passed, although the wind gusts continued throughout the night. The highway signs had been obliterated, and as darkness came, with all the power out, we realized that reaching the newspaper could prove even more difficult than we thought. The main bridges into town had been destroyed. Fortunately, we found a utility worker who could give us directions. Fallen trees blocked the path several times, and we nearly had to pull out our chainsaw at one point, but finally, we made it to the battered Sun Herald newsroom.

I spent the next few days working alongside the paper's brave, shellshocked reporters and editors -- who would eventually win the Pulitzer Prize for their efforts, cold comfort though it might be. Many had lost their homes. Some had lost family members. All of them had lost their community.

New Orleans got all the headlines, but the cities and towns along the Mississippi coast took the brunt of Katrina's fury. Entire streets, landmarks, businesses and neighborhoods were simply swept away by the storm. To this day, I still can't find the words to describe the devastation they experienced. New Orleans was flooded, but it stood. Much of the Mississippi coast was reduced to rubble. They're Katrina's forgotten victims.

My own experience was nothing compared to theirs, but it took a toll all the same. We had no power, no phones and no running water for most of our stay, and certainly no air conditioning -- not a pleasant experience on the Gulf Coast in late summer. The smell was overwhelming at times, especially in the parts of town where rotting chicken and other contents of shipping containers had spilled from the busy port. I slept, sweating, on the floor of the newspaper's conference room for several nights in a row. At least it was dark in there. Patrick slept in the truck, to guard our reserve supply of gasoline.

The suffering I saw, and the frustration at being able to do so little, haunts me to this day. Yet I remain proud that we helped the remarkable staff of The Sun Herald put out a newspaper every day, thanks largely to the satellite phones that Patrick and I brought along. They let us transmit stories and photos to one of the chain's other newspapers, where the Herald was assembled, printed and shipped back to Biloxi. The news was grim, but survivors were hungry for it.

We reported on the loss of life and property, on the desperate need for food and water, on concerns about disease and water contamination, on firefighters and rescue dogs combing through collapsed buildings, on families separated and survivors seeking to reunite. The Sun Herald's coverage continues to this day, reporting on the long, slow recovery of their community, and I can't help but worry about them -- and the many other people who might find themselves in Gustav's path -- as they brace for the possibility of another storm headed their way.

I worry also about the environmental consequences of another hurricane striking the Gulf Coast. My current employer, NRDC, did a lot of work documenting the damage from Katrina and pushing for policy changes. Unfortunately, it seems that three years later, not nearly enough has changed and the lessons have been forgotten. Just witness the current debate over increased offshore drilling. Katrina and Rita, which trailed a couple of weeks later, resulted in 125 spills of petroleum products from platforms, rigs and platforms, dumping 685,000 gallons into the environment. How could anyone think it would make sense to start drilling more on the Outer Continental Shelf, with the risk that hurricanes bring of long-term environmental damage to our oceans, food supply and coastlines?

As Gustav strengthens over the next few days, I won't be able to shake the memories of covering Katrina. I'm hoping the storm weakens or moves away from the coast, and there's no repeat of what happened three years ago. Sooner or later, though, the next Katrina will strike, on the Gulf or someplace else. I only hope that by then, we're better ready for it.

Share Your Stories

If Gustav does hit, or if you have memories or lessons from Katrina that you'd like to share, NRDC welcomes your participation in our new citizen journalism venture, Greenlight. Brought to you by NRDC's award-winning OnEarth magazine, Greenlight lets you be the reporter, photographer or commentator, sharing stories about the environment with the world. Join the conversation and work for change today.

Update: The New York Times' Andy Revkin is now reporting on the possibility of a double hurricane strike on the Gulf Coast, with Tropical Storm Hanna trailing a few days behind Gustav.

What do jellyfish, drilling and whale blubber have in common?

2008-08-04T17:57:19Z

Answer: They’re black and white and read all over.

Sunday’s New York Times was something of a bonanza (albeit a sobering one) for anyone interested in environmental news. In a front-page story, Elisabeth Rosenthal reports from Barcelona on the swarms of jellyfish that are stinging beachgoers in increasing numbers all over the world. “While jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen,” she writes, “for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans.”

