“I’m very glad to be doing the job I’m doing, which is playing music in front of people,” Elvis Costello recently said. “Making records—it used to be the thing that made the motor go round. Now I just sort of make a record and let it go.”

In the New World Order of the music business, artists need to be open to new opportunities and different configurations for their work. All of this week’s guests on SPECTACLE, while fitting squarely within the conventional singer-songwriter tradition, have experimented with multiple outlets that fit their music. Jenny Lewis has spent the last few years alternating between her solo work and her band, Rilo Kiley; Jakob Dylan is taking time away from his platinum-selling group, the Wallflowers, to release his first solo project; and She & Him is a collaboration between actress Zooey Deschanel and acclaimed songwriter M. Ward.

Elvis, too, has taken advantage of the radical shifts of the last decade to present his music in a wide variety of arrangements and styles. Since the year 2000, he has released five studio albums—each one wildly different from the others. When I Was Cruel, from 2002, was his first album recorded with the Imposters, and was perceived as his return to rock & roll; it reached Number 20 on the charts, his most recent visit to that rarefied level. The following year, North was a piano-centered, ballad-heavy collection, its unprecedented intimacy generally considered to be inspired by his relationship to his new wife, Diana Krall.

The Delivery Man, released in 2004, was Elvis’s most raw and bluesy effort ever. Recorded in Oxford, Mississippi, and featuring guest appearances from Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, it was released on the Americana label Lost Highway Records. In 2006, The River in Reverse was a collaboration with New Orleans R&B legend Allen Toussaint, and drew on the disaster of Hurricane Katrina for much of its emotional power; it made it to Number Two on Billboard’s jazz charts. Last year’s Momofuku is the newest addition to the Costello library: it put him back in the studio with the Imposters, but yet again mixed up any kind of formula by featuring Jenny Lewis on a number of songs.

In the meantime, though, Elvis has produced and sung with numerous other artists, and toured in too many different line-ups to count. “Just last year,” he said in late 2008, “I played MerleFest with bluegrass musicians, then I’m touring with the Police, then I’m playing in Europe with an orchestra, then I’m playing a solo show.” As we have explored in previous weeks of SPECTACLE, just in the last decade, he has also worked in classical, jazz, opera, and country music; appeared in various films and television shows; and overseen the extensive reissue program for his catalogue. And, oh, yeah—he and Krall had twin sons in 2006.

Elvis is supposed to have a new album out in the next few months. Anyone want to guess what it will sound like?

– Alan Light

Alan Light is the former Editor-in-Chief of Spin and Vibe magazines, and a former Senior Writer for Rolling Stone. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, he is the author of “The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys” and a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for excellence in music writing.

Writers/directors Mike Bonanno’s and Andy Bichlbaum’s THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD, a film participating in the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

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SAINT PAUL, Minnesota, September 2, 2008 (ENS) – The 2008 Republican National Convention opened Monday at Saint Paul’s Xcel Energy Center without speeches from President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other prominent speakers who had been scheduled to appear but were busy with activities related to Hurricane Gustav.

Weaker than forecast, the center of Hurricane Gustav made landfall Monday morning as a Category 2 storm near the small town of Cocodrie on the Louisiana coast 72 miles southwest of New Orleans. Forecasters had warned that the Gustav might blow in as a disastrous Category 4 storm.

The National Hurricane Center has now been downgraded Gustav to a Tropical Storm that is expected to become a Tropical Depression today. But the Republicans did not want to be caught flat-footed in the face of disaster as the Bush administration was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Cindy McCain, left, and First Lady Laura
Bush address Republican delegates.
(Photo courtesy McCain campaign)

First Lady Laura Bush and Cindy McCain spoke to the delegates about the storm. Laura Bush said, “Our first priority for today and in the coming days is to ensure the safety and well-being of those living in the gulf coast region. And to all of those living in the gulf states, please know that our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

The Republican National Committee, RNC, used Monday to launch the first day of its Hurricane Gustav Relief Effort Monday by forming a center where volunteers can send 80,000 “comfort packages,” a text message alert system, and an effort to encourage Americans to donate to charities identified by the five Gulf Coast governors – all Republicans. The governors sent taped messages to the convention.

Cindy McCain told delegates about the website set up by the McCain campaign, www.causegreater.com, where information about these charitable organizations is available.

“We are deeply concerned about the safety and welfare of the residents of the Gulf states region. Senator [John] McCain has asked us to put country first and shift our focus to assisting the Gulf State citizens, and we have coordinated a relief effort that answers his call to service. We are doing what Americans do best: helping our fellow citizens in need,” said Rick Davis, campaign manager for McCain 2008.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said, “The safety and well-being of the people of the Gulf states remains our top concern. Over the past 24 hours, we have moved quickly to mobilize people and resources to assist the Gulf states’ residents – both those who are in the region and our delegates in Saint Paul – in any way we can.”

