Category Archives: OXO

After Hurricane Katrina, Poor Black Women Were Largely Ignored, Study Says

by Myrna Posted on August 28, 2015

Ten years later, some women say they feel like they were better off before the storm. Protesters block demolition equipment from entering a portion of the B.W. Cooper public housing complex in New Orleans in December 2007. Alex Brandon/AP Ten years after Hurricane Katrina displaced 40,000 people in New Orleans, opinions about the recovery can be traced along racial lines. A pair of new studies underscores that African American women, particularly those who lived in public housing, faced some of the biggest hurdles after the storm. Nearly four in five white residents in New Orleans say their state has “mostly recovered,” while nearly three in five African American residents say it has not, according to survey results released Monday by the Louisiana-based Public Policy Research Lab. More than half of all residents, regardless of race, said the government did not listen to them enough during the recovery, but African American women struggled more than any other group to return to their homes in the months and years after the hurricane, PPRL noted. On Tuesday, a study by the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that recovery policies in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina largely ignored the needs of African American women who lived in four of the city’s largest public housing complexes. These women were forced to move into more expensive housing, and some had to relocate to areas where they faced racial intimidation. Read the rest at Mother Jones. View article:  After Hurricane Katrina, Poor Black Women Were Largely Ignored, Study Says ; ; ;

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After Hurricane Katrina, Poor Black Women Were Largely Ignored, Study Says

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No One Is Ready for the Next Katrina

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

Climate change is making catastrophic floods more likely, and US politicians are doing little to prepare. NOAA/Wikimedia Commons After the storm, after the flooding, after the investigations, the US came to realize that what happened to New Orleans on August 29, 2005 was not a natural disaster. The levee system built by the US Army Corps of Engineers had structural flaws, and those flaws were awaiting the right circumstances. In that way, what happened was all but inevitable. And just as the storm is not to blame, New Orleans is not unique in its vulnerability. The city endured a lot of tsk-tsking in the aftermath of Katrina, as if the storm was the climax to a parable about poor urban planning. Sure, the city sits below sea level, at the end of hurricane alley, and relies heavily on an elaborate (and delicate) system of infrastructure. But where the city’s geography is unique, its vulnerability is anything but. Just about every coastal city, state, or region is sitting on a similar confluence of catastrophic conditions. The seas are rising, a storm is coming, and critical infrastructure is dangerously exposed. The basic math of carbon dioxide is pretty simple: Generally, as CO2 levels rise, the air will warm. Warmer air melts glaciers, which drip into the sea—even as the water itself warms, too. Both cause the oceans to rise. Even if the entire planet stopped emitting carbon dioxide, Earth would continue to suffer the effects of past emissions. “We’ve got at least 30 years of inertia in terms of sea level rise,” says Trevor Houser, a Rhodium Group economist who studies climate risk. And even if the sea weren’t rising, the rate of urban growth will more than double the area of urban land at high flood risk, according to a study Global Environmental Change published earlier this year. But the sea is rising, at about .13 of an inch per year, for the past 20 years. (It was rising before then, too, but at about half the rate for the preceding 80 years.) Another recent study calculated that the world should expect about 4 feet of sea level rise for every degree Fahrenheit the global average temperature rises. This puts nearly every coastal city, in every coastal state, in danger of floods. Climate Central has an extensive project looking at sea level risk, if you’re curious about your city’s risk. Read the rest at Wired. Read article here –  No One Is Ready for the Next Katrina ; ; ;

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No One Is Ready for the Next Katrina

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

The risk of major blazes could increase 600 percent by mid-century, say scientists. Tom Reichner/Shutterstock On the one hand, the warming atmosphere is predicted to drench many parts of the U.S. with extreme rain. On the other, for much of the year it’ll likely desiccate vast areas into brittle tinder, setting the stage for more frequent and powerful wildfires. Increasingly balmy temperatures and a steady lengthening of the wildfire season (peep what’s happening this year in Alaska and Canada) will light a flame under America’s fire potential. By mid-century, large hunks of the country—including the West, the Gulf Coast, and the forested Great Lakes—could see a sixfold increase in weeks with a threat of major fires, according to researchers at the University of Idaho, the U.S. Forest Service, and elsewhere. Using climate models, the scientists project a future where “very large fires” have ample opportunity to explode, according to a paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. This class of conflagration is responsible for charring most of the land in many parts of the nation. Aside for the above-mentioned places, the researchers say, the risk of large fires could intensify in Northern California’s Klamath Mountains and Sierra Nevada and from Florida up the East Coast. Read the rest at CityLab. See more here:  The Raging Future of American Wildfires ; ; ;