As readers of the Los Angeles Times’ excellent Altered Oceans series (which won last year’s Pulitzer for explanatory journalism) are aware, environmental damage to the earth’s oceans is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms in the sea, as well as killing larger marine species and sickening us humans. Jellyfish are stepping (oozing?) into the void left by their overfished predators such as tuna, sharks and swordfish. Rising sea temperatures caused by global warming and oxygen-depleting pollution are also helping the jellies, which the East Coast Times calls “the cockroaches of the open waters” because they thrive in damaged environments where most other species suffer.

The jellyfish boom is just more evidence that our planet’s environmental crisis has unexpected -- and often unpleasant -- consequences. Sometimes it’s not easy to relate to concerns about elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere, or even the plight of the polar bear as sea ice melts, because those things seems so distant from our everyday lives. But the impact of global warming can also be felt very close to home, like when we go to the beach and find it full of stinging jellyfish, which happened to vacationers in Long Beach, N.Y. (and even participants in the recent New York City triathalon).

On our website right now, NRDC outlines some of the other consequences of global warming and delves more deeply into what it could mean for our health. And you can learn a lot more about the many threats facing the earth's oceans and what can be done to protect them at youroceans.org.

More drilling doesn’t equal more oil

A report by Felicity Barringer in the Times’ National section offers “sobering production figures for those hoping that fuel prices can be lowered” by increased drilling for oil on public lands. Barringer writes:

The Bush administration, in its effort to expand energy production, has issued more than three times the number of well-drilling permits on Western lands as in the Clinton administration’s last six years. But oil production in that region during the Bush years is 12 percent below average levels from the Clinton era, according to federal data.

The piece goes on to detail the “palpable” environmental effects of the increase in federal drilling permits on public land in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The expansion of the energy industry has subdivided parts of western Wyoming and western Colorado into a rabbit warren of wellheads and roads. The Pinedale, Wyo., area had its first ozone alerts last winter, thanks to a combination of factors: natural gas flaring from scores of wells, increased vehicle traffic associated with drilling activities and seasonal temperature inversions. One study showed that the mule deer herd that migrates near Pinedale declined by nearly half from 2000 to 2005.

For NRDC’s take on the environmental consequences of drilling on public lands and more productive and immediate solutions to our energy crisis, check out the materials featured in the Oil & Energy section of nrdc.org.

Whale oil: The petroleum of the 19th century

Finally, "Our Towns" columnist Peter Applebome takes readers on a jaunt to Sag Harbor, N.Y., where the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum is featuring an exhibition on the indispensable fuel of the 1700s and early 1880s: lamp oil made from boiled whale blubber. Applebome asks: “Is the oil business the new whaling business? And, if so, is that a good sign or a troubling one?

Bear with us. Whaling, after all, was one of the world’s first great multinational businesses, a global enterprise of audacious reach and import. From the 1700s through the mid-1800s, oil extracted from the blubber of whales and boiled in giant pots gave light to America and much of the Western world. The United States whaling fleet peaked in 1846 with 735 ships out of 900 in the world. Whaling was the fifth-largest industry in the United States; in 1853 alone, 8,000 whales were slaughtered for whale oil shipped to light lamps around the world, plus sundry other parts used in hoop skirts, perfume, lubricants and candles.

Applebome makes the point that at the height of whale oil’s dominance -- and even in its declining years -- few people could imagine a world without it, and Big Whaling mocked its potential competitors. Sounds an awful lot like the way many of us think about fossil fuels today. And yet as soon as something better came along -- kerosene -- whale oil bit the dust within a couple of decades (although it left behind massive environmental consequences).

The point being that the energy source we’re so dependent on today need not be the energy source of tomorrow, and that change can happen more rapidly than many of us think.

NRDC has been urging Americans to move beyond oil and build a new economy powered by clean energy that offers new jobs and new opportunities. When looked at in light of the whale oil story, it makes you realize that change is not only possible -- it’s inevitable. The trick is to push for the kind of change that makes our economy, our country and our world a brighter place.