The 2008 Republican National Convention has joined with Target, FedEx, and the Red Cross to send 80,000 “comfort packages” to the Gulf Coast region containing toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, soap, and packaged foods. The donated materials will arrive in Saint Paul on Wednesday at 8 am, volunteers will assemble the packages at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and FedEx will ship the packages to receiving locations.

Because their plans for the convention have been disrupted by the hurricane, the RNC has launched a text message alert system to inform delegates and alternates of program changes as soon as it becomes available.

“All parties understand that the schedule for the convention will be dictated by the conditions on the ground in the Gulf States and are, therefore, subject to change,” organizers said in a statement.
Demonstrators outside the Republican National Convention (Photo by Jeremiah Peterson)

Outside the convention hall, some 10,000
Iraq war, human rights and environmental
protesters staged a march through
Minneapolis-St. Paul, rallied at the Minnesota
State Capitol and then took their
demonstration to the convention center.

Meredith Aby, a member of the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, said, “The anti-war movement has always had a demand of money for human needs not for war, and Hurricane Katrina was one of the reasons for that demand.”

“Hurricane Gustav affects the Republican Party because they don’t want to be seen as ignoring another crisis as they did when they left people to die on freeway overpasses,” Aby said. “The demonstration will be voicing opposition to the war’s prioritization above human needs such as building levees, the economy, and healthcare.”

The protest was mainly peaceful, but Minnesota National Guard and police in St. Paul arrested 284 people. A few anarchist / anti-authoritarian protesters broke windows at Macy’s and a downtown bank building. Others blocked roads. Dozens of people were pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed.

Late Monday, authorities said 130 of the 284 people arrested may face felony charges.

Democracy sculpture in the sun (Photo by
Jeremiah Peterson)

Among the signs and masks, and the giant Earth carried in the march was an unusual piece of art. Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese made an ice sculpture of the word “Democracy” and presented it at the State Capitol, where it melted in the sun, dramatizing their message, “Democracy Melting.”

Turning to RNC business, on Monday, convention delegates passed the party platform with what the RNC called “the most aggressive and innovative energy policy in Republican Party history.”

“We must aggressively increase our nation’s energy supply, in an environmentally responsible way, and do so through a comprehensive strategy that meets both short and long term needs,” the platform states.

The platform supports nuclear power, calling it “the Earth’s clean future.” It deals with concerns over disposal of nuclear waste and radioactive releases by labeling them “fear mongering.”

“Unwarranted fear mongering with no relationship to current technologies and safeguards has prevented us from starting construction of a single nuclear power plant in 31 years,” the platform says.

The Republican platform endorses drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, although the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, John McCain has said that he does not support drilling in the refuge.

“We oppose any efforts that would permanently block access to the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” the Republican platform states.

Backdrop to the podium at the Republican National
Convention (Photo courtesy 4president.us)

“We support accelerated exploration, drilling and development in America, from new oilfields off the nation’s coasts to onshore fields such as those in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska,” the platform states. “The Green River Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming offers recoverable shale oil that is ready for development, and most of it is on federal lands.”

“To deliver that energy to American consumers, we will expand our refining capacity. Because of environmental extremism and regulatory blockades in Washington, not a single new refinery has been built in this country in 30 years,” it states.

The Republican platform says solar, wind, geothermal and hydro power “must enter the mainstream.” It supports “clean coal” and also conservation, but “not by changing our lifestyles.”

“We must continue to develop alternative fuels, such as biofuels, especially cellulosic ethanol, and hasten their technological advances to next-generation production,” according to the Republican platform.

The platform would retool the American auto industry. “Given that fully 97 percent of our current transportation vehicles rely on oil, we will aggressively support technological advances to reduce our petroleum dependence. For example, lightweight composites could halve the weight and double the gas mileage of cars and trucks, and together with flex-fuel and electric vehicles, could usher in a renaissance in the American auto industry,” it states.

“In the long run,” the platform says, “American production should move to zero-emission sources, and our nation’s fossil fuel resources are the bridge to that emissions-free future.”

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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana, August 28, 2008 (ENS) – Nearly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina forced the evacuation of thousands of people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, residents and emergency managers in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are preparing again to cope with another major storm heading across the Caribbean in their direction.

Late this afternoon local time, the center of Tropical Storm Gustav was located about 15 miles west of Kingston, Jamaica, moving west at about seven miles per hour. The storm made landfall on the eastern tip of Jamaica earlier today and Kingston was swept by winds of 50 mph with higher gusts.

The center of Gustav is expected to cross Jamaica tonight and turn to the west-northwest, moving near or over the Cayman Islands on Friday. Gustav is forecast to rapidly strengthen in the northwestern Caribbean Sea on Friday and Saturday before entering the Gulf of Mexico as a major hurricane.

National Hurricane Center forecasters say Gustav is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of six to 12 inches over Hispaniola, eastern Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Isolated maximum rainfalls of up to 25 inches are possible with life-threatening flash floods and mud slides, warned the NHC. Coastal storm surge flooding of one to three feet above normal tide levels with large and dangerous battering waves can be expected in areas of onshore winds.

