Houston - A Few Words from James Howard Kunstler
Back in the day I followed Kunstler, but for the last few years he's been an old man yelling at clouds more often than not. Today's rant actually had a bit of the old sparkle.
He leads off with the money quote...
Mostly, it is inconceivable that the business activity which made Houston the nation’s fourth largest city and, according to Chris Martenson, equal to the 10th largest economy in the world, will ever return to what it was before August 26, 2017.
I have no idea who Chris Martenson is, don't really care. "inconceivable that the business activity ... will ever return to what it was ..."
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Harvey marks the high-water mark for the city of Houston. There will still be a city there, people, businesses, etc. for a while, but it will never again be what it was.
Collapse always starts from the peak. You only know the peak in hindsight.
The major activity there has been the refining and distribution of oil products, and no activity is more central to the functioning of the US economy. So the public and our currently clueless leaders across the political spectrum, plus a legacy news media lost in the carnival of race and gender freak shows, is about to discover the dynamic relationship between energy and an industrial economy.
...
no amount of federal aid can compensate for the hours, days, and weeks that will tick by as businesses struggle to return to something like their former level of normal operation.
...
Many businesses will never recover, especially the smaller ones that support the big one — the little tool and die shops, the construction outfits, the trucking and shipping concerns, the riggers and pipefitters, the cement companies, and so on. All of that activity existed in highly rationalized chains of on-time production and service and nothing will be on-time in Houston for a long time to come.
Any hope for the national economy is sitting in five feet of dirty water.
Meanwhile Congress is left to dither over two conjoined financial emergencies at once: authorizing emergency aid to Houston, and resolving the debt ceiling problem.
All before they can accomplish their true mission, tax cuts. So far they've failed to accomplish anything, as the stakes increase will they rise to the occasion?
Comments
I heard one resident lament
"We just rebuilt from last year's flooding, and now we have to rebuild again".
What if this happens every year from now on?
At what point does this fall under Einstein's definition of insanity?
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating
Whenever there is a natural disaster in this country, cities and states shouldn't have to wait for congress to decide on whether they will send financial aid to them. This is why we pay our taxes.
The funding should be automatically available and no pork can be added to this.
This was one of the reasons why Cruz voted against the Sandy funding. It was loaded with so much pork, the amount of money that would go towards rebuilding New Jersey was insignificant.
I agree that Houston is never going to be the same again.
I wonder how safe the water supply is after the oil refineries and other plants have contaminated the flood waters?
Good essay.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I'm afraid you are the victim
of propaganda, Snoopydawg. There was little to no pork in the Sandy relief legislation.
It was the slow rollout of funds that gave the impression of waste or pork.
It takes years to organize and gather construction crews to actually rebuild such widely scattered devastation.
A number of fact checking and government studies have shown 99% of the relief funds went to actual storm damages or infrastructure to mitigate this damage from happening again.
A simple Google search will show Cruz was grandstanding then, and now.
Otherwise, good comment.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
That article really says it straight . . .
I posted it on Facebook.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Will Soros be charged with sedition? For what happened in C'vil?
Let's hope so. I see his actions in trying to create the violence in C'ville and other cities as the definition of sedition. He's trying to get people on opposite sides to create havoc and to use violence against each other.
Petition to Declare George Soros a ‘Terrorist’ & Seize His Assets Gains 70k Signatures
Would this type of activity be happening if he hadn't funded it? I don't think that it would. Sure there are many white supremacists, but I doubt that they care very much about the civil war statues. Sure they'd be quite happy to see Blacks back in their roles as slaves, but there isn't any way that this is going to happen.
Besides when the confederate flag was removed from many state houses, they were nowhere to be found.
Great essay. Again. I look forward to the commentary.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Jeeze, Snoopydawg
Are you saying we here at c99% have something in common with Breitbart denizens?
That site is filled with Soros this and Soros that, and his being the cause of everything from the Crusades onward.
Don't get me wrong, I think everybody with that kind of wealth is a malevolent force, until proven otherwise. And maybe taking him down would send a strong message to the rest of the oligarchy and be a net plus.
Then again, maybe this IS something the two sides can unite on.
Just some of that commentary you were looking forward to.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I have a lot in common with both the Democrats & Republicans
And when you stop to think about it, it makes total sense. Each partisan side is utterly blind to their own faults yet sees the other side's faults mostly clearly. I overlap strongly in the following areas:
- Democrats pointing out failings of Republicans
- Republicans pointing out failings of Democrats
Where we tend to disagree is on the successes:
- Democrats lauding the successes of Democrats
- Republicans lauding the successes of Republicans
The same general thinking applies to the likes of Breitbart although there, like GOS, the signal to noise ratio is mostly awful.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
When you've got the time tp figure out
What Soros is really up to,like the Soros/Hillary/VictoriaNuland coup against the people of the Ukraine, as those three want the resources of the shale oil fields of the Ukraine for themselves, and then when you realize Soros is using the Ukraine playbook to start a civil war here, you might finally understand what Soros is about.
