Beyond Katrina

Tropical Depression 17 Forms in the Southwest Caribbean Sea

2008-11-05T17:25:07-06:00

The Atlantic Hurricane Season is still not over yet. Tropical Depression (TD) 17 has formed in the Southwest Caribbean Sea. TD 17 is expected to intensify into a tropical storm in the next 24 hours and could become a hurricane in 2-4 days. If TD 17 can attain Tropical Storm status as forecasted, it would be named Paloma. The current track guidance indicates some threat to the Cayman Islands and Cuba in the 4-5 day period but given the system just formed, the track is very uncertain at this point in time.

Bioneers Conference Day 3

2008-10-19T11:21:04-05:00

Nina Simons, President and Co-founder: How dominant our left side of the brain is personally and in the culture. Another intrepretation: Masculine and feminine capacities. The question is how do we as a culture find balance? What is the purpose of leadership? to catalyze change. Peter Senge - leadership is about creating new realities. We must redefine leadership. Most of our models for leadership are outmoded. She proposes we lead more from the feminine - from the right side of the brsin, involves a shift into awareness of the natural world - to community and connection. Leadership is an evolving practice. How to practice leadership 1. valuing relationships more than things. 2. pay attention to our biases 3. Name our prejudices 4. Appreciate processes as much as outcomes 5. Ask the right questions - allow others to step into leadership 6. partner in supporting each other into leadership - reciprocal mentorship, especially women and girls. Naomi Klein - THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM The deals that are being made now re the financial bail out are impacting the future. The banks have been essentially nationalized. Plan A was handling the debts - taking private debts and making them public. Both political parties rose up against it and the people said no. The bad idea is to turn the government into a kind of hedge fund. Crony capitalism at its worst. Klein urges people to read the fine print on this deal. 9 banks agreed to partial nationalism. The public is taking on the risks with none of the power. So what are the conditions? Milton Friedman quote: Only a crisis real or perceived will bring change. We have an opportunity because the economic infrastructure is in crisis. The biggest crisis of our time is climate change. This is a moment of opportunity. We can only be defeated by our tentiavness. Google Earth: Visualizing change, mapping the future: Rebecca Moore Rebecca's efforts are dramatically leveraging the crucial work of NGO's, communities, initiatives With google earth u can hold the earth in the palm of your hand. Initially it was used for recreational use. When Katrina hit New Orleans NOAA asked google earth to provide hi res images - helped save 4,000 people. Goog doesn't just give you the earth - they give you the tools to add your own content to it. You are putting information in context which is useful in environmental activism. Appalachian Voices -Mountain Mining Initiative: used google earth to show the communities that would be impacted...image overlays to show before and after of mountaintop removal.'' you can annotate and embed video... This initiative needed signatures on a petition to stop a mountaintop removal project and were able to accomplish this with google earth. San Francisco Oil Spill - ocean conservancy used google earth to raise awareness. Dreaming New Mexico: Now you can embed google earthninto your website. incredible group of activists, systems approach to collaboration They were invited by an Amazon tribe trying to save a rainforest to come down and teach their people how to use Google Earth. They had first contact with modern life when a highway penetrated their rainforest. The chief went to a university, tried google earth on a computer and did the first thing everybody does, flew to his home. The chief connected the dots and then went to Google Earth and asked them to train their people - a way for them to show the world how they are saving their forests and how it is economically sustainable. The tribe realized that they were going to connect with and share their culture with millions of people. Rick Reid COLLABORATING ON A GRAND SCALE: THINK SYSTEMICALLY AND ACT COLLABORATIVELY New approaches to grant making. Climate change project in the midwest. 19 grantmaking agencies commited funds to a process - to reform a system. Goal was an 80% reduction in coal reduction - 25 year gold. First thing was to generate a complete systems map - then to pare it down to 4 leverage points. While they were doing this 100 million dollar wind farm was announced - but also a new coal plant. They were able to mobilize. No one group could reach their goal but together they could. The whole body made grant making decisions that were aligned with the larger goals.