Gustav is forecast to increase in size once it reaches the Gulf of Mexico, and these expanding wind fields will produce sea swells that will hit Florida’s Gulf of Mexico beaches by early Sunday. Onshore winds along Florida’s Atlantic beaches are forecast to strengthen this weekend, which will create a moderate to high risk for rip currents.

The National Weather Service predicts that Gustav will strike the Florida Panhandle and the eastern coastal parishes of Louisiana at hurricane force.

Federal and state agencies are better prepared to handle the effects of a hurricane today than they were when Katrina struck on August 29, 2005.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued a state disaster proclamation on Wednesday, and today he requested a pre-landfall disaster declaration from President George W. Bush.

In his letter to the president, Governor Jindal wrote, “I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments, and that supplementary federal assistance is necessary to save lives and to protect property, public health and safety.”

The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness has activated its Emergency Operations Center, and FEMA has brought its National Response Coordination Center and its Regional Response Coordination Centers to heightened states of readiness.

Evacuations will begin 72 hours before to the arrival of tropical storm force winds, FEMA officials and the governor said.

The federal Department of Transportation, through the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, is working with states, airports, airlines and bus companies to insure any needed evacuations are executed without delay.

The Louisiana National Guard has activated 3,000 troops to perform missions, including the transportation, security, assistance with contra-flow traffic and search and rescue.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development activated their contract today for 700 buses, which began to arrive this morning in preparation for the evacuation.

While Governor Jindal is still serving his first year in office, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is a veteran of the disastrous 2005 hurricane season that brought Katrina on August 29 and Rita a month later. The city is still mired in a slow recovery process.

Nagin, who was a key speaker this morning for the Oregon, Washington and Minnesota delegations at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, is returning to New Orleans immediately to monitor Gustav.

“While it is too early to tell exactly where Gustav will hit and how strong it will be, I’m deeply concerned about the emotional and psychological effect on our citizens,” said Nagin.

New Orleans has made preparations to execute its city evacuation plan, which includes an additional 130 buses.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections will begin relocating prisoners from at risk areas on Friday. The state Department of Agriculture and Forestry is prepared to activate pet shelters and has made arrangements for pet evacuation by truck from New Orleans.

The Department of Homeland Security is advising all Gulf Coast residents to have a three-day supply of water for each person in the family, including pets, along with non-perishable food, a battery-powered radio, extra batteries and a flashlight, needed medications and important documents like property insurance.

“Regardless of its predicted path, it is important for citizens in the Gulf Coast region to listen to what their local officials are advising over the course of the next few days and to take these simple steps to prepare,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “If residents make individual and family preparations, they make it easier for first responders to focus on people who can’t help themselves and need help first.”

FEMA Administrator David Paulison is managing the
federal response to Gustav from New
Orleans. (Photo by Jacinta Quesada
courtesy FEMA)

FEMA’s pre-positioned supplies available for distribution in Gulf Coast states include more than 2.4 million liters of water and more than four million meals.

The agency has prepositioned 478 emergency generators, 140 truckloads of tarps and 267 truckloads of blankets and cots.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services has placed nine disaster medical assistance teams, 11 health strike teams and two incident command teams on alert. Nine federal medical stations, each with a 250-bed capacity, are on alert.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has teams on alert to handle planning, power, roofing, and debris removal, and a water and ice team is ready to provide these necessities as they are needed.

In Austin, Texas, Governor Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration late Tuesday in response to the threat posed by Tropical Storm Gustav to 61 Texas counties.

The governor has called on state resources to prepare for Gustav, which is expected to strengthen as it enters the Gulf of Mexico over the Labor Day weekend. He said all state resources are ready for rapid deployment as necessary, and volunteer organizations are prepared to provide mass care support for residents.

The American Red Cross is moving hundreds of mobile feeding trucks into Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The organization is moving thousands of cots and blankets, tens of thousands of comfort kits and ready-to-eat meals into the coastal states today and Friday. Operational headquarters are being established in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Hattiesburg, and Montgomery.

Federal and state officials are also beginning to coordinate with Southeastern states that could be impacted by Tropical Storm Hanna, which is currently developing off the Atlantic coast.

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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, September 1, 2008 (ENS) – Weaker than feared, the center of Hurricane Gustav made landfall as a Category 2 storm near the small town of Cocodrie in Terrebonne parish on the Louisiana coast 72 miles southwest of New Orleans. The storm hit about 10 this morning local time. Forecasters had warned that the Gustav might blow in as a disastrous Category 4 on the hurricane scale of 1 to 5.

Packing winds of 110 mph, Gustav pushed water over the top of the Industrial Canal floodwall in New Orleans, but appears to have spared the low-lying city’s vulnerable levee system that was breached in several places during Hurricane Katrina three years ago, flooding the city.