And it is not simply RW folks, but us indies also get that Soros is up to no good.
Does he fund every single protester at any protest? No, but he sure sees to it that the protests happen. And I speculate that he has both Antifa actors and The Nazi Supremacists on his payroll.
Believing in the improbable can make your life a miracle.
Has Soros been funding the
antifa or those anarchists dressed in black.
Does anyone know who any of those people are?
dfarrah
I couldn't say as far as individuals
Acting out as violence-prone antifas or violence prone Supremacists.
Lorraine Adams wonderful novel "Harbor" gives us an amazing insight into how acts of violence, like the Boston Marathon or Heyer's murder in Charlottesville, are carried out. For whatever reason, the alphabet agencies value those who will do violence, and I suppose since they need to re-use such individuals, they often have patsies lined up to take the actual fall when some event occurs. (The book is a great read on its own, but informative as well.)
I will say this - Amy Goodman has been on Soros' payroll for some time. She gets the green light on various events that Soros has no stake in, so the public found her doing exemplary work on the Standing Rock protests. But her work on Syria was misinformation, as was her work on the Ukraine.
And she was carefully steered away from reporting on ANYTHING relating to voting malfeaasance back in 2004. That was a year when I was heavily invested, in terms of time, on voting matters like Black Box voting, vulnerability of electronic machinery to have the vote count flipped internally through programming, etc. Goodman wanted nothing to do with that topic. Then in like the summer of 2016, she had a few programs on such. Way to go Amy - right before an election, let's worry about something that needed to be done ten years earlier!
She also stayed away from anything relating to decent work done regarding the fishiness of Nine Eleven's Official Story.
Here is an account of funding for Democracy Now!:
Who is funding Amy Goodman and more about her:
I was a regular watcher of Democracy Now. I hardly watch it now.
From CNW - who is a remarkable researcher and who posts on several other blogs I am on:
Serious questions have arisen about how Democracy Now!, begun and developed with the resources of Pacifica Radio and grants from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund and others, suddenly became independent and the effective property of Amy Goodman without recompense to Pacifica. This transfer apparently included valuable assets such as trademarks, ownership of years of archived programs, affiliate station access, and more.
CNW goes on: In a contract that remains secret, Amy Goodman is also receiving $1 million per year for a five-year period that began in 2002, according to Pacifica Treasurer Jabari Zakiya, to continue doing what has become Pacifica’s flagship morning news program. This is more than double Goodman’s officially stated stipend of $440,000 per year from Pacifica Radio.
Democracy Now! receives indirect funding from George Soros, and direct funding from the Ford Foundation, the Glaser Foundation, Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Tides Foundation, and other left-leaning foundations.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6891
——————————————————————————————
[Update, July 3, 2011. I did a lot more digging about Amy Goodman after posting the brief commentary seen below on June 29. I now see that Amy is at the helm of a huge Leftist propaganda machine -of which she is the principle owner- called Democracy Now! that reported assets of over 13 million in 2007. She earns over one million a year in salary from Pacifica alone, but is also syndicated over 800 radio and TV statins and has a newspaper column carried by Hearst Publications under their subsidiary King Features. Her actual yearly earnings are probably in the 2-4 million range-and all of it tax free.
Beyond her salary, there is funding for Democracy Now! in the range of 1.9 million a year Ford Foundation,
The Kaplan Foundation,
the Pew Charitable Trust,
and more than one foundation owned by George Soros.
I plan to post much more information about who Amy Goodman is and how she uses the cover story or fearless reporter, muckracker, and defender of the powerless and oppressed as a stage setting to become very rich, while carrying water for her globalist paymasters with every step she takes along the gold brick road of Illumimated gatekeeper….Ken]
From Ken Adachi, Editor
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/amygoodman29jun11.shtml
Someone at another site stated Amy's salary is around $ 148,000 a year, a mere pittance when you realize that Maddow makes $ 30,000 per show. And that Jon Stewart used to make 12 million per year for "The Daily Show"
https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=11344
A link to information about Pacific Radio and how they are intertwined with
the establishment
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/feldman1partpacificademocracynowdeepdisht...
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Believing in the improbable can make your life a miracle.
