Dangerous Environmentalists

I believe we are obligated to protect the environment. I think we have a duty to care for it. We must be mindful of the earth that we are passing on to our children and their children and their children.

I do everything in my power to conserve. Wastefulness drives me crazy. I truly consider it sinful to abuse our planet.

But--

That does not mean I believe that we should have a "hands off" policy, with zero tolerance toward development. Common sense must be used to find a balance between making wise decisions in regard to the environment and our quality of life.

Michael Tremoglie wrote a very enlightening piece for FrontPageMagazine.

New Orleans: A Green Genocide

As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on President Bush’s ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left – pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical “diversity” over human life – sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, “Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain.”

“The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain,” declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. “This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain,” Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6. The professor concluded, “[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina.”

The New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers and Professor Stone were not the only people cognizant of the consequences that could and did result because of the environmental activists. While speaking with Sean Hannity on his radio show on Labor Day, former Louisiana Congressman and Speaker of the House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litigation prevented hurricane prevention projects.

In other words, unlike other programs – including the ones leftists like Sid Blumenthal excoriated the president for not funding – these constructions might have prevented the loss of life experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, “Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system.” Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. Further, SOWL’s recollection of this case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfidious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dreaded capitalist investment.

On December 30, 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. issued an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain hurricane protection project, demanding the engineers draw up a second environmental impact statement, three years after the corps submitted the first one. In one of the most ironic pronouncements of all time, Judge Schwartz wrote, “it is the opinion of the Court that plaintiffs herein have demonstrated that they, and in fact all persons in this area, will be irreparably harmed if the barrier project based upon the August, 1974 FEIS [federal environmental impact statement] is allowed to continue.”

...Despite the mayor’s apparent incompetence, these floodgates environmental activists sued to prevent from being constructed may have kept a flood from consuming the city to the extent it did in the first place. The current programs aimed at reinforcing existing levees but would only prove effective against a level three hurricane; they were not adequate for a level five storm like Katrina. Moreover, they did not fortify the specific areas the government sought to protect, to keep Lake Pontchartrain from flooding the entire city, which everyone knew posed a danger to a city below sea level. In other words, this plan would have saved thousands of lives and kept one of the nation’s greatest cities from lying in ruins for a decade.

At a minimum, such a plan would have staved off a significant portion of the disaster that’s unfolded before our eyes.

Worse yet, the environmentalists’ ultimate decision to reinforce existing levees may have actually further harmed the Big Easy. There is at least one expert who claims the New Orleans levees made no difference – in fact, they contributed to the problem. Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane Center and Director of the Center for the Study Public Health Impacts by Hurricanes Ivor van Heerden said, “The levees ‘have literally starved our wetlands to death’ by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Tremoglie's revelation is stunning in that it shows how destructive radical environmentalist policies can be. These far Left extremists claim to be in the business of protecting, not destroying. Tragically, their success in pushing their agenda may have resulted in thousands of deaths.

Now, flashback to a week ago Tuesday, when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was bloviating on the Huffington Post. Then, it was widely assumed that New Orleans had dodged the worst of Katrina's destruction. None of the massive damage and death caused by the flooding in New Orleans had occurred.

However, at the time of Kennedy's post, he knew that Mississippi had taken a direct hit from Katrina. Nonetheless, in the wake of that devastation, Kennedy gleefully blamed Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and the policies of the Bush administration for causing Hurricane Katrina. He disgracefully showed no compassion whatsoever for the victims in Mississippi.

Kennedy argued that the Kyoto Protocol could have spared the Gulf Coast. He chastised Barbour for calling mandatory CO2 caps "eco-extremism." In effect, Kennedy blamed Bush and Barbour for creating Katrina.

Well, I have no problem blaming environmentalists, like Kennedy, for putting lives at risk in the name of "protecting" the environment.

Tremoglie's article exposes the disastrous reality of the "eco-extremism" that Kennedy and those of his Leftist radical ilk promote.

Kennedy said, "Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."

It may be more appropriate to say that Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the death and destruction caused by the policies of radical environmentalists.