“We’ve been working full time since Katrina and the New Orleans area has the best hurricane and storm damage reduction in its history,” said Lt. Gen Robert Van Antwerp, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and chief of engineers. Since Katrina, the Corps has completed the repair and restoration of 220 miles of floodwalls and levees in New Orleans.

The Corps is half-way through a six-year project to provide New Orleans with 100-year level hurricane and storm damage reduction by 2011.

Hurricane Gustav churns the Louisiana coastal
waters as it makes landfall. September
1, 2008 (Photo by Mike C.)

Van Antwerp says there are still areas more vulnerable than others and there is still a threat of widespread flooding.

Nearly two million people fled the Gulf coast, after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation order for Sunday morning, the first such evacuation since Katrina.

Terrebonne Parish Manager Al Levron was warning people to evacuate as late as Sunday afternoon. “My personal recommendation is get on the road, head north,” Levron said. “Riding this storm out in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Shreveport or Arkansas is better than sitting in your home in Terrebonne Parish.”

At this hour, the river levees and the private ‘back’ levees are holding up throughout Plaquemines Parish, to the south and east of Gustav’s center, and there are no reports of flooding at this time. But power is out across the parish as the storm has toppled power lines and trees.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser toured the parish as far south as the Buras Bridge, but was stopped by high winds. Nungesser said that water is being pushed up near the top of the private levees, but so far there is no over-topping. He said, “It will depend on how long the wind continues to push up the water as to whether these levees will hold.”

Nearly half a million customers have lost power in Louisiana due to the storm, and many more are expected, according to Entergy, the utility that serves the central Gulf Coast.

Entergy’s Waterford 3 Nuclear Plant near New Orleans completed a controlled shutdown on Sunday night. The River Bend Nuclear Plant in St. Francisville, Louisiana, is powering down to 75 percent due to reduced demand.

Entergy is assembling a team of 9,000 restoration workers, plus additional support, to respond to Hurricane Gustav as soon as it is safe to do so, utility officials said.

While Gustav has now weakened still more to a Category 1 hurricane, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami warn that an “extremely dangerous” storm surge of 10 to 14 feet above normal tidal levels is expected near and to the east of where Gustav crossed the coast.

Gustav toppled trees at Broadway and Jeanette
in New Orleans. (Photo credit unknown)

In addition, Gustav is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of six to 12 inches over parts of Louisiana, southern and western Mississippi, Arkansas and northeastern Texas with isolated maximum amounts of up to 20 inches possible through Thursday.

A few tornadoes are possible over the central Gulf coast this afternoon, forecasters said.

President George W. Bush called Hurricane Gustav “a serious event.”

Participating in a briefing on at the Texas Emergency Operations Center in Austin, he warned the people of East Texas to be prepared for a possible flooding event.

“All in all, what I look for is to determine whether or not assets are in place to help, whether or not there’s coordination, and whether or not there’s preparation for recovery. And to that end, I feel good about this event,” the president said.

Government agencies are better prepared for this storm than they were for Katrina with water, meals, generators, tarps and other emergency supplies, and private relief agencies also are helping evacuees.

Audrey Black, general manager of a storehouse in Picayune, Mississippi that supplies the Christian relief and development agency World Vision, was forced to evacuate from Picayune to Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday.

“People are still living in temporary trailer parks in this area, and there isn’t a sense of normalcy yet. Now families are going through the experience again,” said Black.

World Vision is working with local church and community partners who are housing evacuees from Louisiana and the Gulf Coast to supply families with diapers; clothing for babies, children and adults; shampoo, soap and deodorant; toilet paper, napkins, paper plates and toys.

Mayor Nagin has mentioned allowing New Orleans residents to return to their homes as early as Wednesday, if roads are cleared of downed tree branches and electrical wires.

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DENVER, Colorado, August 26, 2008 (ENS) – Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and flooded 80 percent of New Orleans a new report from international relief organization Oxfam America launched at the Democratic National Convention reveals the slow pace of recovery in the region and urges the next administration to make recovery a national priority.

Oxfam’s report, “Mirror on America: How the state of Gulf Coast recovery reflects on us all,” comes three days before the August 29 anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

“The uneven and inequitable state of recovery of the Gulf Coast is a national embarrassment,” said Oxfam America President Raymond Offenheiser. “Although the force of the storm was an act of nature, the failures of the recovery are an act of our government. If we refuse to address this as a nation, it will go down in history not only as a failure of leadership, but also as a failure to hold our government accountable.”

A welcome home sign in New Orleans’
hurricane-struck Lower Ninth Ward
encourages neighbors to come back
the their homes and rebuild. (Photo
by Jacinta Quesada courtesy FEMA)

Less than a month after Category 5 Katrina, Hurricane Rita struck some of the same Gulf Coast areas, the third Category 5 hurricane of the harsh 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.

Three years later, the barriers to a complete recovery are highest in the housing and jobs sectors. Almost 37,000 people on the Gulf Coast are still living in trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to Oxfam’s report.

