Each time someone asks why protecting New Orleans and the Louisiana coastline is America’s responsibility, I wonder what a stupid question that is. We are Americans and the providers of so much to this country, culturally and economically. Was 9/11 New York’s or D.C.’s problem? Of course not, what a question, so why are New Orleans and Louisiana constantly in the position of explaining themselves? This past week, John Barry, author of Rising Tide, and Oliver Houck, local environmental lawyer, professor and activist, have each written a piece on why it is an American duty to save New Orleans and the Louisiana coast. Please read both articles in full before returning to this post.
LA Times: Who Should Pay To Protect New Orleans?
Oliver Houck: When Bad Neighbors Spoil Good Fishing
The question is not Can America Save New Orleans? It’s What Have You Been Doing All This Time? Moreover, it’s a shame that almost three years after Katrina/Flood, we still need this level of advocacy. However, in so doing, let us not stand accused of the same provincialism and lack of analysis of which some other Americans are guilty.
Both articles are problematic in that they do not take into account that damming and agricultural discharge from the north are a result of necessary farming. The Midwest is America’s breadbasket – just as we create and convey seafood and petroleum products to the north, Midwesterners make and give us meat, grain (corn, wheat, anyone?) and dairy, with severe environmental stresses to their own soil and waterways that are then sent to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. Where else is the waste going to go but downhill, given the way our midcontinental drainage currently works? Wanting to sue the Midwest for sending down agricutural effluvium is like telling the oil refining industry downstream not to flare or spew other chemicals or the rest of America will take you to court for polluting the air. Those upstream and downstream of the Mississippi River are, pardon the pun, in the same boat when it comes to self-pollution, spreading the pollution and creating products that the other party and the rest of America needs. We suffer, but we enjoy the fruits of each other’s sacrifices as well.
The patch of the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans isn’t called Cancer Alley because of Midwestern agricultural effluents alone. Also, how does an area host pipelines, refineries and chemical plants as a basic part of its economy and expect to get to zero levels of toxins? Why not threaten to take every single one of these industries to court, too? It’s easy to first throw angry, culturally-loaded words at nameless fellow citizens, but not display the same ire to the companies and governmental bodies that are also equally as culpable.
Not a big fan of dams, I’m all for breaking most of them down starting with the headwaters of the Mississippi. But, how about letting the river flow where it should – into the Atchafalaya – instead of constraining it to its current course to keep the Port of New Orleans alive? Let’s face it, a lot of the problems that we currently experience are very much local- and state-made.
Again, thanks so much to John Barry and Oliver Houck for keeping us on the radar screen and so effectively. We are all Americans, like it or not, as we can and do offer to and learn from one another. Anger is one thing, goodwill is another, but the growing and misinformed American Us-Versus-Them mentality is not going to get any of us anywhere.
