Author: Jerome a Paris

This diary started with a desire to flag tiggers thotful spot‘s diary about increasing infant mortality in the US over at dKos. I also read Ductape Fatwa haunting diary : They passed the babies forward, about the NOLA refugees desperate attempts to make sure that at least their children would get out.

But then I thought: why focus (yet again?) on the bad news? Let’s maybe look at the bright side of this: parents’ love for their children, and their desire to want the best for them.

I don’t know how many tribbers are parents, I suspect a majority (take the poll below and we’ll maybe have a better idea), which means that such tragic news or stories resonate immediately for many of us. Today, however, I’d like us to bring out some happy stories.

In my case, I would just like to tell you about my Sunday at home with my family – a happy, and thankfully not so unusual, day together.

As some of you know (see for instance Protection from the random miseries of life), my son is battling a brain tumor, and the most recent news are good, in that the tumor, which was killed by the ongoing chemio, has not reappeared as per the latest IRM early this week, and that his physical therapy doctors seem more optimistic about his ability to continue to recuperate movement in his right arm which is partly paralysed as a(n expected) result of the surgery. Things are moving, and moving in the right direction, which is good.

And today, we are actually celebrating his 5th birthday – for the 5th time. As a result of his illness, we’ve tried to find as many occasions as we could to cheer him up and have happy moments, and his birthday (in late August) was one. It was celebrated in early July at his school – they have a small party for all the summer birthdays, and he was keen to go to school that day (in the past year, he only went a few hours per week, due to his treatments and his overall tiredness). Then in August, there was a further celebration with my parents as they came to visit us for a while; on the actual date, there was another cake (and presents) at home, and again a few days later with his other grandmother on her day off… Finally, a party was organised in early September at home for his friends to come over. That party (like the one a year ago, which eventually took place in late November) was cancelled because he had to spend that day in hospital, so we are finally doing it today. We’re having a clown – actually, a Spiderman – come over to entertain him and ten friends of his, and we’re hoping he’ll have a good time.

Actually, although he’s had a tough last year, he has been blessed with a smiling, irrepressibly positive personality; he has complained very little throughout, and has been able to have a lot of good times. He has been back to the (very high) energy levels we were used to until summer last year, and is running around, banging on stuff and being a fun and facetious little boy (and a very literal-minded one, which i suppose he could use to become a good lawyer: if you tell him “stop banging on the table with that sppon”, he will pick up his fork and do it with that new tool…). He’s a charmer and makes you melt a few seconds after you’ve been wanting to ground him for the rest of the day for yet another destructive experiment with his environment (this week’s best: can I cut a credit card in two with my parents’ scissors, and the answer is sadly yes).

Now, one of the hardest things when you have a very sick child is to learn how to treat your other children fairly, and explain to them why you need to spend more time with their brother. He has two sisters, one older, one younger. With the older one (now almost 7), we’ve tried to take advantage of her already reasonable and well-behaved character to explain to her what was going on, what we expected from her, and how grateful we were for her autonomy and her understanding. We’ve tried to do special things with her alone – going to the restaurant just with her, going shopping for her clothes (not me!), bringing friends over or letting her go over, and so forth. We hope this has worked. She was always a serious little person and she still is today, very caring for her brother, and very responsible. Now in first grade, she wants to do her homework with zeal, and to have her things in order, so we’ve created special disorder-free zones just for her… She loves to sing and draw, and we’ve encouraged her to do this as much as possible. So today, she has been preparing a big drawing as a present for her brother’s birthday, and our home is decorated with her work.

The younger one, now two and a half, probably had the hardest adjustment to make, as she suddenly lost the attention she was used to as the baby of the family at a tender age (she was barely 18 months last year when we discovered our son’s situation). So she’s had to fight even more for our attention than a third child usually does. Whether caused by this or because this was her personality (I think the latter), she has thankfully had no difficulty doing this. She is forceful, totally fearless, and happy to take her bigger siblings one on one at any time. She also loves to run around and jump with her brother, which keeps them busy at the expense of our neighbor’s peace, and makes him use all his limbs in their  joint exertions, which is great for him. They get along amazingly well, falling into fits of laughter together, and always willing to test the limits of physics together, which makes us alternate between pure terror, flashes of anger and amazed content. I often join (or initiate) the games of the two little ones, and we have loads of fun together. Their older sister often joins us, but she’s usually the first one to get hurt first, so I have to play with her separately (but we can also do more serious things with her). Ther little one is very cuddly with us, always requesting hugs and playtime and reading, which we are happy to provide, and which we have indeed made a conscious effort to provide in higher doses after the several weeks last year when, per force, we neglected her somewhat.