In Mississippi, federal money that was mandated for use in rebuilding low-income housing was diverted to improving the shipyards in Biloxi, the report shows.

Only 12 percent of African-American evacuees who returned to New Orleans after the hurricanes have been able to find work, compared with 45 percent of white evacuees, according to the report.

“Compliance with federal labor laws has been ignored with frequent occurrences of safety and health violations, wage theft and exploitative treatment of immigrant workers,” Oxfam states.

“It was the perfect storm of worker exploitation and wage suppression,” said Tracie Washington, president and CEO of the Louisiana Justice Institute in the report.

Derrick Evans arrived in Denver from Gulfport, Mississippi, hauling a FEMA trailer emlazoned with a message designed to make Democratic delegates think: “Where did $129 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery go?”

Evans said that he brought his “KatrinaRitaville Express” to Denver because neither presidential candidate has paid attention to the struggles on the Gulf Coast. He will haul the trailer into Minneapolis-St. Paul next week for the Republican national convention.

Other serious problems still plague New Orleans as it attempts to recover and prepare for future storms.

Special Counsel Scott Bloch, of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, this month sent a letter to President George W. Bush detailing that the investigation conducted by the Department of Defense into the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ pumping installation in New Orleans and its contract with Moving Water Industries was “superficial and dismissive.”

The investigation was a response to a whistleblower’s accusations that the Corps installed defective pumping equipment and conducted improper contracting procedures with MWI, but the Defense Department cleared the Corps of these allegations.

Part of the New Orleans flood control
system (Photo by Jacinta Quesada
courtesy FEMA)

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, said, “It is very troubling that two years after these pumps were installed we are still uncertain if these pumps will keep our city safe from rising water.”

Landrieu last week pressed for a congressional investigation into the pumping equipment installed in New Orleans by the Corps and the contract for the pumps.

“The possibility of a dysfunctional flood protection system threatens the entire recovery of South Louisiana,” Landrieu wrote to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat.

“The possibility that New Orleans faces a risk of failure of the flood protection system because of inappropriate government contracting is unacceptable,” wrote the Lousiana senator.

Landrieu today commented on a Government Accountability Office report tracking the progress of debris removal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“Home demolition in hurricane-ravaged areas of New Orleans is moving forward, albeit slowly,” said Laudrieu, “and I am glad that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has diligently issued 120 enforcement actions as of May 15, 2008 against businesses or individuals who improperly disposed of debris at unauthorized sites.”

Landrieu says she supports the work of state and federal agencies to prevent illegal dumping in New Orleans East and called for the closure of one controversial landfill.

“We are still awaiting the final closure of the Chef Menteur landfill, which has generated controversy because of its close proximity to a national wildlife refuge and a residential neighborhood,” the senator said.

“The closure is currently caught in a bureaucratic tangle, awaiting a 404 permit from the Corps of Engineers, among other things, before final closure can commence,” she said.

Whoever takes up the reins of power next January will have much to do to help the Gulf Coast recover.

Oxfam is urging the next administration to create an Office for Gulf Coast Recovery headed by a federal coordinator; to make sure all federally subsidized housing destroyed in the storms is reopened or replaced; to require states Gulf Coast states that receive federal recovery dollars to provide regular reports on the use of those funds; and to ensure compliance with labor laws.

“The transition to a new administration is a critical opportunity to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger,” said Offenheiser. “Not only can we help the Gulf Coast recover, we can take the opportunity of the rebuilding effort to address the long-standing root causes of poverty and vulnerability that existed in these two states long before the storms of 2005.”

Sharon Hanshaw, executive director of Coastal Women for Change in Biloxi, Mississippi, said, “This is our community, we want it back the way it was – or better.”

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“Katrina taught us much about ourselves here in southeast Louisiana. It taught the rest of America a bit about Louisiana.”
- Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City

I don’t mean to be a downer. As you know by now, this isn’t a show about Katrina. What’s more, URBANbuild was created as a response to the housing devastation that existed well before any of us knew who she was.

But ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL is, among other things, a show about New Orleans, and you can’t talk about New Orleans anymore without talking about Katrina in some way, because now it’s an integral part of the city’s collective identity.

And so it happened that we spent a muggy afternoon filming in the Ninth Ward [www.gnocdc.org], a section of the city that was thrust into the international spotlight on August 29, 2005 when, because of its proximity to a broken levee system, it flooded beyond repair. Unforgettable images of its drowned homes splashed across TV screens around the world, so that now people from Kansas to Kathmandu know it by name.

Needless to say, we couldn’t help but feel a voyeur’s sense of nervous anticipation when we went with some students to film 2005’s most talked-about location.

What we found was nothing more than a memory. Receding, distant, grey, empty. Broken. Even the wreckage I’d heard about from friends who visited a year ago was gone. What remained was an overgrowth of weeds, some taller than we were, swishing loudly in the hot wind. They grew up through every crack in the concrete, and in front yards where crumpled remains of houses stood on their last leg, and for long stretches of empty land, where once there stood an entire row of lively homes. Now just weeds. And mosquitoes, as thick as gnats.

