Free Republic

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by...

In the past four weeks we have seen two different governmental responses to disaster, one efficient, the other, frankly, disastrous. Providence has spared Houston and much of urban east Texas, but that city's response to Hurricane Rita--and the comparison with New Orleans--should give us pause in thinking not only about how we deal with the mess left behind by Katrina, but also the future of the Gulf Coast. In 2001, the director of Louisiana State University's hurricane center described New Orleans' establishment as "lulled to sleep" in the face of a predictable, looming disaster. In the months before Katrina, big...