So we’ve had doses of all this today already – races across the apartment, cooking the cake together, then playing with the leftover ingredients and a little bit of water (some cleaning up at some point…), now dancing on music as we await Spiderman and the first guests.

Having kids is a totally new life. We have been to the movies extremely rarely in the last few years; we don’t travel overseas anymore on our holidays, and we have much less time to read or other personal activities. We have a rollercaster of emotions, a lot of responsibilities and worries, and a lot of great moments throughout, on which I think it is important to focus once in a while, to remind ourselves that life is not just crises and pain.

So, what good moments did you have recently with your kids? Or with friends’ kids? (i love to play with the kids of others – I get all the fun, and someone else gets to deal with the overexcited children afterwards… and it’s actually pretty flattering to be popular amongst 4-years old). Do you remember to concentrate on the good times, those worry-free periods of pure happiness?

Update [2005-10-2 17:38:15 by Jerome a Paris]: I have taken out the reference to the poll in the title. I forgot to include the poll when I posted this, and now it makes little sense to add it… Sorry about this small mix up – but thanks to all for all the grrat stories and/or pictures!

As some of you may have followed, I have been trying to build up a manifesto for an energy policy for the Dems (see this diary: Building together an effective Dem energy policy (I) ). There will be more, which makes more sense to continue over at dKos. But I thought it would be worthwhile to come back to basics, and write once again about “peak oil”.

The occasion to do this is an excellent 10-page article published this week-end in Le Monde, France’s equivalent to the NYT, where they introduce peak oil to their readers. Amongst the highlights:

• Saudi Arabia “does not have the capacity to produce 15 mb/d” says Aramco’s n°2;

• oil sands will never produce more than 5 mb/d, if that

• Total’s CEO said “peak oil will be no later than 2025, and only if we have a demand crisis“

And this graph:

Ready for an introduction or a refresher? Jump in.

Above is the front page of their week-end magazine. It says: “Oil: running dry?”, and the trailer below (from the front page of the daily), says: “the end of oil: a well kept secret“. The article is unfortunately not available online, but it is in French anyway, so I am providing a summary below (it’s not a transcript or a translation – anything between quotes comes from the article, the rest is my translation, sometimes interspersed with additional information).

:: ::

The article begins by reminding us of the economists’ common wisdom on oil: yes prices have increased, but this is purely conjonctural, once Iraq will quieten, or China’s growth slows down a bit, or a few refineries are built, it’ll all go back to normal. Reserves are plentiful and technology will allow us to squeeze more oil from the existing fields and bring new ones up.

And yet, “the best geologists worldwide have now been arguing for several months about the imminence of peak oil. How much time do we have until we enter a era of permanent oil shock?” Our ability to adapt to it depends on how much time we have to do so, and it may be several decades, or it could be  “a few months”.

The article notes that non-OPEC production is certain to peak at the latest in 2010, and that we will increasingly depend on OPEC oil, and especially on Saudi oil. The article gives a good summary of Matt Simmons’s claims that Saudi reserves are probably inflated and that nobody knows the real numbers as no reliable information has been provided since Aramco was nationalised. It quotes several Saudi executives with very pessimistic forecasts: one, Nawaf Obaid, strategic advisor to the Saudi Ambassador to the US, says that Saudi Arabia would like not to ever produce more than 12 mb/d (“but no other country is ready to invest today to allow Saudi Arabia to slow down its production”); the other, Sadad Al-Husseini, former n°2 of Saudi Aramco, says that the country does not have today the capacity to go to 15 mb/d; it would need years to get there and, if it did, say by 2015,  it would not be able to sustain that level for more than 10 or 15 years before irreversible – and rapid – decline set in. Under Simmons’ pressure, the Saudis have now provided some numbers that showed that Ghawar, the biggest field in the world, is now 48% depleted, and its production (and that of the other big Saudi fields) declining by 5-12% per year.

With non OPEC production peaking, and Saudi saying that it can only increase its own production at a terrible price, no wonder that some are pessimistic…

The article notes the interesting coincidence of two big meetings that took place last May, one being a visit of a massive Saudi delegation in the US to find funds (more than 600 billion dollars) to invest in their country. The other was the yearly conference of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), and the games there to identify who was represented (all the oil companies, the EU Commission, EDF, GE) and how many journalists were there (a lot, apparently).

