Catastrophe in the Making The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow /

• Main Authors: Freudenburg, William R. (Author), Gramling, Robert (Author), Laska, Shirley (Author), Erikson, Kai T. (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC : Island Press/Center for Resource Economics : Imprint: Island Press, 2012.
• Subjects: Environment.; Political science.; Natural disasters.; Architecture.; Environmental management.; Environmental economics.; Environmental Management.; Cities, Countries, Regions.; Political Science.; Environmental Economics.; Natural Hazards.

When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to “natural disasters” or “acts of God.” But what if they’re neither? What if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves? That’s the provocative theory of...

Table of Contents:

• Prologue. The First Days of Katrina
• 1. A Mighty Storm Hits the Shore
• 2. The Setting
• 3. Slicing Through the Swamps
• 4. The Growth Machine Comes to New Orleans
• 5. A “Helpful Explosion”
• 6. The Collapse of Engineered Systems
• 7. The Loss of Natural Defenses
• 8. Critical for Economic Survival?
• 9. The Axe in the Attic
• 10. The End of an Error?
• Endnotes
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index.