Global Greenie

When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized spending for volcano monitoring, those of you outside of the Pacific Northwest might have nodded in agreement.  In this economic climate, it’s easy to forget the cost of natural disasters.  How would Jindal like it if someone took away hurricane monitoring?

I just spent a long weekend in and around New Orleans, my second time there since Katrina, and probably my 35th to 40th visit in my life.  My mom’s from NOLA and her whole side of the family still has deep roots there.  If there’s another storm, should they be expected to leave forever?  To never rebuild?

Those are tough questions.  Seattle is close enough to Mt. Ranier that the USGS has produced a four-page document entitled Mount Rainier—Living Safely With a Volcano in Your Backyard (click for .pdf)  And on a (rare) clear day, I can see the active Mt. St. Helens from here within Portland city limits.

On Friday, we were to attend my cousin’s wedding, but my wife and I rushed down to Barataria Preserve in Jean Lafitte National Park — one of our favorite places in southern Louisiana.  It flooded since the last time we were there — due to Hurricane Ike.  I was told that many of the wild irises and other plants died from salt water/storm surge, but I have to say, the area looks pretty good to me.

I saw no fewer than five snakes, a turtle, some frogs, and a few birds in less than an hour.  I do recall hundreds of armadillos last time, and I didn’t see any, but I think they weren’t a native species anyway.  Perhaps the hurricane did them in, but it’s more likely that they were eradicated in some formal program.

If you’ve never been in a bayou, watch this video.  It’s fun to listen to a few seconds of the sound from the airboat, but then you might want to mute the sound and just watch.

Pretend you live there, that your livelihood comes from that water, and that you either can’t afford or aren’t allowed to rebuild.  Pretend your family moved there hundreds of years ago and that they still speak a form of French today.  Where will you go?

Although I tend to write about what I’m doing to change my impact on the environment, it’s important to think of these issues globally.  If you’re a visual person, you’ll appreciate Breathing Earth, a site I found using Stumble Upon.

Breathing Earth is a running counter of births and deaths worldwide and the number of tons of carbon dioxide emitted.  If you mouseover a particular country, the stats display.  In the screen capture above, I hovered over South Africa, where I spent three weeks last year.  Notice that their birth and death rates are fairly equal, likely due to the HIV/AIDS crisis there.  But South Africa’s CO₂ emission rate is 1000 tons every 90 seconds, while the United States generates the same amount every 5.4.

Another captivating feature of the site is that countries turn red each time they emit an additional 1000 tons.  Symbols appear for each birth and death.  It doesn’t take long to see which ones are causing the most problems.