All participants agreed on one thing: it is almost impossible to find reliable numbers on oil reserves. A specialist from the IFP (Institut Français du Pétrole, France’s main school and research center on oil) is quoted as saying “it’s already pretty much impossible to know how much oil comes out of a pipeline, so finding out how much is below the ground…” The IFP president compares reserves assessments to finding out what’s in a warehouse by looking through the keyhole – and everybody has a different opinion.

According to the article, the big players use two main sources to evaluate reserves worldwide: the Oil & Gas Journal, which sends a yearly questionnaire to governments of oil producing countries, and publishes their (unconfirmed) replies, and IHS Energy, a Houston consultancy, which publishes a confidential database – the problem is that it’s so confidential that even the price of the information is not public, but is rumored to be more than a million dollars… Total, which has access to the database, notes that the two sources come up with similar overall numbers (OGJ has 1,266 billion barrels of “probable reserves” from 94 countries, and IHS has 1,152 from 114 countries), but that each line (country per country) is pretty different.

With production already declining in a number of countries (including two OPEC members, Indonesia and Gabon), non conventional oils seems all the more necessary. Total, one of the world leaders in that field, with operations in both Canada and Venezuela, hopes, in its most optimistic scenarios, for 5 mb/d production in 2025. The IEA does not believe that more than 2 mb/d will ever be produced. It’s hugely expensive (Total announced a 10 billion dollar investment to produce 200,000 b/d in 2015 in Canada), terribly dirty, and unlikely to play more than a marginal role overall.

What appears throughout the article is that oil companies, at least, seem well aware of the problem, and have now decided that their interest was to publicise the problem and no longer to deny it. Jon Thomson, the exploration & production head for ExxonMobil spoke at the 2003 APSO conference (when these were fairly discreet affairs) and was already saying then that “to satisfy current demand, we need to find a new North Sea every 18 months… Where are we going to find 10 North Seas?”. The graph at the top of this diary was prepared by ExxonMobil, which did a huge work to collect all doscovery data and backdate them properly. And now Chevron is making the ad campaign we mentioned in an earlier diary about peak oil, and Total is running ads in France which say “for you, our energy is limitless”. Hints, hints, but they are getting clearer every day, it seems… (Simmons is quoted as saying that prior to the publication of his book this summer, “only 2 people in Washington were worrying about the issue”)

3 years ago, these companies refused to acknowledge the problem. Now they’d like it to become more public. Once the non-OPEC peak happens, they will be highly vulnerable against the “real” majors, the national oil companies of the countries which still have reserves, most of which close them off to outside players.

The article states that in a recent meeting with political leaders, Thierry Desmarets, the boss of French major Total, said that peak oil would happen around 2025, provided that there is a demand shock. Which means, obviously, that if we do not curtail our demand, the peak will be much earlier. This is very much compatible with the scenarios drawn by APSO’s Jean Laherrère and Saudi Aramco’s Al-Hussieni, who both expect that production will plateau very soon, with a bumpy ride on such plateau, marked by various shocks and price volatility. Laherrère expects the final decline by 2015, while Al-Husseini sees it closer to 2030.

But a plateau will be enough of a challenge for our economies. Denying it is what the APSO calls “flat earth economics”.

Of course, you can always fall back to this:

There’s lots more coal in the US than there is oil in Saudi Arabia, so what’s the problem?

In today’s FT, from Philip Verleger of the Institute for International Economics, Fred Bergstein’s think tank:

US suffers as Bush’s gamble fails

After his 1964 landslide election, President Lyndon Johnson gambled that the US economy could support a war and his Great Society programme. He lost. The expenditures exceeded economic capacity. Shortages occurred, prices rose, and a 15-year inflationary spiral began. Within two years, the Federal Reserve had to intervene by raising interest rates. Economic growth stopped and harsh economic conditions brought an end to Johnson’s dreams.

Forty years later, another president from Texas made another wager: betting the US could fight a war, reduce taxes and avoid conserving energy. He also lost. Over the next two years, President George W. Bush will see inflation return and the Federal Reserve Board act to offset his profligate energy and fiscal policies.

President Bush (…) and his advisers also gambled, although in a different game. Johnson tried to provide guns and butter without raising taxes. George Bush tried to serve up large tax cuts without reducing spending or addressing the nation’s rapacious thirst for motor fuels, particularly gasoline.