Bioneers Conference - Day 2 Plenaries

2008-10-18T11:13:24-05:00

13,000 people are gathered today in real time - on site and in satellite locations around the globe. Chief Oren Lyons of the Wolf Clan speaking at Bioneers now... Janine Benyus: NATURE'S 100 BEST: TOP BIOMIMICRY SOLUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES Qualcomm - research on imitating the colors of a butterfly's wings - applications to color on digital screens Benyus is the "mother of biomimicry"... just returned from the ICN conference - International Conservation League. She said she is not going to talk about scarcity, she's going to talk about abundance - life's good ideas. There is more than one way to spread our seeds. Indigenous people have known for a long time that the models are there. Co2 is being used to make plastics. There is a company that is learning to harvest wave energy like kelp. bioluminescent jellyfish - just add calcium and you get light. Bee swarm technology - bees have a unique voting system. algae know how to manage bacteria without killing it. purifying water using human membranes as a model. the economy - one company's discards being used by another...resource sharing. Life's most innovative design is that it gives and takes care of its own needs. Vision for who we can be as a species? Dune Lankard - SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS OVER CENTURIES: A NEW BUSINESS MODEL Dune is an Eyak Athabaskan native - became an activist and preservationist when the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill descecrated his homelands and water. He describes the preservation of ecosystems and the people who inhabit them as the way to maintain healthy, thriving economies for businesses into the community. Conservationists are fighting over the same funding pots. Started a land trust - the native conservancy - for his tribe so they didn't have to give up their land to preseve and conserve it.

Bioneers Topic: Digital Oasis

2008-10-17T19:06:41-05:00

Well this topic is of course near and dear to the heart -Digital Oasis: Online Networks, Blogging,& Fast Forward Change. A couple of salient points: Blog's are a centerpice of any online activism campaign, but we should be using everything that's availabe, and I'll list the most important web 2.0 solutions later. Tree Hugger,Grist, and Wiser Earth are leading the panel discussion. Interestingly, Tree Hugger is a blog, started as a blog... follows a similar Model as BK - feautured contributors

Bioneers Conference Friday afternoon sessions

2008-10-17T16:54:19-05:00

I am covering the topic 'Women Rising Globally' this afternoon in the main tent. This is a panel discussion. Media and communications is one of the main components in this rising movement of women in leadership. 3 Unstoppable Trends: 1. The rise of women's leadership. 2. The communications Revolution ---lower barriers for publishers. 3. The shift in global consciousness to invest in women's issues. my observation: I am thinking to my self how young they look - the 4 amazing women who are sitting on this panel - and right there is the evidence...and the good news! Kavita Ramdas just said something amazing - she said there is this idea that we should be focused on educating women. She says women have a lot to do to educate the world. There is this idea that women are this group of people who need educating, filled up, given micro-credit. Women need to be have their voices and their wisdom heard - The knowledge and wisdom is already there.

Bioneers Opening Notes

2008-10-17T12:18:18-05:00

Energy market is a 6 trillion dollar industry - I am not sure I can wrap my mind around 6 trillion. Texas is about to build one of the biggest wind plants in the world. The Dreaming New Mexico Project inspires an idea -What about a Dream map for gulf coast rebuilding? Paul Stamets - "the mushroom guy" is speaking right now about using fungi to save the world! Just heard Erica Fernandez speak, a young lady who at the ripe age of 16, rallied her community to stop an LNG pipeline project that would have negatively impacted the coastal community she lives in. Ray Anderson speaking on the "green collar economy", Industrial sustainability in action now. 7 real examples of new thinking, conscious design, and bio-mimicry...status quo thinking is an opiate that must be over come. He says the goodwill of the marketplace has been astonishing. In closing Anderson says "our society cannot survive unless we take care of nature. She is the goose that lays the golden egg. We must not only 'do no harm', we must do good. Kavita Ramdas, The Global Fund fund for Women - extraordinay woman doing amazing work to empower underprivledged women. Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of the late great Jaques Cousteau speaking on blue issues - she believes water is the defining crisis of this next century. She says passion for the ocean is a beautiful legacy to have been born into...and her grandfather grew weary of answering environmental questions at the end of his life. He did not understand how people could see the grandeur of the earth and its oceans and ask why it should be preserved. Our water planet gives back what we give to it. If we abuse it returns abuse. I don't think any of us in south Louisiana can argue this point. Alexandra urges all of us to change the conversation from one of guilt to one of urgency in hope.

Blogging Live From Bioneers Conference

2008-10-17T11:35:10-05:00

Good morning. I am blogging live this week-end from the 19th annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California. Bioneers members are creating and realizing imaginative approaches to restoring and protevting the health of our planet and the well being of our communities.