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

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19 Heartbreaking Photos of Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

Here’s what I saw in New Orleans 10 years ago. Mark Murrmann Without having been there—actually seeing it for yourself in person—it’s hard to comprehend just how hard Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, particularly the Lower Ninth Ward. When the levees broke, this neighborhood bore the brunt of the damage, altering the landscape in ways that defied logic. Roofs of houses lay in the middle of the street. Cars had been tossed around, littering yards, streets, and even front porches. Whole houses were lifted off their foundations. Personal items—remnants of people’s lives—scattered everywhere. I went there a few months after the storm, when the very slow process of cleaning and rebuilding had just begun. Houses had been checked for bodies. Bulldozers had cleared some streets. Electricians worked to ensure that power lines were no longer live. Still, it was dizzying and overwhelming to stand in the middle of it all. I couldn’t even imagine what it would have been like to have lived there. Aside from the cleanup crews, pretty much the only other people I saw in the neighborhood were photographers. At the time, these photos felt voyeuristic. In a way, they still do. But they also give a little sense of the scale and depth of the physical devastation wrought on the Lower Ninth Ward. Mark Murrmann Mark Murrman See the rest at Mother Jones. See more here:   19 Heartbreaking Photos of Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath ; ; ;

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19 Heartbreaking Photos of Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath

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Where Black Lives Matter Began

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

Hurricane Katrina exposed our nation’s amazing tolerance for black pain. Victims of Hurricane Katrina argue with National Guard Troops as they try to get on buses headed to Houston on Sept. 1, 2005. Willie Allen Jr./St. Petersburg Times/ZUMA On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, in 2010, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu preached unity. “With the rising water, differences and divisions were washed away,” he said, asking the audience to listen to each other, and embrace their common aspirations. “We will hear and we will learn the beautiful truth that Katrina taught us all,” he declared, “We are all the same.” With this, Landrieu invoked our national memory of the hurricane—a catastrophe that devastated New Orleans for all of its residents. In his own address on the fifth anniversary, President Obama struck a similar tone, with a message of rebuilding and harmony. “Five years ago we saw men and women risking their own safety to save strangers. We saw nurses staying behind to care for the sick and the injured.  We saw families coming home to clean up and rebuild—not just their own homes, but their neighbors’ homes, as well.” With the 10-year anniversary this week—Katrina’s storm surge breached the levees a decade ago on Saturday—we’ll soon see similar rhetoric from politicians and those seeking to pay respect to the storm’s victims. Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst disasters in American history: It killed more than 1,800 Americans, displaced tens of thousands more, and destroyed huge swaths of New Orleans. While the government couldn’t stop the storm, it could have prepared for the damage. But it didn’t. The days and weeks after Katrina were marked with scandalous mismanagement, as the federal government made history with its incompetence and failure. Thousands of New Orleans residents who weren’t evacuated and couldn’t escape the city were left with inadequate aid and shelter, all but abandoned by officials who couldn’t, or in some cases wouldn’t, help them. In our current remembrance, Katrina is a synonym for dysfunction and disaster, a prime example of when government fails in the worst way possible. It’s also a symbol of political collapse. George Bush never recovered from its failure, and “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” stands with “Mission Accomplished” as one of the defining lines of the administration and the era. Read the rest at Slate. View original:  Where Black Lives Matter Began ; ; ;

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Where Black Lives Matter Began

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Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina?