(…)

The loss of natural gas supplies adds to inflationary pressures. Katrina and Rita destroyed perhaps 5 per cent of the nation’s natural gas supply, causing large price increases. Heating bills could double this winter. Furthermore, the cost of goods manufactured using natural gas, such as PVC pipe, will climb sharply even before rebuilding efforts boost demand.

(…)

[gasoline and diesel] price hikes could have been avoided had we pursued a programme to limit increases in motor fuel consumption. Here, too, George Bush made a bet. Efforts to tighten fuel economy standards for new vehicles were rejected when his energy programme was introduced and Congress refused to change it. The president declined to push a gasoline tax following 9/11. He wagered that an already stretched refining industry could meet mounting gasoline demand, which is largely linked to American affinity for large SUVs and trucks. (…) Although the calculations are hard to believe, econometric models suggest retail gasoline prices might need to double by next summer to maintain market balance.

There is only one end to this scenario: higher interest rates. A vigilant Federal Reserve Board will have to boost rates to suppress demand, just as during the Johnson administration. The pressure for higher rates will be even greater given the forthcoming retirement of Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman. His replacement will need to convince financial markets that the Board remains determined to keep inflation in check. The consequences will be a slowdown or worse.

As the rebuilding effort slows, high interest rates and high gasoline prices may pull the economy into recession. Like President Johnson, President Bush took a chance and lost.

I find this article interesting for a number of reasons:

• its publication shows the FT’s continued bearish outlook on the world economy and their strong awareness of the acute energy crisis we are entering. Their front page today is again about oil (this time about the worries expressed at the IMF summit) and they have published a steady drum of stories about energy getting scarcer or more expensive, as my readers know well from my regular quotes. That means that the business community in Europe is becoming increasingly aware that this is a major issue;

• the linkage between the budgetary policy and the energy policy is a vital one. Bush has refused to address the energy issue and has tried instead to drown it instead, with Greenspan’s help, in a massive monetary and budgetary spending binge. We’ll pay “whatever it takes” to get our energy without limits is his (and America’s) motto. Well, that binge may come to an end, and Katrina may have been the wall that stopped Bush’s unsustainable policies, as it shows that there is no spare capacity in the refining sector (to fuel America’s wasteful cars), in the construction sector (to rebuild what was destroyed), and in the global financial world (to finance it all on Uncle Sam’s plastic);

• the insight that price rises will need to be massive to have an effect on America’s insatiable demand. A lot of Americans will change only when in financial pain; big changes will require a lot of pain;

• the important note that natural gas is the biggest short term problem. I have promised to write more about this, and I will, but note again that this will lead to higher heating and higher electricity prices – higher meaning probably double their current levels;

• the conclusion is that the only outcome is higher interest rates. Greenspan leaving is a good thing, but his God-like status does mean that his replacement will need to establish his/her credibility – and that will mean a hawkish attitude on inflation. That’s what’s needed, but it will happen faster than most expect, and it will be painful – in all likelihood popping the housing bubble and increasing debt servicing costs for most.

In a way, it is ironic that Iraq will end the same way that Vietnam did – because the USA could not afford it anymore. But at least Johnson was trying to build the Great Society at the same time. Bush has only been trying to shovel money to his rich cronies. History will not be kind to him.

Sorry to step into the March stories, but this is a pretty big development:

Nuclear watchdog refers Iran to Security Council

The U.N. nuclear watchdog passed a resolution on Saturday requiring that Iran be reported to the Security Council for failing to convince the international community that its nuclear programme was entirely peaceful.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) governing board approved the resolution despite threats by Iran to begin enriching uranium and curtail IAEA inspections.

(…)

With 22 votes for, one against and 12 abstentions, the outcome also highlighted the split between Western nations and others such as Russia, China and South Africa, which disagree with the EU three and Washington on how to deal with Iran.

Le Monde notes that the lack of a date in the resolution means that nothing will happen until the next meeting of the council of governors of the IAEA in November – i.e. negotiations continue. Interestingly, the only negative vote comes from Venezuela, with India voting with the Europeans and Americans. It is nevertheless very unusual for the IAEA decisions to come to a vote, so both sides can claim victory (the Europeans, that the resolution was approved, and the iranians, that it was watered down and not unanimous). The resolution does formally note that the numerous violations and breaches by Iran of its obligations constitute a case of non-respect of the NPT and deserve to be brough to the Security Council.