When we interviewed Casey about her childhood house in California, we could feel memories from these ghost houses hovering around us while we filmed (under rubble and behind shredded facades, I swear, they were everywhere).

Afterwards, the crew stood on one of the many leftover concrete foundations, often the only discomfiting sign that anyone had ever lived there. Like the entire Ninth Ward itself, it was like walking on an outline of what used to be. Michael showed me how one could imagine an entire floor plan for a house that once stood exactly where we did, simply by following the lines on the concrete, and by paying attention to loose material in the ground. I mean, right down to the bedroom closet and the toilet! It was surreal.

As we drove away, we saw two guys rebuilding a house from scratch. The only people around for what seemed like miles, they whistled and hummed to each other while they hammered nails into fresh wood – like it was just another day in the neighborhood.

And for them, it probably was.

Rachel Clift
Producer

Jonathan Demme believes that “film and literature can change a mind.” If a film causes a human mind to consider questions that it has not encountered before, therein lies a great possibility to influence that one person. The idea is that awareness allows people to make better decisions in their life. Jonathan warns people from thinking that you can change society with a great book or film, but he does imply that by moving individuals towards a more informed and knowledgeable understanding of the world, these people might collectively create a difference in society. This desire to better people makes Jonathan Demme an ECO HERO.

Jonathan Demme makes films that inspire thought and confront complacency. Mr. Demme has covered human rights issues as well as environmental issues in two of his films. The first film, Jimmy Carter Man from Plains was filmed 2006 through 2007. The film features comfortable interviews with Jimmy Carter in his country home. Since Jimmy Carter dedicated his life to fighting for human rights, one of the messages from Mr. Demme’s film cannot help but be related to environmental justice.

The second film, New Home Movies From the Lower 9th Ward, focuses on the human tragedy of post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. The residents of the city talk about their harrowing existence in a city that still suffers from environmental disaster.

Check out the ECO HEROES video with Jonathan Demme.

In order to get a geographic appreciation of Jonathan Demme, make sure to check out Jonathan Demme’s Map Marker [www.sundancechannel.com] on Eco-mmunity Map.

Feel free to comment on this post and discover More ECO HEROES using the links below:

Jonathan Demme [www.sundancechannel.com]

Ira Ehrenpreis @ Technology Partners [www.sundancechannel.com]

Jerry Fiddler @ Solazyme [www.sundancechannel.com]

Sarah Gitlin @ Dalton High School [www.sundancechannel.com]

Shai Agassi @ Project Better Place [www.sundancechannel.com]

Sherry Strong [www.sundancechannel.com]

Zem Joaquin [www.sundancechannel.com]

Adam Green [www.sundancechannel.com]

Robert Thurman [www.sundancechannel.com]

Joanna Opot @ Starting Bloc [www.sundancechannel.com]

James Wells @ Sustainable South Bronx [www.sundancechannel.com]

GENEVA, Switzerland, April 8, 2008 (ENS) – Bringing a rise in air and sea temperatures and extreme weather patterns, global warming endangers not only the planet but also threatens human health, top United Nations officials warned on Monday – World Health Day – which marks the founding of the UN World Health Organization on April 7, 1948.

“The core concern is succinctly stated – climate change endangers human health,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, WHO.

“The warming of the planet will be gradual,” she said, “but the effects of extreme weather events – more storms, floods, droughts and heat waves – will be abrupt and acutely felt.”

She noted that human beings are already exposed to the effects of climate-sensitive diseases, including malnutrition, which causes over 3.5 million deaths per year, diarrheal diseases, which kill over 1.8 million people a year, and malaria, which kills almost one million people every year.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, right, meets with a group of “lady health workers” in Pakistan. (Photo courtesy World Health Organization)

“Although climate change is a global phenomenon, its consequences will not be evenly distributed,” said Dr. Chan. “In short, climate change can affect problems that are already huge, largely concentrated in the developing world, and difficult to control.”

Recent events such as the European heat wave in 2003; Hurricane Katrina, which struck the United States in 2005; and cholera epidemics in Bangladesh are just a few examples of what can be expected in the future.

“These trends and events cannot be attributed solely to climate change but they are the types of challenges we expect to become more frequent and intense with climate changes,” Chan said. “They will further strain health resources which, in many regions, are already under severe stress.”

To address the health effects of climate change, WHO is coordinating and supporting research and assessment on the most effective measures to protect health, particularly for the most vulnerable such as women and children in developing countries.

WHO is advising member states on the changes they must make to their health systems to protect their peoples, and will work with them in the future to develop effective means of adapting to a changing climate and reducing its effects on human health.

“Nearly 10 million children under age five die every year of largely preventable diseases,” said Ann Veneman executive director of the UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. “Many of the main global killers of children – including malaria and diarrhoea – are sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall, and could become more common if weather patterns change.”