Adopt A Hurricane Impacted Family for Christmas

2008-09-25T02:48:23-05:00

Hello, Margaret Saizan here. I am the publisher of Beyond Katrina: The Voice of Hurricane & Disaster Recovery. Since 2005 I have sponsored a Christmas wish fulfillment/Adopt a Family program to help match donors to hurricane survivors. The program has become very popular and I am especially pleased that the donors love it so much! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to host the program last year for personal reasons. However, much to my surprise (and delight) I received many emails from donors who were really disappointed about this. The Adopt-a-Family program has been an enormously rewarding experience for both givers and receivers alike.

Inasmuch as the gulf coast is still not fully recovered from the storms of 2005 and its citizens are now dealing with the aftermath of two additional hurricanes - Gustav and Ike - I am considering reinstating the program this year. Please let me know if you are interested in participating either by adopting a family, being a co-sponsor, or otherwise. At this point I am seeding ideas and I welcome dialogue and input from readers and stakeholders in gulf coast hurricane recovery.

In times past the program has been wildly successful as an organic, self creating initiative and this seems to be congruent with the viral way in which new media/social media moves. However, this year I am getting a little bit earlier start than usual and plan to be more intentional in my promotional efforts. Inasmuch as the deeper motivation for most who participate lies in the satisfaction of a job well done, I would like to create a way to cross promote the businesses and initiatives of participating donors and sponsors. In this way the benefits to all are multiple.

Please email inquiries, ideas, pledges to donate or sponsor, etc. to Margaret Saizan at beyondkatrina@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,

Margaret Saizan
Beyond Katrina: The Voice of Hurricane & Disaster Recovery
www.hurricane-katrina.org

Gustav really was the worst, meteorologists say

2008-09-25T02:02:37-05:00

Aha! I've been waiting for the dust to clear and the information to come forth as to why Cat 1 Gustav was such a formidable hurricane for Baton Rouge, exceeding the intensity and the damage wrought by Betsy and Andrew. Two LSU scientists weigh in here.

On another note, I wish the National Hurricane Center would change the policy of repeating the same hurricane names every few years. It creates confusion for those of us who document them - and it doesn't seem to be the most efficient way to do this in my humble opinion.

There are two invests in the Atlantic and thankfully seems like neither are going to be very ominous at this point, nor are these systems heading for the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully we gulf coasters are done for a while.

Tenacity Over Tears: The Life of a Bayou Woman

2008-09-22T04:51:37-05:00

I want to take this opportunity to introduce my readers to a very special friend from Bayou Du Large, one of the the coastal communities in Terrebonne Parish, La that was impacted by the storms of 2005 and now severely in 2008. Her name is Wendy Wilson Billiot, but she is most affectionately known these days as "Bayou Woman". While I have never met Wendy personally - inasmuch as we have a shared passion for Louisiana's coastal concerns -we've enjoyed a wonderful pen pal relationship via email for the past year or so. There are some folks you just feel an affinity to right off the bat. Wendy is one of them.

In addition to keeping up with her through email, Wendy publishes a very unique and interesting blog about her life in Bayou Du Large which I read frequently. Well before Gustav and Ike made landfall in coastal Louisiana, I told Wendy I wanted to do a tribute to her and her blog here at Beyond Katrina because I've enjoyed it so much. After Ike's storm surged pushed into Terrebonne Parish flooding her community and her home, I just knew it was time to make good on that promise.

Wendy's blog, "Life in the Louisiana Wetlands ", (which can be viewed at http://bayouwoman.wordpress.com/ ) is a veritable plethora of information about life on the bayou as seen through the eyes of a true blue Bayou Woman. She covers everything you'd ever want to know there (but are too afraid to ask) from fishing, to bayou cooking, wildlife, plant life and more.

Wendy is also a hard working and relentless advocate for the preservation and restoration of Louisiana's fragile wetlands.. Her community of Bayou Du Large is in the Terrebonne Estuary System, which she is quick to remind is "vanishing at the astonishing rate of a football field every half hour". She has a USCG captain's license which enables her to take people on tours to see the amazing beauty and degradation of our wetlands. She has also penned a wonderful book, Before the Saltwater Came, an environmental book about our local wetlands and the first of its kind. Her book is being used to educate students about our disappearing wetlands in classrooms across the state, the nation, and indeed all over the world. Likewise, her articles have appeared in many well know magazines and newspapers and she won the Louisiana Outdoor Writer's Association Excellence in Craft first place award in 2007 for her articles about Louisiana's coastal issues.

