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Indlæser... Ain't There No More: Louisiana's Disappearing Coastal Plain (America's Third Coast Series)af Carl A. Brasseaux, Donald W. Davis
Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.  DavidWineberg | Nov 3, 2016 |  ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
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Winner of the 2018 Louisiana Literary Award given by the Louisiana Library Association For centuries, outlanders have openly denigrated Louisiana's coastal wetlands residents and their stubborn refusal to abandon the region's fragile prairies tremblants despite repeated natural and, more recently, man-made disasters. Yet, the cumulative environmental knowledge these wetlands survivors have gained through painful experiences over the course of two centuries holds invaluable keys to the successful adaptation of modern coastal communities throughout the globe. As Hurricane Sandy recently demonstrated, coastal peoples everywhere face rising sea levels, disastrous coastal erosion, and, inevitably, difficult lifestyle choices. Along the Bayou State's coast the most insidious challenges are man-made. Since channelization of the Mississippi River in the wake of the 1927 flood, which diverted sediments and nutrients from the wetlands, coastal Louisiana has lost to erosion, subsidence, and rising sea levels a land mass roughly twice the size of Connecticut. State and national policymakers were unable to reverse this environmental catastrophe until Hurricane Katrina focused a harsh spotlight on the human consequences of eight decades of neglect. Yet, even today, the welfare of Louisiana's coastal plain residents remains, at best, an afterthought in state and national policy discussions. For coastal families, the Gulf water lapping at the doorstep makes this morass by no means a scholarly debate over abstract problems. Ain't There No More renders an easily read history filled with new insights and possibilities. Rare, previously unpublished images documenting a disappearing way of life accompany the narrative. The authors bring nearly a century of combined experience to distilling research and telling this story in a way invaluable to Louisianans, to policymakers, and to all those concerned with rising sea levels and seeking a long-term solution. Ingen biblioteksbeskrivelser fundet. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)333.91Social sciences Economics Economics of land & energy Hydrospheric, Atmospheric, and Biospheric Resources Hydrologic ResourcesLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (4)
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Maps going back centuries show the constant ebb and flow of land and water. Louisiana is ever changing. One estimate says a football field size lot is created or destroyed every hour. But settlers refused to work with nature; they insisted on bending nature to their wants. Wetlands were considered worthless – even though they provided game, furs and feathers for industry. So levees and canals redirected the Mississippi – with disastrous results. The canals mean all the silt flows right into the Gulf of Mexico, and when added to constant erosion and damage from hurricanes and flooding, Louisiana is in dire shrink mode, with no compensating factors. Since the 1930s, it has lost nearly 2000 square miles of coastal land. Neverending flooding meant locals built homes on stilts, or at very least lived on the second floor. Roads to connect coastal settlements were pointless, because either the road or the settlement could disappear at any time.
Agriculture in Louisiana is a litany of failure. Cotton, sugar, cattle, strawberries and rice all failed. In the case of rice, grids of canals to flood rice paddies eventually allowed saltwater incursion, ruining both land and water supplies. Sugarcane fermented in the frosts and became worthless. Gulf shrimp have been so polluted by the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion, even the federal government says no one should eat more than four a month. In every case, Man’s hand can be seen working against nature.
On the human side, Louisiana suffered greatly when slavery ended, but learned to use child labor as badly as anyone had ever seen. And Louisianans are sedentary; they don’t move away to find a better life. It is not uncommon to find tenth generation families living in the same place. For a state so rocked by disaster and hardship, that is remarkable, and worrying.
Ultimately, the book disappoints a little, because it seems to want to be a museum catalog rather than a view of the world. All the old photos, bills of lading, contracts, share certificates and maps are interesting, but the collection needs editing if it wants to make a point. And although it is nicely laid out, with a lot of brown shaded sidebars and full color whenever the originals had it, you really need to see it on paper. The electronic version is a minor nightmare of zooming in and out, hundreds of times, to read the tiny type of the highly detailed captions and try to read the original text in the images of the documents. Stick to paper for this one.
David Wineberg (