In Ecuador, more than 14,000 people
were displaced by torrential rains
since January which have flooded
nearly half the country.
(Photo courtesy UNICEF)

Women and children tend to be most affected by hurricanes and flooding, which climate change experts say will increase in intensity and frequency in coming years. The destruction of homes, schools and health centers resulting from natural disasters reduce services available to families.

“The voices of women and children must be heard and their needs assessed as part of the international response to prospective changes to the environment, and they must have access to the knowledge and tools necessary to protect themselves and their communities,” UNICEF said.

In his World Health Day message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world body must ensure that “protecting human health is anchored at the heart of the global climate change agenda.”

It is the world’s poor – who contributed the least to climate change – who will bear the brunt of the human suffering resulting from the crisis, said Ban.

In addition to causing more frequent and more severe storms, heat waves, droughts and floods, Ban pointed out that climate change jeopardizes the quality and availability of water and food, “our fundamental determinants of nutrition and health.”

Stressing that “climate change is real, it is accelerating and it threatens all of us,” Ban called for collective action to combat climate change, for the sake of the planet as well as for the humans who inhabit it.

Some of those who are taking action now were honored Monday in Washington, DC to mark World Health Day. Fundación Selva Negra, the Black Forest Foundation, a nonprofit environmental organization founded by the Mexican Rock group Maná, was named a Champion of Health by the Pan American Health Organization during an observance of World Health Day 2008.

Pan American Health Organization
Director Dr. Mirta Roses, second
from left, presents the award to
Selva Negra’s Augusto Chacon
and Mari Carmen Casares.
(Photo courtesy PAHO)

Founded in 1995, the foundation focused initially on reforestation projects in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Since then, its work has included protection of endangered sea turtles, recycling projects, environmental education projects, support for communities affected by natural disasters, and programs to prevent violence and substance abuse among young people.

One the foundation’s newer projects is The Growing Connection, which promotes high-yielding, water-conserving household vegetable gardens aimed at improving the nutrition of women and children, in particular. The project is currently being carried out in 11 countries, including Ghana, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the United States.

“We learned not long ago that all the environmental work we do will be useless if we do not include the human beings who interact with threatened species and regions,” said Mari Carmen Casares, Fundación Selva Negra’s deputy director. “We know today that the hope for marine turtles on Mexico’s coasts is inevitably linked with the economic and cultural salvation of the communities that surround them.”

“Health and environment are two parts of the same thing: the quality of life of humans and of all the species with which we share this planet, and the viability of Earth, at least as we know it,” said the foundation’s Executive Director Augusto Chacon.

The long-term trend of global warming is continuing, despite the current La Niña weather phenomenon that is bringing relatively cooler temperatures to parts of the Equatorial Pacific region, the UN World Meteorological Organization said Friday.

Worldwide temperatures continue to rise and this year are expected to be above the long-term average, even though the cooling La Niña weather pattern is likely to persist through to the middle of 2008, the world’s weather scientists said in a press statement issued in Geneva.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said that while there will always be both cooler and warmer individual years, the overall trend in temperatures is still upwards.

“For detecting climate change,” he said, “you should not look at any particular year, but instead examine the trends over a sufficiently long period of time.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, March 11, 2008 (ENS) – Every mode of transportation in the United States will be affected as the climate warms, with the greatest impact expected to be flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges brought on by more intense storms, says a new report from the National Research Council.

The report identifies five climate changes of particular importance to U.S. transportation – increases in very hot days and heat waves; increases in Arctic temperatures; rising sea levels; increases in intense precipitation events; and increases in hurricane intensity.

Though the impacts of climate change will vary by region, it is certain they will be widespread and costly in human and economic terms, and will require major changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems, the committee concludes.

Evacuation of New Orleans flooded by Hurricane
Katrina. September 1, 2005 (Photo
by Michael Rieger courtesy FEMA)

“The time has come for transportation professionals to acknowledge and confront the challenges posed by climate change, and to incorporate the most current scientific knowledge into the planning of transportation systems,” said Henry Schwartz Jr., past president and chairman of the engineering firmSverdrup/Jacobs Civil Inc., and chair of the committee that wrote the report.

“Rising temperatures may trigger weather extremes and surprises, such as more rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice than projected,” Schwartz said. “The highways that currently serve as evacuation routes and endure periodic flooding could be compromised with strong hurricanes and more intense precipitation, making some of these routes impassable.”

Transportation providers will need to focus on evacuation planning and work more closely with weather forecasters and emergency planners, the said the committe, which includes meteorologists, climate scientists and planners as well as transportation officials from Massachusetts, New York, Texas and California.

“It is now possible to project climate changes for large subcontinental regions, such as the Eastern United States, a scale better suited for considering regional and local transportation infrastructure,” Schwartz said.

The U.S. transportation system was designed and built for local weather and climate conditions, predicated on historical temperature and precipitation data, but the report finds that climate predictions used by transportation planners and engineers may no longer be reliable for forecast weather and climate extremes.