Believe it or not there is still more - and while I haven't told Wendy this yet - this is just the first in a series of posts I'll be doing about "Bayou Woman". She is one of the most creative, interesting and multi-talented folks I've ever encountered and there is just way too much to share about the cornucopia that is her life in just this one post. I also feel it is important to cover Terrebonne's recovery and rebuilding efforts here, just as I have done for the communities impacted by Katrina and Rita. However, I couldn't share the story of Terrebonne's recovery any better than Wendy can.

As I write, Wendy is working hard to clean up after Gustav and Ike, choosing "tenacity over tears" as she deals with the multitude of personal and collective losses inherent to the impact of two back to back hurricanes. Her latest blog posts with accompanying photographs (yep she's quite a photog too) provide an insiders view of the many facets of hurricane recovery in Terrebonne parish. I do hope you will stop by Wendy's blog at http://bayouwoman.wordpress.com/ and peek in on the amazing life of a Bayou Woman!

Margaret Saizan

**Photo courtesy -- Wendy Billiot

Storm report: Forgotten people

2008-09-22T03:13:02-05:00

"Time and Tide" Isle de Jean Charles --Terrebonne Parish, La. (courtesy Matthew White)

This one's near and dear to the heart. I was very pleased to that Gannett's Dennis Camire penned an article focused on the Houma Indians and their struggle to preserve their way of life, their lands and to rebuild again in light of recent hurricane devastation. As Camire reports,"the problem is that the tribe has not fully recovered from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The tribe's members, many of whom used to depend primarily on fishing for their livelihood, are seeing their marshlands vanish into the Gulf of Mexico and are being battered with personal losses from storm after storm". The article which is publised at The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, Louisiana may be viewed here.

I want to take this time to do a mention for Houma Indian Captain John Verret who has generously helped me and and my colleague Matthew White get up front and personal with coastal land loss and wetlands issues over in Terrebonne - as have others there. As a result Matthew has quite a few photographs taken in Isle Jean Charles (which is part of the article's focus), Dulac, Cocodrie and other parts of Terrebonne, here. Matthew does plan to return soon to continue his documentation of this fragile ecological jewel.

Gustav costs utilities $600 M

2008-09-20T10:58:34-05:00

The Entergy companies that serve Louisiana and three other states paid up to $600 million to get the lights back on after Hurricane Gustav, Entergy Corp. said in a press release Friday. Continue>>>

Levees make noticable difference

2008-09-20T10:54:33-05:00

Hurricane Ike helped illustrate what residents of two south Louisiana parishes already know — having levees and coastal restoration means less flooding during storms. Continue at The Advocate....

Gov. Jindal visits storm-wrecked Terrebonne Parish

2008-09-15T10:48:04-05:00

"The Gulf of Mexico came up, and as you know, we couldn't stop it," said Terrebonne Parish sheriff Vernon Bourgeois.It was amidst that backdrop that Governor Bobby Jindal arrived in Terrebonne Parish, talking about the state's efforts to recover from two hurricanes in the span of two weeks. He says the state won't be able to do it on its own.Continue>>>

Lafitte residents assess Ike's damages

2008-09-15T10:41:35-05:00

Flooding is a familiar sight here, but Hurricane Ike is the new benchmark. Continue>>>

Fish are weathering the storms

2008-09-15T10:37:43-05:00

When Hurricane Ike's tides finally fall next week, fishing is expected to pick up where it left off. But anglers heading back to their favorite spots shouldn't expect to find their world the way they left it before Hurricane Gustav. The marsh has been reshaped -- again -- and so have area marinas. Continue>>>

Changing the landscape of Louisiana marshes

2008-09-15T10:24:34-05:00

Upcoming long-term projects to rebuild dying marshes will alter the landscape of the coastal fishing communities, which need to start preparing

As Hurricane Ike's storm surge created coastal chaos, I couldn't help thinking back to conversations earlier this summer with Lafitte area anglers upset about the impacts of the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion Project. Speck fishing had been lousy in the northern part of Barataria Basin, and fishermen were convinced it was because Davis Pond had changed their brackish habitat into a freshwater lake. Continue>>>