by Myrna Posted on August 26, 2015

Take a bird’s-eye tour of the $50 billion battle to save Louisiana. I’m driving down a dirt road in the vast tangle of coastal bayous that stretch south of New Orleans, so that Reggie Dupre can show me his pride and joy. “This is the little silver lining on the very dark cloud that was over Louisiana,” he says. In front of us, construction crews are shaping mounds of rock and dirt into a mile-long, 12-foot levy. On one side is a canal, crammed with boat traffic for the offshore oil drilling industry. On the other side is Terrabonne Parish, a rural community of commercial shrimp fishermen and oil roughnecks who rely on these waterways the same way a city kid like me relies on the subway. The levy dead-ends into a shiny new $25 million floodgate, the last line of defense against storm surges that accompany the hurricanes that frequently slam this coastline. Dupre is the director of the Terrabonne Levy and Conservation District, a county agency tasked with keeping the homes here above water. A decade ago—when Hurricane Katrina forced 1.5 million evacuations, killed nearly 2,000 people, and caused $100 billion in damage—Dupre was the parish’s representative in the Louisiana legislature in Baton Rouge. After the storm, he became a key architect of the state’s overhauled flood-control agenda, pushing through legislation to create a new state agency to manage coastal issues and working to steer tax revenue from oil drilling into coastal protection projects. Now he’s back home, overseeing projects like the one in front of us. Since Katrina, his office has built 35 miles of new levees. But the levees are just a small piece of the unprecedented transformation taking place along Louisiana’s coast. Dupre is also an evangelist for a new, broader ethos that has washed over the whole state since Katrina. Experts here agree that levees and floodwalls like this are only effective if they’re buttressed by natural barriers further out in the delta: The barrier islands and marshlands that are rapidly disappearing thanks to erosion, land subsidence, and sea level rise. Because of those forces—driven in part by a century-old practice of sealing the Mississippi River in its course and thereby starving the adjacent wetlands of nutrients and fresh water—Louisiana loses coastal land area equal to the size of a football field every hour. Before the storm, hurricane protection and coastal restoration were treated as separate, or ever competing, interests. Now, they’re one and the same. “Without Katrina, this wouldn’t be happening,” Dupre says. “We’ve gone from being the laughingstock to the model for the rest of the country.” In 2012, officials in the state’s new Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority—Dupre’s brainchild—released their most recent 50-year, $50 billion “master plan,” a sweeping document that encompasses everything from wetland restoration to elevating at-risk houses. Already, according to CPRA chair Chip Kline, the state has reconstructed 45 miles of barrier islands and restored nearly 30,000 acres of wetlands. These natural barriers slow storm surge before it reaches the levees, the first in what are known here as “multiple lines of defense.” There are also 250 miles of new levees, a two-mile storm surge barrier wall, the world’s largest pumping station (it can drain an Olympic-sized swimming pool in less than five seconds), and a host of other projects designed to control floods and stymie land loss. Kline says he’s confident that New Orleans is now safe from at least a 100-year flood (that is, a flood so severe that it has only has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring in any given year). Katrina was a 150-year flood in New Orleans. But given the realities of climate change, most experts think the city won’t be truly secure until it reaches the 500-year level. President Barack Obama agrees: Earlier this year he signed an executive order stipulating that any flood protection measures supported by federal money must meet a 500-year standard. Louisianans like Kline and Dupre contend that that standard is unreasonable and could hamper vital projects that are too expensive for the state to roll out on its own. Either way, the Louisiana coast is now a massive laboratory for the kinds of measures that coastal cities like New York and Miami will need to survive climate change. For Dupre, the stakes are clear: “If I’m not successful, my whole culture disappears.” There’s no better way to see the coast’s plight, and the scramble to save it, than from a bird’s-eye view. So Climate Desk hopped aboard a pontoon plane for an exclusive flyover. Check out the video above. More:   Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina? ; ; ;

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Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina?

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Hillary Clinton Breaks With Obama Over Arctic Drilling

by Myrna Posted on August 18, 2015

She expressed her disapproval just a day after Obama gave Shell the go-ahead. JStone/Shutterstock Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has agreed with the vast majority of President Barack Obama’s policies, but in a Tweet on Tuesday she expressed her disapproval with one: letting Shell drill for oil in the Arctic. Clinton had previously said she was “skeptical” and had “doubts” as to whether the Obama administration should have given Shell the go-ahead for exploratory drilling. The oil company’s permit from the U.S. Department of the Interior allows it to drill in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Shell halted its drilling program in the region after it lost control of a massive rig in 2012. The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it’s not worth the risk of drilling. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 18, 2015 Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Link to article:   Hillary Clinton Breaks With Obama Over Arctic Drilling ; ; ;

