Will the Greens Apologize to New Orleans?
When will the environmentalists apologize to the people of New Orleans? For decades, the Greens have sued to stop virtually every effort to strengthen the city’s levees. They also prevented the construction of floodgates at the sea entrances of Lake Pontchartrain that could have stopped the storm surge from reaching the city at its historically most-vulnerable point.
Why did the environmental movement betray the residents of the city?
One lawsuit against levees said that “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species.” The suit was filed by the Sierra Club, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Wildlife Federations of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.
But the Louisiana black bear is not a species.
Black bears are numerous over most of North America. In the Lower Mississippi, the black bear’s big problems are the past loss of forestland (now stabilized), and illegal hunting. If it weren’t for the pet dogs and guns in New Orleans, city residents would have to chase garbage-loving black bears out of the French Quarter on a nightly basis.
It’s hard to believe the levee lawsuits were primarily to save the black bears. Certainly, the activists had a vision of wild rivers, flooding unfettered in the spring flushes, and sweeping away before them everything “unnatural”—like cities and farms.
Jeffrey Stein of American Rivers testified before Congress in 2000, saying that “levees that temporarily protect floodplain farms have reduced the frequency, extent and magnitude of high flows, robbing [the Mississippi] of its ability . . . to sustain itself.”
Mr. Stein did not mention that he was asking us to choose between a few more black bears and a city with a million residents and a rich historic tradition.
Come to think of it, some activist judges might also pen a mea culpa or two. In 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. issued an injunction against the Army Corps of Engineers’ project to install floodgates on Lake Pontchartrain. He wrote, “plaintiffs herein have demonstrated that they, and in fact all persons in this area, will be irreparably harmed if the barrier project . . . is allowed to continue.”
I wonder if “all the persons in this area” would today agree with the judge that the floodgates would have caused them “irreparable harm.”
What about the nation’s taxpayers who may have to pay $100 billion to clean up and restore flooded New Orleans?
I want America to preserve lots of black bears, eagles, elk—and even the ivory-billed woodpecker that was thought to be extinct and was recently videotaped in the dank wetlands of Arkansas.
Thanks to modern technology, however, humans no longer have to hunt black bears to extinction in order to eat. Thanks to high-yield tree farming-and waste-based products like chipboard-we don’t have to clear the nation’s wild forests to build adequate housing.
We must, however, use good judgment on the real risks that face people and wildlife. The Green movement either didn’t understand the power of Mother Nature, or didn’t care about the city of New Orleans. Before Katrina, FEMA had identified a big hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the worst natural disasters that was likely to befall America. Had the Sierra Club come to the same conclusion? If not, why not?