Don't forget the famous black earth
of the Ukraine, which is coveted by international agribiz. Pre-coup, Ukrainian soil could only be owned by Ukrainian citizens. Not now.
Mary Bennett
The whole situation
There in the Ukraine is so tragic and so scary.
If you know enough to make an OP, I would love to read it. One thing that gave me a bit of info was Oliver Stone's recent interview with Putin. Putin lays out a lot of what went on in the Ukraine. I have heard that the interview is available on Showtime.
Believing in the improbable can make your life a miracle.
If you would
take a few minutes to listen to their side, you would be surprised how much our concerns overlap theirs.
dfarrah
I have spent a lot of time @Breitbart
That is how I discovered their hatred of Soros.
They also dislike the New World Order as well as globalist banksters.
We've a lot in common.
As SnappleBC noted above, a whole lot of signal to noise ratio thats just awful to go through.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Agree. I hear Alex
Jones for 10-15 mins., 3-4 times a week - mostly becuz I'm too lazy to change the am station - enough to know he's not Totally bat$h!t crazy. His War on the Globalists is on the money. His problem is he doesn't think Repubs are on the side of the Globalists.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Yeah, his kind of Republicans
are against Globists. It's the establishment Repubs that are fully on board.
Samo samo on this side, establishment demos (Dnc, Clinton's, and their ilk) are pushing for the NWO and global hegemony while their former base...us...are totally in opposition.
The oligarchy are winning the battle of Divide and Conquer.
In fact, they are kicking our asses on both sides. You would think at some point we would all become so embarrassed by this rout that we would join together. But nooooo!
Too much pride or something, on both sides.
Sad. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Is that a petition started by AIPAC?
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
The Free Thought Project
has been burned. I clicked on the "Antifa Terrorist" link and was taken to a Google Play retailer app.
They were once an excellent site for police brutality. Not going back for any downloads or stories myself.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Huh???
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
I have relatives there, back @ home after evacuating
None is employed. They adopt kids.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
In the 1970s, I knew a Baptist pastor from Texas whose family
lived on public monies he received, for adopting older kids that nobody else would take.
Jim Kunstler
is always right, is what I have experienced. I stopped reading him because he's too scary. Thank you for this, for getting me to start reading him again.
Posted
that someone was re-writing my recent comments. I now think I was heat stroked. Scary. I apologize. Not used to temperatures over 100 for 3 days in the Bay Area.
-----
Change your password.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
I did.
I'm going through my recent postings and finding some are re-written. And I wrote to the Admin.
Since writing to the
Admin., it appears my postings are what I originally wrote, as far as I've checked so far. Unique experience.
At some point the crop failures will occur.
The elites will be pretending REALLY HARD that it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with climate change.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Maybe Earth really will end up like in the movie “Interstellar”:
High-school principal in the trailer: “The world doesn't need any more engineers. We didn't run out of planes and television sets … we ran out of food.”
The end is in sight.
Great read. Thanks for sharing it with us. Some of us knew how irrelevant our government and media had become. Soon, everyone will know. A choice will have to be made - war and globalism or the survival of the United States. Wonder what they will pick. My bet is on them saving their own asses and devil takes the hindmost.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
The wars will continue
until citizen morale improves.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
I think you mean James Kunstler,
Howard being the lawyer of 70s fame. Maybe they are related?
And, yes, James has issues lately, over the last few years. I think it might have recently dawned on him that all those uncool, white sox wearing rubes, who all seemed so ridiculous to high urbanite sophisticates back in the day, were folks who built stuff, and is perhaps suffering from the effects of a case of pretty severe, I would guess, cognitive dissonance. Not to mention that after three, I believe it is, marriages and God only knows how many "relationships", he would appear to be again between attachments--pure speculation on my part, but I note that references to his partner ceased to appear about the time a new Sexy Middle Aged Guy photo, with arms upraised to enfold the new love of his life, appeared on his blog. To me, he seems to be fast becoming another aging boomer male whining about "feminism".
I know, meeeooowww, didn't get my cream, but the guy expects to be taken seriously on a range of topics outside the areas like urban planning and architecture where he has done some research and thought, and he gives himself permission to issue wholesale insults to various groups, while reacting with extreme offense to complaints about him. Frankly, I don't give a %^&* what POC activist tweeted or emailed what comment about what talk he might have given at what university.
The best part of his site continues to be Eyesore of the Month, which is hilarious.
Mary Bennett
Thanks for catching that
title updated.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
I've never seen
his blog or read anything about his personal life. I think he's right in his books.
