Your Weekly Gambit Preview

This week's Gambit (not yet available online) features an interview with Mike Tidwell, whose new book The Ravaging Tide Strange Weather Future Katrinas and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities predicts that American coastal cities from Miami to Baltimore will soon face flood control problems similar to those of New Orleans due to rising sea levels and soil subsidence.

Coincidentally I have recently picked up Tidwell's Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast (2003) in which the author visits the Louisiana bayous with a mind toward writing a travel/adventure article and comes away having written an engaging account of Louisiana's problem of rapid coastal erosion and the threat it poses to the entire region's way of life. I plugged Bayou Farewell the other day in resonse to this YRHT post to which Greg Peters responds

Jeffrey: Tidwell has gone around the bend lately. He's recommended that NOLA be abandoned and claims that the NWS prediction of a less-busy-than-last-year hurricane season this year is the result of a secret government conspiracy. Whee.

This would be unfortunate.. but I don't see Tidwell arguing that the city be abandoned in the Gambit piece.. or on his website. And the farthest I can find him going into "government conspiracy" territory is criticism of the Bush Administration's shameful downplaying of the evidence for global warming.. as well as its effects on tropical weather. I'm not saying I don't believe Greg. I think he may be referring to this LA Times OP-Ed where Tidwell lays out the choice, either fund coastal restoration and flood protection in Louisiana or abandon the city... which is sadly closer to reality than hyperbole.

Also in this week's Gambit: Greg's two-page Katrina anniversary cartoon which, in his usual dark and biting idiom, is one of his best.