The next New Orleans

The author who predicted Katrina now forecasts watery catastrophe for New York, Houston and Miami in "The Ravaging Tide."

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Read more: New York, Politics, News, Miami, Global Warming, Katharine Mieszkowski

Aug. 14, 2006 | Mike Tidwell predicted Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans in his 2003 book "Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast." In his new book, "The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities," Tidwell argues that building stronger, higher levees for the ruined city, like devising better evacuation plans, amounts to treating the symptoms instead of the disease. When President Bush tells businesses and residents to return to New Orleans, Tidwell says, it's an act of "mass homicide." The multibillion-dollar plan that would have prevented the tragedy was never implemented before Katrina, and even after the storm the plan languishes.

But Tidwell's new book is about more than the fate of one city. It's a warning about a much bigger disaster looming on the horizon. "The Ravaging Tide" draws a stark parallel between the apathy now gripping the U.S. about climate change, despite all the well-documented signs, to the apathy that gripped pre-Katrina New Orleans. Tidwell argues that the sea-level rise and bigger hurricanes caused by global warming will put many cities -- including New York, Miami and Houston -- at risk of becoming the next New Orleans, ultimately endangering as many as 150 million Americans who live within 100 miles of the coast. Tidwell spoke with Salon via phone from the Maryland office where he directs the nonprofit U.S. Climate Emergency Council.

You argue that New Orleans flooded not because the levees were breached but because the levees held for so many decades. What do you mean by that?

The hurricane levees broke, but the levees on the Mississippi River held, and the levees on the lower Mississippi River have not broken since 1927. It's the taming of the Mississippi River, the three-century policy of preventing the river from flooding, that triggered catastrophic land erosion along the coast that basically created the watery flight path for Katrina to finally ruin the city.

The whole land platform of south Louisiana on which New Orleans rests was created by 7,000 years of Mississippi River flooding, depositing sediments and nutrients flowing down from two-thirds of America. This process of taming the river prevented the natural flooding that created the land and maintained the land's physical integrity over time. So, when that flooding stopped in a major way, especially in the 20th century, the land just subsided. This created 3 feet of relative sea-level rise over the course of the 20th century. About 2 feet of it was from subsidence, and about a foot of it was from global warming.

And it's that 3 feet right there that explains Katrina. Not levees. Not insufficient bottled water for evacuees. It's 3 feet of relative sea-level rise, followed by a gigantic storm. If you just got the 3 feet of relative sea-level rise, you'd have the inconvenience of disappearing wetlands, and impacts on fisheries, and drinking water turning salty, but presumably people could adapt. People wouldn't die as a result of just the land disappearing. But when the land disappears because of 3 feet of relative sea-level rise, [and that's] followed by a gigantic storm, then you have a catastrophe. And it's those two elements that are being replicated throughout the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

Because of global warming?

In Louisiana it was 3 feet of relative sea-level rise. Everywhere else it's 3 feet of absolute sea-level rise. That's because of global warming. You'll have the same repositioning of the relationship between land and water, and you'll have the same ferocious hurricanes, all because of global warming. Even the Bush administration is on record saying that because of climate change we will see between 1 to 3 feet of sea-level rise in the 21st century, and we also know that hurricanes are becoming more ferocious. And again, these are the two conditions that destroyed New Orleans.

You write that the president telling people to return to New Orleans now is an act of "mass homicide," like sending civilians into the path of a tsunami. Why is that?

The president and all the offices of the federal government combined have done nothing at all to treat the disease that killed New Orleans. They've haphazardly tried to treat the symptoms, to improve the hurricane levees, to create better evacuation plans, to have more supplies pre-positioned for subsequent hurricanes. These are all symptoms. The disease in south Louisiana has been catastrophic land loss, and there's been a plan that's been on the table to reverse that land loss, since the '90s. And for reasons that are truly inexplicable, this government refuses to invest any real money into that plan.

Therefore, if you tell people to go back and you tell them to repair their homes and re-enroll their children in schools in New Orleans, and you've done nothing to treat the disease, then the cancer is going to return. New Orleans is still catastrophically vulnerable to another Katrina. Nothing substantive has been done to protect the city from another record surge tide. The only thing that can protect that city from mammoth surge tides from future hurricanes is to rebuild the land that has been lost. There's a plan on the table, and it's not expensive, certainly not compared to other ways that we spend money. Fourteen billion dollars to substantively rebuild barrier islands and begin rebuilding wetlands is about the cost of six weeks of fighting in Iraq, or the cost of the Big Dig in Boston.

Next page: Will Miami or New York be the next New Orleans?