New Orleans - The Lessons of Atlantis Begin to Sink In
In the early 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan endorsed the idea of creating an International Space Station
(ISS). At the time, it appeared to be a make-work project designed to
keep the aerospace industry alive during a period of relative peace. As
early as 1969, during the Apollo Program,
Americans had walked on the Moon, 238,000 miles from Earth. With a
planned orbit of only 173 miles above the Earth, the ISS had no such
lofty goals. Instead, the solar-powered pressure-vessels of the ISS
offered only slow and steady progress toward long-term human habitation in space.
Commensurate with its low-key goals, was a bargain price, estimated at
less than $10 billion. A lot has changed over the past thirty years. At a
current running cost of $150+ billion, the ISS is now the most expensive human engineered structure, either on or above the Earth.
As it passes overhead 15.7 times each day, most
Americans think little about the ISS mission or its cost. If they knew
more about it, many would say, “Who needs an ISS?” All these years
later, I now believe that the ISS program is worth its cost.
Even though its useful life may be less than ten more years, the ISS
serves us as a microcosmic reflection of Earth. There, on a
human-created, Earth-orbiting satellite, the ever-rotating crew conducts
experiments in biology, chemistry, human biology, astronomy and meteorology.
Back on Earth, we find the Mississippi River available for similar, if unplanned experiments. Looking 135 nautical miles upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana, we find the Old River Control Structure.
Only the static backpressure of its levees and control gates maintains a
precarious balance of life downstream in New Orleans. In allegorical
fashion, joints and fasteners connect the various ISS modules. Stressed
by the unrelenting vacuum of space, gas leaks on the ISS
are potentially deadly to the crew. While the ISS relies on constant
atmospheric pressure within its structure, the Old River Control
Structure relies on gravity and friction to hold back the kinetic energy
of the Mississippi River. Both structures experience unrelenting
energy, while entropy assures their ultimate demise and destruction.
As Katrina approached the Louisiana coast in August
2005, the hasty evacuation of New Orleans was a debacle. At the time,
each city, state and federal official assumed that someone else had
called for buses to provide evacuation of a poor and vulnerable
population. The public evacuation plan turned out to be a myth. Hundreds
of unused school buses
later sat ruined by the flood. As affluent and able citizens evacuated
structures to the North, a monumental traffic jam ensued. If each bus
had carried a full load that day, more people could have evacuated in
far less time. As it was, no one remained to assist the most vulnerable
and helpless residents. Leaving the sickest in their beds, a hospital
physician may have ordered lethal injections for forty-five non-ambulatory patients, prior to abandonment of the hospital.
One major difference between the International Space
Station and New Orleans is that NASA and the ISS crew cannot afford to
employ mythical thinking. If they ran the ISS in similar fashion to
pre-Katrina New Orleans, something as simple as a coolant-pump failure
could result in loss of both the 
crew
and their quarters. Effective engineering, planning and resupply are
essential to maintaining human habitation in space. New Orleans, on the
other hand, currently sits in a dry bowl, free from flooding. Since
simulations do not work well on a grand scale, we cannot properly assess
the efficacy of defenses at New Orleans. Instead, we must wait for the
next great storm in order to find out. By then it might be too late for
both New Orleans and the federal deficit. Yet today, we maintain the
fiction that New Orleans can continue its long-term defiance of the laws
of Nature.
crew
and their quarters. Effective engineering, planning and resupply are
essential to maintaining human habitation in space. New Orleans, on the
other hand, currently sits in a dry bowl, free from flooding. Since
simulations do not work well on a grand scale, we cannot properly assess
the efficacy of defenses at New Orleans. Instead, we must wait for the
next great storm in order to find out. By then it might be too late for
both New Orleans and the federal deficit. Yet today, we maintain the
fiction that New Orleans can continue its long-term defiance of the laws
of Nature. NASA provided the ISS with spare coolant pumps beyond the number of anticipated failures.
Will their planning be sufficient? I believe that the ISS has a better
chance of surviving intact for the next ten years than does the City of
New Orleans. If New Orleans, Louisiana were to flood again, the cost to
revive the city would easily surpass the estimated $160 billion lifetime
cost of the ISS.
This is not a personal prediction of death, doom and despair, but floods, fire an famine are not out of the question. Humankind has the ability use both its collective memory and its collective consciousness. If we allow a shift in consciousness, newly awakened humankind could change the future of Planet Earth.
With both the profit motive and politics at play, it is hard to
determine if our current plans are sound. If each stakeholder could
reflect upon our overall relationship with the laws of Nature, they
might see themselves as part of a larger whole. With a touch of gnost, we can understand Nature and help guide humanity’s relationship with Gaia, our Mother Earth.
Centuries ago, at a bend in the Mississippi River,
settlers created New Orleans. From that time, forward, humans continued
to build structures there with little regard for attendant environmental
consequences. As hard and fast as many stakeholder positions seem to
be, Nature can lift those stakes and carry them away like driftwood, to
the Gulf of Mexico. Since Earth is the only permanent habitat known to
humans, it behooves us to acknowledge and accommodate the laws of Nature as supreme to any laws of our own making.
Taking the laws of Nature into account, we should
study alternate weather and flood scenarios for New Orleans and its
environs. Without regard for corporate profits, property values
or political gain, independent studies and their recommendations should
again see the light of day. Once we understand the likelihood of
various weather events, we can then proceed with plans to protect only
that which is reasonable to protect.
If the hubris and ignorance of our ancestors continues in New Orleans,
we risk human-aided devastation and destruction unlike any seen on Earth
since the last days of Atlantis.
By James McGillis at 11:38 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link
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