Katrina - all our tomorrows
The terrible human suffering endured by the poor, mainly black, population of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is more than simply an indictment of the indifference and incompetence of the American state and its patent failure to protect its own population.
All our fates are at stake because Katrina's devastation was ultimately the outcome of global forces that shaped both the unparalleled strength of the hurricane and the callous response of the Bush regime in Washington.
Climate change has accelerated over the last 30 years in tandem with uncontrolled corporate-driven globalisation. The market economy has essentially disregarded the impact of intensified production on world-wide eco-systems in the pursuit of profit.
The Bush regime refuses even to acknowledge the incontrovertible evidence about climate change presented by eminent American scientists, let alone world bodies. In Britain, New Labour pays lip service to the facts - then takes no action that might affect business interests.
As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more intense downpours, more frequent heat waves, and more severe storms. "Freak" weather in every region of the planet is now common - from snow in Los Angeles to intense droughts in Spain and Portugal, to 37 inches of rain in Mumbai in one day.
Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off southern Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina was also able to pack more power because development-provoked erosion has brought the Gulf of Mexico 20 miles closer to land. The reason? Bush overturned a ban on wetlands development instituted by previous administrations.
Similarly, the loss of wetlands threatened New Orleans' levees, which were built on the assumption that they would have 40 to 50 miles of protective swamp as buffer between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. Federal funding for flood defences were then cut. Studies into the consequences of force 4 or 5 hurricane were abandoned, as money was diverted to fund the war in Iraq.
A second consequence of capitalist globalisation has been the changed functioning of the state, especially in the US and Britain. It has increasingly withdrawn from social responsibilities in favour of facilitating the operations of the market economy. Privatisation and the contracting out of functions has reinforced this process. The ideology of self-help is touted in justification.
In the America, the state has instead deployed its resources to military expansion and to the "war on terrorism". The federal agency responsible for natural emergencies was actually subsumed into Homeland Security, the body created by Bush to combat terror threats, had its budget cut and its mission of disaster planning and preparation was dropped entirely. Many of its functions were privatised. Its director is a Bush crony sent packing from his previous job in charge of a horse association.
As a result, while Katrina came with at least two days' warning, the authorities waited to issue an evacuation order. There was no transport for people without cars or money; facilities to house and care for refugees were minimal; there were no forces in place to deliver desperately needed supplies; and there was nowhere near the number of boats and helicopters necessary to rescue the stranded. For four days, there was simply no clear centre of command. Countless people suffered and died because of this criminal neglect. Meanwhile, the White House has responded - by sending 50,000 combat troops to occupy New Orleans.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the chief government scientist has warned that London is also vulnerable to the results of climate change. The Thames barrier is all that stands between the city and catastrophic surge of flood water. New Labour's response? To build more homes on flood plains in the Thames gateway area and allow the paving over of the countryside.
This is a capitalist system in crisis, unable to protect people, obsessed with military power and the "war on terror", presiding over a debt-ridden economy and increasingly isolated. Katrina has exposed the hollowness of the view of the US as a "superpower", in control of everything it does.
In Iraq, it has wrecked a state and created the conditions for civil war, while in its own country the US government can't even get a bottle of water to people pleading on TV. As Polly Toynbee noted: "What the great Louisiana catastrophe has revealed is a country that is not a country at all, but atomised, segmented individuals living parallel lives as far apart as possible, with nothing to unite them beyond the idea of a flag. The 40 million with no health insurance show the social dysfunction corroding US capacity. For the poor at the bottom of the New Orleans mud heap, there never was even the American dream to cling to. They always lived in another country." (Guardian, September 9)
Left in charge, leaders like Bush and Blair, together with the global corporations they are sponsored by, are dragging humanity towards the abyss. It doesn't have to be this way. The science and technology to tackle climate change is present. So are the resources. Existing political and economic structures deny us the opportunity to put humanity's interests above profit and undemocratic state power. That is why A World to Win is campaigning to sweep them aside in order to open a new chapter in world history.
9 September 2005
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