FLOODING IN HOUSTON CAME AFTER RABID CAPITALISM PAVED PARADISE AND PUT UP PARKING LOTS

Feeling Rebloggy

Houston is America’s fourth largest city. Its zoning laws are largely nonexistent. Many of the city’s neighborhoods were constructed at or below the flood plain.

Basic common-sense rules and guidelines about designing building codes and infrastructure that could survive severe flooding have been overruled in favor of unregulated growth of.

This has been a dream come true for the rich and for real estate entrepreneurs.

But it is now a nightmare made real for Houston, as oil and chemical facilities sit (closest to black and brown) residential communities and the people are potentially being poisoned by toxic flood waters and air.

~Chauncey DeVega, Salon.com

Read More: http://www.salon.com/2017/08/31/disaster-capitalism-in-action-corporate-greed-made-harvey-worse-now-comes-the-cash-grab/

Since Houston, Texas was founded nearly two centuries ago, Houstonians have been treating its wetlands as stinky, mosquito-infested blots in need of drainage.

Even after it became a widely accepted scientific fact that wetlands can soak up large amounts of flood water, the city continued to pave over them. The watershed of the White Oak Bayou river, which includes much of northwest Houston, is a case in point. From 1992 to 2010, this area lost more than 70% of its wetlands, according to research (pdf) by Texas A&M University.

~Quartz

Read More: 

https://qz.com/1064364/hurricane-harvey-houstons-flooding-made-worse-by-unchecked-urban-development-and-wetland-destruction/

More than one scientist has said the destruction of Louisiana's wetlands is the reason the storm surge hit New Orleans levees so hard during Hurricane Katrina. And why are the wetlands gone there too?  More rapid capitalism and not enough environmental laws.

White, mostly republicans, keep voting for people that aim to kill and live on a hill above the flood plane because republicans have been dog whistling their white racism to moderate levels for decades using things like Southern Strategy. 

But now Trump is bull-horning the white supremacy over them. And they're going to get their small government desires right in the neck any minute now.

Ten days before Hurricane Harvey descended upon Texas on Friday, wreaking havoc and causing widespread flooding, President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking a set of regulations that would have made federally funded infrastructure less vulnerable to flooding...

But because of Trump's rollback of President Barack Obama's Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, experts across the political spectrum say much of the federal money sent to Texas is likely to be wasted on [re-]construction that will insufficiently protect against the next storm.

businessinsider.com

'

read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-reversed-obama-flooding-regulations-before-hurricane-harvey-2017-8

The republicans know this doesn't matter to their base though. By the time the next storm hits, ignorant white supremacists that voted for Trump -- who are left alive -- will believe President Obama was in charge during Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina both.

BIG YELLOW TAXI

TWO CHOICES FOR SOME IN FLORIDA AND ALASKA: MOVE OR PERISH

Feeling  Rebloggy 

The water has been inching closer to Rita Falgout’s house, lapping at the edges of her front yard. Her home is one of 29 in Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island in the bayous of southeastern Louisiana that is slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The island, home to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw and the United Houma Nation tribes, is reached by a lone road that passes through the marshland with water on either side. Since 1955, the island has lost 98% of its land.

“Now there’s just a little strip of land left,” Falgout, 81, tells Quartz. “That’s all we have. There’s water all around us.” She’s one of just 100 people who lives in Isle de Jean Charles. Few outside know or care what’s going on there. “I’m anxious to go,” she says.

~ QUARTZ 

Who's going to pay for the move?

And if the government pays, then who gets to move first?

These are the things to think about.

Read More

https://qz.com/994459/the-us-is-relocating-an-entire-town-because-of-climate-change-and-this-is-just-the-beginning/?

Like I said before, the one-percenters THINK they can move away from ALL the effects of climate change. Regardless of what you believe is causing climate change, polluting the planet cannot be making it anything but worse.  We need to push back against Trump and his cronies because human beings (the one percenters in the lead) can kill this planet or making it unlivable 

New study links Oklahoma earthquakes to fracking 

from 2014http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/oklahoma-earthquakes-linked-fracking-study

More than once I've read that the killing the wetlands, that grassy, swamp like area between New Orleans and the ocean is why Hurricane Katrina was so devastating to the land mass. The wetlands were a natural barrier to hurricanes in addition to the levees. Putting natural gas pipelines through them and the levees themselves have killed some of that barrier.

Wetlands along the southern coastlines of the United States serve as natural speed bumps to approaching hurricanes by starving them of warm ocean water and creating physical barriers to surging flood waters. However, in the last 100 years, the construction of levees and canals has turned thousands of square miles of wetland habitat into open water. This video from NOVA scienceNOW explores the importance of these critical habitats and examines the damage Hurricane Katrina caused to one stretch of Louisiana wetland.

https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.watcyc.katrinawet/hurricane-katrina-wetland-destruction/#.WT23fGjytEY 

http://www2.southeastern.edu/orgs/oilspill/wetlands.html 

The devastating effects of Hurricane Katriana might represent environmental racism or environmental classism or both

Hawaii is one of the few states on the right track. A few days ago, it became the first state in the United States to sign on to follow Paris Climate Accord

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/07/531882630/hawaii-signs-legislation-to-implement-goals-of-paris-climate-accord-anyway

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE FOR THE BETTER WILL SURVIVE TRUMP

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Thanks to the Paris Agreement and the broader arrangements around it, the coming of Trump will not be as bad as it might have been.

The Paris system’s flexibility makes it resilient in ways more traditional international regimes (like trade agreements or NATO) will come to envy under President Trump.

A solar power installation at the COP22 venue in Marrakech1 Pic: Flickr/UNclimatechange)

First, there is the Paris Agreement itself, which entered into force last week. If Trump withdraws from it, as he has promised, it will take four year before the US actually leaves (or one year to leave the overarching UN climate convention). And, because of clever drafting that elides the US Senate, a new President could instantly re-ratify the Agreement after he or she comes into office.

HA!!!


Read More
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/11/09/the-paris-agreement-will-survive-president-trump/

ON GETTING CHEAP DRINKABLE WATER FROM OCEAN

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“We basically stumbled across a plastic with a particular ability to allow water vapor to pass through it, but virtually nothing else,” said DTI’s Mark Tonkin, who developed the application over a five-year period.

In the irrigation system, the pipes are installed underground and filled by gravity from saltwater tanks above. Plants receive freshwater from the water vapor that permeates through the pipe walls and then condenses. The pipes need to be flushed periodically to get the salt out, but pumping or pressurizing is not necessary.

TakePart.com

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/05/why-special-kind-plastic-pipe-could-be-solution-californias-water-woes?cmpid=ait-fb