New Orleans After Katrina

In an article in the current New Scientist, it is reported that 85% of the world’s river deltas now regularly flood in ways that are catastrophic. Guess where most of the world’s population also live. I ran by the River Thames on a cold, dry day in London today and the water was four inches from the riverbank. There’s a higher wall on the north side of the river, but still. We’re swamped.

We’re swamped in debt. The banks are paying fines, finally. But they will write them off in some way and continue to make profits. No one went to jail.

In New York, students at Cooper Union are occupying a room at the top of their building in protest at the absurd practices of their administration. Having constructed an expensive new Engineering building without thinking how to pay for it, Cooper now wants to end its proud tradition of free education to pay some bank. A year ago Cooper tried to close down St Mark’s Books, the last great bookstore in New York for a few more dollars in rent that could be squeezed out of a nail salon or a pharmacy.

Thank heavens the students have principles because the administration tried to buy them off with an insipid deal whereby current students would not pay fees. As we saw in Quebec this past year, resistance is as moral protest against the principle of tuition fees. Or you end up where UK students are with fees having gone from £300 ($500) a year to £9000 ($15000) in five years.

All of these details were brought home to me today in long conversations with people struggling to deal with the way that the crisis has shaped their own lives. An editor confronting mediocre manuscripts atrociously copy-edited but knowing her own job depends on achieving her target. A couple wanting to develop careers and raise their children facing insuperable practical issues and deciding to separate. And so on. We all know far too many examples of this kind, where the professional and the personal collide to the loss of the people involved.

Which is why I keep insisting that the climate disaster is the piece that ties the case for the 99% together. We can’t go on like this or we’ll all be swamped.