After Katrina

In one of her Newsweek columns, Anna Quindlen has some choice remarks:

there has been no powerful national leadership from either party on this front in recent memory. Political officials have bowed to the public's thirst for more, more, more.it is going to become harder and harder to overcome the effects of blind overgrowth even for those of means. Get ready for the $100 tank of gas, and an Armageddon of our own making.We have been crummy stewards of the Earth, with a sense of knee-jerk entitlement that tells us there is always more where this came from. There isn't.

A Peak Oil blogger from the southern States, Aaron, wrote entries titled, katrina: will we simply react? and we must plan for ourselves. I ask: what really should be the lessons of Hurricane Katrina? It's not merely that we ought be self-sufficent in the short-term.

We need look at the bigger picture. Historical circumstances, including government actions and inactions, led to the vulnerability of the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some factors are: poverty, complacency, lack of will, expedience, inattention to the consequences on the natural environment (with the erosion of the marsh lands) and inadequate standards in the design and construction of the floodwall foundations.

Similar circumstances make us vulnerable to oil shortages. But we can expect those shortages to be increasing, permanent and global. Who is going to bail us out then?

So the survivalists may have it right, not only for their personal survival but as an ethical statement. The caching of industrial goods won't cut it. Rather, long-term survival for our species may require real local self-sufficiency. But what place is still natural and temperate enough (the South?) to support human survival, and who is courageous enough to shun outside dependencies and prepare for the worst?