At this point, both sides can claim victory, which means that diplomacy have prevailed, which sounds like a good thing…

People, you are doing the right thing, and the media, at least ours, is noticing:

The full headline of the paper is: “Hurricanes, Iraq War: Bush in trouble”

Keep it up! We support you from far away places!

Total May Use Atomic Power At Oil-Sand Project (WSJ, behind subscription wall)

PARIS — French oil giant Total SA, amid rising oil and natural-gas prices, is considering building a nuclear power plant to extract ultraheavy oil from the vast oil-sand fields of western Canada.

This comes as oil prices — driven even higher by Hurricane Katrina and now the threat of Hurricane Rita — are removing lingering doubts about the long-term profitability of extracting the molasseslike form of oil from sand, despite the fact that the output is much more expensive to produce and to upgrade than is conventional crude.

At the same time, prices of natural gas — which oil-sands producers have relied on to produce the steam and electricity needed to push the viscous oil out of the ground — have risen 45% in the past year. That is prompting Total, which holds permits on large fields in Alberta that contain oil sands, to consider building its own nuclear plant and using the energy produced to get the job done.

This is interesting for two things: the global comeback of nuclear energy, and the staggering investments required to develop the Canadian oil sands. Neither are a sign that we are about to get back to an era of cheap energy…

Total’s interest is the latest sign that nuclear energy is making a global comeback. Finland commissioned a new reactor in 2003, the first such order in Western Europe in 13 years. France has chosen a site in Normandy where a reactor will be built. The U.S. hasn’t commissioned a new nuclear plant for three decades, but the industry is talking seriously about a revival, encouraged by the Bush administration and the rising cost of fossil fuel.

(…)

Total is relying on Areva SA, the French state-run nuclear engineering company, to define what type of reactor might suit its needs in Canada. Research is focusing on a dedicated reactor significantly smaller than those used by utility companies to produce electricity for large city grids.

Areva said discussions with Total are centering on a new type of reactor, known as a High Temperature Reactor, with a capacity of around 500 megawatts, about a third of the size of a traditional reactor. Areva also has been approached by other oil companies but discussions are most advanced with Total, Jean-Jacques Gautrot, Areva’s director for international operations and marketing, said.

Areva, the French builder of nuclear plants (and the main contractor for the new Finnish plant), has recently signed an agreement with Constellation energy to prepare the ground to build new nuclear reactors in the US. It is also bidding for new nuclear tranches in China.

I wrote most of what I know about nuclear energy in this diary: Nuclear energy in France – a Sunday special, which describes how the industry is run in France, how waste is stored (and how it will be stored for the long run), and how costs are accounted for. I am certainly not trying to sell nuclear as a cure all on the energy front, but it is certainly better than coal for baseload (still the main source of electricity in the US, UK and Germany) and it is mostly carbon-free and, when well-run like in France, very cheap. Against that, you have the (manageable) problem of storing dangerous waste for long periods of time, the (small but uninsurable) risk of a major accident, and the high upfront cost (in money and energy) of the initial investment. On balance, nuclear should remain part of our energy supply – but just a part, and mostly as a preference to coal-fired plants.

But back to the oil sands:

In Canada, Total holds half of an oil-sands permit in Alberta and has secured more heavy-oil acreage with the purchase of Deer Creek Energy Ltd., located in the same western province. Total said it plans to invest $7 billion in Deer Creek, on top of the $1.4 billion it expects to pay for the company. The company says it could one day produce 200,000 barrels of heavy crude a day, close to 8% of Total’s current global output.

Canada’s oil sands contain 174 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, the world’s second-largest oil resource behind those of Saudi Arabia, according to Canadian government estimates.

Oil sands, a mixture of grit and a tarlike grade of crude oil known as bitumen, were discovered more than a century ago but have been considered economical to produce only in recent years as the price of oil has surged. In addition to nuclear power, producers are considering burning oil-sands residue and coal as alternatives to natural gas to make the steam needed for extraction.

Mr. Darricarrère said a nuclear power plant would help Total comply with tougher constraints on carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse-gas emissions. Although they generate toxic, radioactive waste, nuclear reactors don’t emit greenhouse gases that scientists believe contribute to global warming.

