History will repeat itself this summer, with hurricanes in our weather forecast. Tropical storm Debby is the next threat to our everlasting, American costly dilemma, when it comes to dealing with these predictable annual events.
Whether global warming exists or not, the fact is that cities like New Orleans, with 49% of it's land under sea level, will always have deadly issues. The USA has, year after year, turned it's back on the problems some of our cities encounter with tropical storms and hurricanes. This leads to huge costs, that if finally addressed, wouldn't be eating at our pockets, every, single, year! Whether it's global warming or not, we shouldn't just stare at it and do nothing.
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| Photo by eagle102.net |
Many cities in Europe have had infrastructure issues with flooding, like New Orleans has, specifically in the Netherlands, or Holland. In most cases the flooding really wasn't related to weather, like tropical storm Debby. The Dutch have 25% of their land, under sea level, yet you don't hear about many deaths occurring recently! Why? Because they have tackled their problems. They did this years ago when they upgraded their infrastructure by building 1,864 miles of outer sea-dikes along with inner canals and river-dikes. We need to learn from them and improve our infrastructure. Not only in Louisiana, but in other areas where floods are predominant, such as along the Mississippi River.
Storms like Debby or hurricane weather forecasts, are not going to go away. New Orleans or the Mississippi River will not, all of a sudden, dry up! Not only will these improvements save lives, but they will also help our infrastructure with global warming and provide much needed jobs that Americans so desperately need.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands#Floods
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