In "Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation" he makes a lot of points that should be obvious but still aren't, especially around the possibility that solar power has not, and maybe will not have, the capacity to provide enough power to air-condition the South and it's car culture way of life. He points out the possibility that fracking produces less energy than it takes to extract its resources and that it is being engaged in simply for the subsidies.
So far, I think he has been ahead of the curve. What makes him seem wild-eyed is that he's saying things even the most dedicated environmentalist doesn't want to hear, I think, things like, we aren't going to stop climate change by making zillions of plastic solar panels to air-condition our shopping centers, to run our cars, or to recharge our smart phones. We still want all this stuff, including the asphalt roads to get from here to our jobs running computers so we can make a difference in the world.
He's saying that's Magical Thinking and that we're going to have to go back to a much simpler way of life, which when I think about it has some very scary things about it.
Someone
has edited my response. I did not post the words I'm writing in response to here. Similar points, but not my words. What's going on, C99%?
What do you mean, Linda Wood?
I remember reading and uprating it shortly after you posted it, and it looks about the same to me. I mean, I don't have a photographic memory, but it looks about the same.
What was changed? Is anyone else at home or wherever you are who could have messed with it?
It's been reworded
and expanded upon. And it's probably somewhat better written. It's definitely longer. I don't have a copy of what I wrote, but no one had access to my account or my computer during the time between when I posted my response and now. It's probably better written than what I posted, its certainly longer. Unique experience.
Well,
it appears to be as I posted is at this point. Has anyone had this experience today or ever on this site?
Linda...
I received your email about this so I went to the logs and checked out the posts that where made by you according to the time stamp on your original comment. There are indeed two comments posted by you at that time but both are worded exactly the same, no difference. In the logs the the first comment was made at 12:08 and the second was posted at 12:10, that suggest to me that the second comment was an edit of the first one made at 12:08, but the wording is exactly the same in both of them.
I also checked the IP number of the computer/device that was used to post the comments from and the IP numbers matches exactly. So if indeed the first comment was edited in the second comment, they were both from the same computer/ device.
Very strange. Both comments were worded exactly the same and both have the same IP numbers. Both comments came from the same source.
I'm going over
the comments I believed were edited, (notice the word "believed,") and so far they seem to be as I wrote them. Thank you for your efforts.
I think I may have been experiencing a heat stroke problem. I apologize for the distraction.
oh, me dummy can solve this mystery
because I ain't a geek, just an easily to be confused imbecile.
See, if I want to post a comment to another comment and the one I am responding to is high up somewhere and I have to scroll upwards to find it again, then I do the following:
Instead of scrolling back upwards (often it takes several tries to find it, because the damn laptop is so sensitive and always scrolls up too fast and over the comment I am looking for), then I rather open another window with the same comment thread and keep it open. (because you, dear JtC, have unfortunately not anymore the feature of putting the number of a comment, like for example 1.2.2.1.1 of yours, somewhere for us to see when we have to scroll upwards to find the comment again we are answering to. You had this in the very beginning and then somewhow dropped it and didn't offer it any longer. I am just saying, that I regret you dropped that little helping number (I think it was under every comments avatar). It made searching for a comment in a long thread so much easier.
I write a comment and accidentically post it. Then I have several windows open with the C99p threads and comment window open. If I go back to the one window where I was writing the comment in that I didn't post yet, I think I post them again.
You see, it's important to post comments. So better twice than never. Sez my little brain... /s
https://www.euronews.com/live
Mimi, you should be able to
You should be able to adjust the scrolling behavior. If you tell me what type of laptop, I might be able to find instructions online and post a link for you.
By type I mean brand and model or model number if you can find it. Sometimes that info is under the battery. For example: Lenovo ThinkPad T Series.
I read
The Long Descent about 15 years ago., which was truly an eyeopener, but since that time I find his contributions to be either obvious or a rehash of we already know.
As cultural critic, complaining about everything from Cheetos to people's clothing to SJWs picking on him, I don't find his contributions of much use.
Mary Bennett
If you've read more
of his writing than I have, I respect the fact that you may have read unsupportable things. But in his basic premise that we are kidding ourselves about finding a technical solution to our technological assault on nature, I think he is right. And I think in his unique and often humorous criticism of our approaches, he gets our attention and makes very important points.
Let's see... go back to
Roaring '20s or buy a bazillion solar panels. We're gonna buy a boatload of solar panels.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
william kunstler
iirc
Thanks
William Kunstler was my first thought and I've been wondering "but who is William" while running thru this thread. Saved me a google!
The lawyer was William Moses Kunstler n/t
Thank you
for the correction.
Mary Bennett
Wait a minute — now I’m really confused.