Hidden behind these paragraphs are two things:

• getting oil sands into something usable is a very messy process, which requires a lot of industrial treatment of the oil sands, and a lot of energy. So you need oil sands AND natural gas or some other power source to make oil, which, as energy prices increase, will make the resulting oil quite expensive…

• as the numbers above show, this is an amazingly expensive effort. Consider that Total says it will spend about 8 billion $ to build a 200,000 b/d capacity – worth about 2 billion dollars per year at current prices, but equivalent to 1% of US daily consumption – and imagine how much more will need to be spent to get to volumes able to service America’s insatiable thirst for oil… The graph also shows that oil sand production in Canada is not expected to reach significant volumes in the next 10-15 years, reaching barely 3-4% of world production (and less than a third of current US imports), so it will not be enough on its own to significantly modify the global oil balance. It will certainly create few more fortunes in Alberta, and lots of prosperity around Calgary, but it won’t solve the looming oil crisis.

A spokesman for Imperial Oil Ltd. of Canada, an affiliate of Exxon Mobil Corp., which operates some of the world’s largest oil-sands operations, said it looked into the nuclear option in the past but didn’t pursue it because of cost and technology challenges.

Shell Canada Ltd. said it isn’t considering nuclear power as part of its oil-sands plans. Rather, the company said it is looking into the possibility of turning asphaltene, very heavy oil, into gas to save on its natural-gas bill.

So there is still abundant skepticism in the industry. Most of all, this shows the desperation of the industry in the face of dwindling reserves, lack of access to the countries that still have some oil, and the increasing cost of production of new volumes of oil.

Those that say that oil will come back to 40$/barrel or less are either lying to us, hopelessly naive, or unaware of these worrying trends. The Financial Times published an article (Storm over the oil industry (behing sub wall) that came out just during Katrina and which I did not find an opportunity to comment upon then)

The issue of costs might not get much attention as hurricanes, terrorist threats to oil production, the dwindling spare capacity of oil in Saudi Arabia and the insatiable thirst for energy in China and the US. But cost inflation is being viewed as a significant reason why oil prices are so high and a sign that they will remain so for some years to come. Sanford Bernstein expects the cost of producing a single barrel of oil to increase by 9 per cent a year, from about $22 a barrel this year to $36 in 2010, and the cost of finding and producing the so-called marginal barrel – beyond which the activity becomes unprofitable – will double to $60 over the same period. Uncertainty about how much new projects will cost also prompted Goldman Sachs this month to raise its prediction of the long-term oil price from $45 a barrel to $60.

The only words that come to my mind are “desperate” and “fucked”.

this was posted as a comment on k/o’s recent diary, but as it ended up being a lot longer than i expected, I am posting it again here as a stand alone diary. More meta navel gazing…

I have not been around here so much, and have provided little original material recently (i.e. not crossposted either on dKos or ET), so I don’t know if k/o’s kind word about me in his diary refers to the European whiff from the European Tribune links, or the occasional text, but it is gratefully acknowledged!

I wanted to add a few words about how I see dKos, as both an “insider” (i.e. a regular with lots of visibility) and an outsider (a foreigner, and French to boot):

First,  dKos is really several sites.

• You have the front page dominated by kos and Armando, and you have to admit that they do write some damn good stuff. That’s what the vast majority of people read.
• Then you have the diaries, where the regulars spend most, if not all their time. In fact, i’d say a regular is someone who checks the reclist or the most recent diaries or his/her hotlist before the front page. That’s the hard core community, those that spend almost every waking hour there. A few hundred? A couple thousand? Plus the many occasionals? But it’s a lot harder to know how much of an audience these discussions have beyond the regulars.
• Within the diaries, you have the non-controversial topics, and the more controversial ones. If you write about abortion, or Hillary Clinton, or race, or Lieberman, you have to know that you will generate strong feelings and that the threads can easily degenerate. Some people like being provocative, or tactless, some don’t realise they are, and many of us are susceptible. Thus many misunderstandings… and not everybody has the strength of character of Boo to apologise right away if someone felt insulted by something he wrote. And many of the new members abuse the ratings and just misbehave. And some like Armando and others act very abrasively and even obnoxiously in the diaries. it’s so different from the well reasoned and calm front page pieces that it has to be voluntary. It’s easy to identify, and it’s easy to avoid. Don’t give ratings, don’t comment if you don’t want to get embroiled.
• But within non controversial diaries, like most of my energy and economics stuff, you can have some great threads, many insightful comments, and really interesting stuff. I don’t think there has ever been a flame war in any of my diaries, simply because the discussion remains thoughtful throughout, and I do believe that the diary writer sets the tone. Here at Booman’s, as has been pointed out, Boo and Susan obviously listen to others and respect them, and that does set the tone.