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Hillary Clinton Breaks With Obama Over Arctic Drilling

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Islamic Leaders Issue Bold Call for Rapid Phase Out of Fossil Fuels

by Myrna Posted on August 18, 2015

Religious scholars, experts, and teachers from around the world unite to call for climate action. ssuaphotos/Shutterstock Islamic leaders have issued a clarion call to 1.6 billion Muslims around the world to work towards phasing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and a 100 percent renewable energy strategy. The grand muftis of Lebanon and Uganda endorsed the Islamic declaration on climate change, along with prominent Islamic scholars and teachers from 20 countries, at a symposium in Istanbul. Their collective statement makes several detailed political demands likely to increase pressure on Gulf states ahead of the Paris climate summit in December. “We particularly call on the well-off nations and oil-producing states to lead the way in phasing out their greenhouse gas emissions as early as possible and no later than the middle of the century,” it says. Clear emissions reductions targets and monitoring systems should be agreed in Paris, the statement says, along with “generous financial and technical support” for poorer countries to help wean them off fossil fuels. Read the rest at The Guardian. More here:   Islamic Leaders Issue Bold Call for Rapid Phase Out of Fossil Fuels ; ; ;

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Islamic Leaders Issue Bold Call for Rapid Phase Out of Fossil Fuels

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California Is on Fire. This Map Shows Where.

by Myrna Posted on August 18, 2015

On the two-year anniversary of the Rim Fire, the state confronts more vicious blazes. A wildfire burning near Clearlake, Calif., earlier this month. Josh Edelson/AP On August 17, 2013—two years ago today—a deer hunter near California’s Yosemite National Park ignored a campfire ban and burned trash from his dinner. The embers blew into dry brush, starting the third worst wildfire in the state’s history. All told, the Rim Fire, as it came to be called, burned 257,314 acres in and around Yosemite. No wildfires of that scale have occurred since, but, thanks to drought and climate change, California is far from out of the woods. In fact, in 2015, 4,382 wildfires have already scorched a total of 117,960 acres, more than double the 5 year average for this time of year. Firefighters have finally controlled the largest two fires, in Northern California’s Jerusalem Valley, but not before the blazes razed nearly 100,000 acres. Read the rest at Mother Jones. Continued here:   California Is on Fire. This Map Shows Where. ; ; ;

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California Is on Fire. This Map Shows Where.

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Should You Install Solar Panels on Your Roof?

by locuridemuncainconstanta Posted on August 18, 2015

green4us

How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel's Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

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Farm Together Now – Amy Franseschini & Daniel Tucker

With interest in home gardening at an all-time high and concerns about food production and safety making headlines, Farm Together Now explores the current state of grassroots farming in the U.S. Part oral history and part treatise on food politics, this fascinating project is an introduction to the many individuals who are producing sustainable food, […]

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From Baghdad to America – Jay Kopelman

Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman won the hearts of readers everywhere with his moving story of adopting an abandoned puppy named Lava from a hellish corner of Iraq. He opened the door for other soldiers to bring dogs home, and in From Baghdad to America , Kopelman once again leads the pack with his observations on […]

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A Life in Stitches – Rachael Herron

In these 20 heartfelt essays, Rachael Herron celebrated romance novelist by day, 911 dispatcher by night, and founder of the hugely popular blog Yarnagogo.com shows how when life unravels there s always a way to knit it back together again, many times into something even better. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron s tales, […]

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The Other End of the Leash – Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.,

The Other End of the Leash shares a revolutionary, new perspective on our relationship with dogs, focusing on our behavior in comparison with that of dogs. An applied animal behaviorist and dog trainer with more than twenty years experience, Dr. Patricia McConnell looks at humans as just another interesting species, and muses about why we […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America's most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog's Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread

PLEASE NOTE: This is a  summary and analysis  of the book and NOT the original book.  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis   Inside this Instaread: Summary of entire book, Introduction to the important people in the book, Key Takeaways and Analysis of the Key Takeaways. […]

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Following Atticus – Tom Ryan

After a close friend died of cancer, middle-aged, overweight, acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan decided to pay tribute to her in a most unorthodox manner. Ryan and his friend, miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch, would attempt to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire's four thousand- foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity. […]

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Should You Install Solar Panels on Your Roof?

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