According to Wikipedia, the writer’s name is James Howard Kunstler — does that mean “James Kunstler” and “Howard Kunstler” refer to the exact same person?
On the other hand, the famous radical lawyer that I remember from the 1960s and 1970s was named William Kunstler.
I think that
is correct.
Mary Bennett
I have been wondering when we would reach a tipping point
where climate change became enough of a hindrance to money making that the real power brokers would begin to call for action. As I watched this storm unfold I was thinking that if there is any silver lining here it is that big oil would be experiencing karma. This is unless the taxpayers continue to bail out recklessness and shortsightedness. I too had been avoiding Kunstler but I'm glad you paid attention WoodsDwellar.
There's other business besides oil in Houston
The headquarters of Dell computers is nearby and all the NASA stuff. Hurricane Irma is starting to look pretty scary.
Irma
Beware the bullshit factories.
Dell is located in Round Rock, TX
Which is part of the Greater Austin metro.
Not really much outside of the Oil Bidness...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
OK thanks for the correction
I'm sure all effort will be made to restore the liquid dinosaur business ASAP.
Beware the bullshit factories.
HP, formerly Compaq
At least their headquarters used to be in northwest Houston. Not sure if they still are.
Lots of industry has to do with oil, though. I've worked at a couple of machine shops, machining flanges and big valve bodies for rigs, and giant fan shafts and 60 foot tubes similar to air conditioner coils for refineries. It's precarious even when there's no natural disaster, because it's all based on oil prices. Lots of waves of hiring and laying off.
James Howard Kunstler, Jim Kunstler, William Moses Kunstler ..
huh?
who?
what's the matter with "us"?
https://www.euronews.com/live
I read Kunsler back in the day, too.
I still read him now and then.
He has a unique understanding of the economy of energy — oil in this case — that goes beyond numbers and translates out into how people live and how the future unfolds on a day-to-day level. Kunstler moves faster than time, all predictors do, but I think his predictions make sense, as long as nothing too disruptive happens while we wait for that future to catch up with us. Unanticipated things happen that can divert social predictions — and they often do. But massive planetary trends are generally too big to fail. Thus, people can do a little reading and immediately discover what's going to happen where they are currently standing. In that sense, they own the future.
We've known this was in process since before the 1980s and have based our foreign policy on its inevitability. There was never any question that the Gulf of Mexico will be submerged in our lifetimes. I had the opportunity to look at Katrina through the eyes of the Houston oil guys:
"The mouth of the Mississippi had been diverted at a time when nature was tame, and New Orleans grew over and around it, but that won't last much longer, either. The Gulf cities will be gone soon, nothing can change that reality, and it's not a secret. The Army Corps of Engineers are not building dykes, they're outlining shipping channels. If the refinaries aren't there, the pipelines we are building will offload the oil onto ships and the private owners will still profit. The people were never part of this calculation. No accommodation has been being made for them. Either they are smart enough to leave those regions and make a life elsewhere, or they are off the books and forgotten. It's their choice. They know what's coming."
The same holds true in all US coastal regions.
This part of Kunstler's essay caught my eye:
It's all about positioning yourself so you are not left holding the bag. Americans are pretty much on their own.
That's not even considering the Atchafalaya Diversion,
which will happen sometime in the foreseeable future. The Mississippi captured the (northern) Red River several hundred years ago, sucked the inflow into itself, and started spitting out the outflow as the Atchafalaya. Massive logjams slowed the process, until humans broke them up and cut through the horseshoe bend that was another delaying factor. All of a sudden, whoopsie, Ole Miss started going away from New Orleans -- and this was no longer permissible.
Enter the US Army Corps of Engineers and their efforts to throttle down the Atchafalaya outflow to a manageable level (~30% of the Mississippi's flow). They've been at it since the 1950s, they keep elaborating on the structures, and they've had several close calls (most recently in 2011). Eventually the Old River Control Structures will fail and the river will have its way - but no one knows exactly when or under what circumstances.
When that happens, New Orleans dies. And Big Oil takes a massive, possibly fatal, wound.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
NN18 is in Nawlins
next year for some reason. Never having been there, nor no desire to, I never took a close look at the city of N.O. So, I got out Google Maps and took a look, looking for a nearby hotel. Wow! The city is damn near built in the Gulf. I'm surprised the French Quarter is above water. Why would any insurance company provide flood insurance to anyone in that city, and why would The Government continue to bail out this town? And, granted, Houston is a bit further inland, but I suspect Pluto is right. By 2030 there won't be a Nawlins. At least not as presently exists. The city literally hugging the Gulf is unsustainable.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.