I got a couple of emails from german friends in the last couple of days talking about the desaster in New Orleans.
All of them stressed out that this was the consequence of Bush's policy of not signing the Kyoto treaty.
Usually I am in the front line when it comes to Bush bashing ... but in this case? Give me a break. I did a little research and found out that our "beloved" enviromental protection minister started this discussion in an article for a newspaper ... and a lot of other german publishers jumped on that train.
Let me say it in the most simple and polite way possible ..
THAT IS FUCKING BULLSHIT
Facing hurricanes is simple the price you have to pay if you choose to live on the coastline in a tropical area. Period. We can talk about the fact that americans seem to like to rebuild every year power lines .. and not putting them underground like in other parts of the world ... yes ... these are home made problems ... or the fact that a lot of people live in mobile homes ... that are not made to face strong storms ... also a local problem ...
New Orleans is a topografical and urbanistic joke. The city is circles on all four sides by water ... the city itself is between 2 and 6 meters under sealevel ... even on regular days the pumps have to work 24/7 to keep the city alive.
If you leave the city a few miles you will be surrounded by poverty. The housing is a joke ... no wonder that these "buildings" could not stand a storm like Katrina.
Oh .. and here is a statistic with the 20 strongest storms in the US ... I wonder when the global warming started to create severe hurricanes in the early 20th century. I really wonder why most of them took place before the global warming was a topic on the agenda.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/climate/canes.htm