The Unnatural Tragedy of New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina was an unavoidable natural disaster. How we are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is an avoidable unnatural disaster. Most of the devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast emerged from what raw nature has done. Wider and more long lasting damage to our nation can only result from what human nature is doing.

The typically human tendency to find and fix blame is as dangerous as it is destined to fail. The “blame game,” which we all seem to decry even as we participate in it, has no winners. It does have losers, plenty of them. They will not be from just one political party, race, religion or administrative level or arm of government.

As we engage in the cathartic if unproductive search for who to blame, perhaps we can find some guidance in our Constitution. It begins, as all schoolchildren know, with “We, the people…” This is not just semantics. The Constitution proclaimed the fundamental principle, unique in history at the time, that this would be a nation where all power – and ultimately all responsibility – comes from and must be exercised by the people. So if we want to blame anyone for what has happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, perhaps we should blame ourselves. After all, Thomas Jefferson reminded us, our leaders serve only with the “consent of the governed.”

And we have given our consent, by our silence as well as by our votes.

We have consented to the tendency to accept short-term solutions where long-term ones were needed. How else do we explain our willingness to tolerate the weakening of New Orleans natural storm barriers as well as the failure to strengthen its man-made ones? Our leaders at all levels ignored long-term infrastructure needs because we let them.

We have consented to consumption rather than investment, a decades-long rush for material comfort that has, in the end, lowered our ability to preserve that very standard of living we so avidly purchased. No one made us save less, spend more, and so end up with a national and personal debt that makes finding the money to prevent and recover from disasters so hard.

We have consented to approach our world with hubris rather than humility, assuming that the unthinkable was also impossible and that planning and organizational structures could hold back the forces of nature. We can’t blame our leaders for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the same warnings that caused us to do the same, because what happened in New Orleans was forecast, more than once.

It may be comforting now, in the wake of the storm, to think that it was all the fault of the federal government, or the state government, or the Republicans, or the Democrats, or those who run FEMA or those who serve in State capitols. Comforting but wrong. Because in our democracy, those who lead us are chosen by us and answerable to us. If they did wrong, so did we.

In the despair of the winter of 1776, when the American Revolution looked so hopelessly lost, Thomas Paine, an immigrant writer who had failed at everything he tried in the Old World reminded those of us just starting in the New World that “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Perhaps it’s time to look into our souls as Americans and accept that until we change, those who lead us will not change. Perhaps it is time to demand long-term solutions not short-term fixes, save more than we spend so as to put our fiscal house in the order needed to invest in the infrastructure of America, and recognize that we would do far better living within nature’s laws than trying to ignore them.

The Scarlett Syndrome

The U.S. contributes 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases but, except at the state level in selected parts of the nation, the government has determined that voluntary efforts and market incentives are the chief vehicles to use in contributing to worldwide reductions. At the personal level, we continue to favor style, power, and size in our vehicles over fuel efficiency and rank high gas prices among the top problems the nation faces. We acknowledge that there may be a global warming problem, but we do not share an urgency for a comprehensive and effective solution.

The U.S. national debt ceiling now tops $8 trillion, with annual budget deficits running near or above $300 billion for possibly years to come. At a personal level, Americans charged $1.5 trillion to credit cards in 2003, up 350 percent from the amount charged in 1990. In the second quarter of 2005, American households spent $350 billion more than they took in. Both the national debt and consumer debt are viewed as serious problems, but they are not matched with serious solutions.

Scarlett O’Hara had an approach to pervasive problems that many Americans seem to share. When faced with the fact that Rhett Butler was finally leaving her, she agonizingly proclaims: “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.”

There are many reasons we put off tough choices and necessary measures. Sometimes, as with global warming, we argue that the empirical evidence requiring action is inconclusive. Sometimes, as with the national debt, we cite more urgent matters, such as the need to stimulate economic growth or help disaster victims. Sometimes, as with personal debt, we just rationalize our behavior with an appeal to our own self-interest. After all, we work hard and owe it to ourselves to enjoy life too. Sometimes we count on historical experience and time to take care of things. Americans, we know, always respond best when a crisis comes.

But many of the problems we face, from global warming to national and personal financial debt, from failing to provide for our own retirement to glaring infrastructure problems in our roads, rails, and bridges, may never rise to the definition of “crisis” – a time when something must be done to avoid total breakdown or disaster. It is at least conceivable in many of these cases that irreversible damage may be done before we acknowledge a crisis has been reached. Many of these problems will instead continue to get worse as we continue to ignore the symptoms, much as Scarlett does through all the years of Rhett’s pleading. When she finally acknowledges the problem, she can no longer solve it.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison in 1789, had a point of view on this tendency to ignore big problems and put them off until later. "The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another. . . is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also among the fundamental principles of every government. . . . I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living' . . .." Jefferson meant that the current generation had a right to make decisions about the use of resources as long as they did not damage the substance of them for the next generation. While Jefferson was concerned primarily with land, he also abhorred financial debt for the same reason, commenting to John Taylor in 1816 that “I sincerely believe...that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

It’s not clear what it will take to change our preference to “think about that tomorrow.” Despite his theory, Jefferson was terrible in practice, dying over $100,000 in debt. Some evolutionary biologists have even suggested that paying less attention to the future has been bred into us, since those who were most fit to survive no doubt had to pay attention to immediate needs rather than sit in their caves and ponder long term ones.

Bit it is also clear that we cannot continue to ignore our most intractable societal problems. Political leadership on the national level, religious and civic leadership at the local level, and personal leadership, especially leadership by example, at the family level will all be needed. The first task will be to have honest conversations about our current predicament, where we are heading if nothing is done, and what it may take to change course. The second task will be to formulate action agendas at all levels and to marshal public opinion and personal will to demand a change. This will include not only an honest and massive campaign of personal and public education but a forceful re-ordering of laws and moral imperatives. We must arrive at the point where cutting greenhouse gases and retiring our personal and public debt, to name just two examples, are goals that are both morally and legally compelling and compelled.

The film Gone with the Wind ends before we get a chance to see if Scarlett does think about it tomorrow. The betting money is not in her favor. But at least she will only hurt herself by her inability to face life head-on. We will not be so lucky.