But dKos now is more than about Kos, it is an aggregator. That’s where you go because that’s where everybody is, and everybody is there because that’s where you go. It’s become a big meeting place. and that’s invaluable if you want to get lots of different opinions, if you want to really test your arguments, or if you are looking for depth of information. the counterpart is that it’s become quite rough, very crowded, and somewhat anonymous. And you diary, even if it goes down the chute after half an hour, will have had more readers than you can dream of anywhere else.

But you cannot get both the audience and the coziness, that’s simply not possible. So Booman’s has a part of its success because it is familiar, but less stressful than dkos. it has managed to build on that initial reservoir to become something different enough, and that must be credited to Susan and Boo. And it gets to be big enough that you get some good feedback, enough information and interaction to keep yourself busy. But like I wrote, Kos is THE meeting place of the left, and it will be impossible to cut the link altogether, and to avoid such meta diaries. We should not let us get annoyed by them. I suspect it’s healthy to discuss these things once in a while, as long as it’s not obsessive.

Don’t get annoyed about the dKos “community”, it’s just too big, it’s a crowd, a loose network of communities, some of which find other places to meet on their own and come once in a while to the big market place to know what the others are doing and reading.

As to dKos being centrist, let me say this: I am a centrist economically speaking, and a lot more liberal on social issues. Kos is probably the other way round. As BT cares a lot about social values and probably a bit less about the economic stuff (at least it does not generate the same passions), it’s kos’s more conservative pov on some social issues that pisses people here off. Within the community, you get every kind of opinion, including those that are offensive to you if you have deeply held views on one or several topics, and one of these will inevitably come up and write something that you cannot tolerate. That’s a fact of life in such a big crowd, and it has little to do with kos beyond the obvious fact that he does not restrain such abrasiveness.

An additional point is that dKos is a fascinating site for me for many reasons:

• it has become an amazing aggregator of information on a surprisingly wide range of topics (not just US politics) and it is a really invaluable place to get informed;
• the feedback it provides to each of us (like here on BT, but at lighting speed and from many different angles) can be uncomfortable but if you can take it, it will make you stronger, better informed, and hopefully a better person (it can also hurt you, so you have to be careful)
• the very specific “winner takes all” logic of the site (the same that makes the top players in some sports earn so much more than their nearest competitors) makes it a harsh environment, and makes it hard to leave it.
• for me, it’s also particularly titillating as a foreigner to have a voice. I always try to be careful not to insult my hosts, but it is giddying to be able to be heard like this.

And remember, it is dKos that brought us all here and made it possible for us to find like-minded people all in one place. So that’s worth some grudging respect, isn’t it?

This has been originally written for dKos, but I expect it could interest you guys here as well. Jerome

There have been various diaries outlining plans for the Democrats to recapture power (the most recent and remarkable one being georgia10’s recent effort this week-end). All these plans focus, rightly, on the Dems being the party of responsibility and competence, there hardly ever is even a mention of energy policy.

I frankly don’t understand this.This is a vital topic, at the heart of many of the failures of the Bush administration, and which will remain in the headlines all the time in the coming months and years (if only via higher gasoline, heating oil and electricity prices).

This is a subject that begs to be reclaimed by the Democrats, and is an easiy way to show what separates us from the bushistas. Remember that the current White House is chock full of people coming  from the energy business, and I think that today’s crises have something to do with that.

Let me write again why energy is fundamental, what the issues are, and what needs to be done. I thank all those that have provided some input in my thread yesterday and I will try to credit all of your good ideas below as appropriate.
Cheap energy defines our civilisation

Energy supply, and energy prices have a direct impact on most aspects of how the US economy runs, and of US diplomacy:

• cheap oil has allowed the whole US civilisation to be built around  the car. Suburbs, McMansions, exurbs have been made possible by the  ubiquity of roads and cars, and make sense ONLY with cheap individual  transport available;

• the car industry, despite the emergence of new industries and technologies, is still the biggest engine of economic growth, occupying millions of workers and shaping the needs – and prosperity  – of whole sectors (metallurgy, electronics, textile, road  construction, hospitals, police, all the services for each), and of  course the oil industry that feeds it;

• globalisation has been made possible because it is so cheap to transport goods around (by truck or boat, mostly) and to specialise factories for specific tasks in production chains that span the world  and take advantage of local resources (whether commodities, cheap or  conversely specialised labor or access to markets);