Infrastructure pushed beyond the range for which it was designed can become stressed and fail, as seen with loss of the U.S. 90 Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. Highway 90 bridge in Biloxi,
Mississippi was destroyed by
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (Photo
by Mark Wolfe courtesy FEMA)

In addition to climate changes, other vulnerabilities will affect coastal-area transportation systems, the committee notes.

Population is projected to grow in coastal areas, which will boost demand for transportation infrastructure and increase the number of people and businesses potentially in harm’s way.

Erosion and loss of wetlands have removed crucial buffer zones that once protected infrastructure, and an estimated 60,000 miles of coastal highways are already exposed to periodic storm flooding.

Infrastructure vulnerabilities will extend inland as the climate continues to change, the committee says.

In the Midwest, increased intense precipitation could augment the severity of flooding, as occurred in 1993 when farmland, towns, and transportation routes were severely damaged from flooding along 500 miles of the Mississippi and Missouri river systems.

On the other hand, drier conditions are likely to prevail in the watersheds supplying the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes as well as the Upper Midwest river system.

Lower water levels would reduce vessel shipping capacity, impairing freight movements in the region, such as occurred during the drought of 1988, which stranded barge traffic on the Mississippi River.

And in California, heat waves may increase wildfires that can destroy transportation infrastructure.

Not all climate changes will be negative, however. Marine transportation could benefit from more open seas in the Arctic, creating new and shorter shipping routes and reducing transport time and costs, the report notes. In cold regions, rising temperatures could reduce the costs of snow and ice control and would make travel conditions safer for passenger vehicles and freight.

“Preparing for projected climate changes will be costly,” the committee warns.

Response measures range from rehabilitating and retrofitting infrastructure to making major additions to constructing entirely new infrastructure. Roads, rail lines, and airport runways in low-lying coastal areas may become casualties of sea-level rise, requiring relocations or expensive protective measures, such as sea walls and levees.

The report calls for the federal government to perform such services as creation of a clearinghouse for information on transportation and climate change.

Sand pushed inland by the storm surge
of Hurricane Jeanne covers a road
in Vero Beach, Florida. (Photo by
Mark Wolfe courtesy FEMA)

The federal government should establish a research program to re-evaluate existing design standards and develop new standards for addressing climate change, the committee recommends, and should also create an interagency working group on adaptation.

Changes in federal regulations regarding long-range planning guidelines and infrastructure rehabilitation requirements may be necessary.

And the National Flood Insurance Program will need to be re-evaluated and flood insurance rate maps updated with climate change in mind, the committee suggests.

But many recommendations need not wait for federal action, and focusing on the challenges now could help avoid costly transportation investments and disruptions to operations in the future, the committee advises.

Local governments and private infrastructure providers can begin to identify critical infrastructure that is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Professional organizations can single out examples of best practices, and transportation planners and climate scientists can begin collaboration on the development of regional scenarios for likely climate changes and the data needed to analyze their impacts.

This report is a collaboration between the Transportation Research Board and the Division on Earth and Life Studies of the National Research Council. It was sponsored by six federal government agencies.

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The President of CERES, Mindy Lubber, has “filed a petition with the US Securities and Exchange Commission asking the SEC to require publicly-traded companies to assess and disclose their financial risks from climate change in their formal reporting statements” (financialtimes.com). The reasoning behind this petition is that major environmental disasters like hurricane Katrina can cause major stock fallout in affected companies or create ripple effects on the stock market that can drive down the price of stocks. Currently, there is no requirement for companies to release information about the climate risks that might interfere with integral parts of how a company conducts business. For instance, a company with offshore oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico would be required to release information to investors that would estimate the economic damage to the oil company that might occur if a hurricane hit the rig. This would also mean that the company could present a more favorable climate risk assessment if they weatherized the oil rig to withstand more powerful storms.

The idea is to force major stock market companies to release the climate risk of their businesses since this information is actually a material risk at this day and age. This move may herald unprecedented changes in corporate sustainability projects when companies realize their company’s stock value is tied to a climate risk report. Spiritually, this change to the way Wall Street conducts business would be a major shift in the ethical practice of the corporations of the world. The reason for this lies in the fact that you can only treat the symptoms of climate change so much before the cost becomes untenable. To clarify, there is a point at which weatherizing an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico becomes too expensive, and even impossible to protect against the ravages of a category 5 hurricane. It is at this point that the oil company in question may consider that the cost of operating the oil rig in the Gulf is not worth the profit it generates, and shift money to renewable energy projects in safer environments. Business models that suffer less from climate risk will be given a higher likelihood of success in the financial world if this petition from CERES is successful.

If wall street aligns with the processes of life in order to simultaneously confer the greatest increase to fiscal profitability, then would the financial world solve more environmental problems as a byproduct of functioning?

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Read More About This Story at the Following Places

1. Financial Times Article [us.ft.com]

2. CERES Website [www.ceres.org]

3. Find more at the NYtimes.com Website [www.nytimes.com]