• US diplomacy nowadays is mostly concerned with pushing that globalisation that US corporates lead, and with protecting the supply of the energy that underpins it. Look at the countries in the news –  they pretty much all have to do with energy. The Middle East  obviously, China, as the biggest global factory and the second largest consumer of oil, Venezuela. Canada – all you hear about  Canada is when there is a trade dispute;

• A final point to note in that diagnosis (as pointed out by Devilstower) is that the US energy system is really two totally separate systems:  a transportation system, mostly based on oil, and an electricity network powered, in that order, by coal, natural gas and nuclear. Electricity can be produced by many different sources, and needs to play a bigger role in transport; instead, we are currently busy bringing the oil world (and problems) into the grid through a massive increase in gas-fired generation capacity).

Crunch time is coming

The timetable for peak oil is a small number of years. The timetable for peak gas, which will trigger similar spikes in electricity prices until we have found a way to produce more than a smallish fraction of it from renewables, is not much longer. In fact, I would not be surprised if the inevitable energy crisis will come from the natural gas/electricity side before, or jointly with, the oil side.. (I explain why in my first comment in the thread below as it requires too much detail this summary, but it does need to be explained – so see below for further details).

Instead of bringing the network into out transportation policy, we have brought peak oil (in the form of “peak gas”) into the electricity sector. Power prices will be set by the high natural gas prices (see why in my comment below). So the market will balance by having demand pay the higher price, or going down significantly to get to lower prices. Thus, demand destruction. It will happen. “Markets” (i.e. physical reality, here) will prevail: the poor will go without heat and without electricity, while others will see their budgets stretched. This is the INEVITABLE outcome of today’s trends, and it could come as soon as this winter on both the power side (with a pretty strong probability) and the oil side (with a more uncertain chance – but as  you know, I am betting on it).

One aspect of the need for a comprehensive energy policy is the awareness that we are going towards a wall at high speed. If you do not believe this, and think that “we’ll find ways”, I suppose that all that I will write below makes little sense to you, and may appear unduly catastrophist and counter-productive. But even the NYT does not really subscribe to this view anymore:

I wish I had the confidence to make my own forecast, but in this case, I don’t. What I do know – what we all know – is that oil is a finite resource. Surely, the peakists are right about that. What I also know is historically, the economists have generally been right about how the price of oil has wound up fixing the problem.

As Gary N. Ross, the chief executive of the PIRA Energy Group, puts it: “Price is the only thing that matters. The new threshold of price will do its magic on the supply-and-demand side.”

After all, it always has before. And it will again. Until it doesn’t.

My suggestion is that Democrats must bring this message forcefully. And what a better opportunity than the time when all energy prices are at record highs and a Republican administration drawn heavily from the ranks of the “business as usual” energy sector is in full control?

Of course, it’s not just the Bush administration, but half a century of policies to which the Dems have contributed a lot. But when will there ever be a better occasion to break ranks with the status quo?

Cheap energy is largely an illusion

The fundamental problem is that oil (and natural gas, thus power, is the same) is cheap only because we have decided that we would only consider as its cost the actual cost of digging it out of the ground, plus whatever the locals forced us to add as taxes or royalties. Other costs were not considered:

• the pollution generated when we burn it, and the corresponding healthcare costs, and the harder to quantify impact on the delicate ecosystems around us;

• the even harder to quantify cost of using up a non renewable source. The planet has provided us with this treasure, a highly concentrated and convenient form of stored chemical energy, and we’ve burnt almost half of it (and the easier to find half) to run around, without making any significant effort to find substitutes for the future; How will we keep on functioning when that amazing resource  becomes harder to find, scarcer – and a lot more expensive?

• the newer threat of global warming, and its unpredictable consequences on our weather and our ability for us to tolerate it (and Katrina shows that we seems to be poorly prepared even for predictable phenomena). The likelihood that our crops and our environment will adapt to the coming changes is unknown;

• the transformation of our agriculture into a petroleum-based industry, where crops matter less and less and where food is but a by-product of subsidies on top of strange industrial processes (involving millions of animals “living” in horrible conditions) whereby oil-calories are transformed (very inefficiently) into edible products. The additional side effects on our health (obesity,  pollution by pesticides and the like) and our landscapes (the wholesale destruction of arable land, whether by filling it with petroleum-based products or by building on it more buildings, roads and other artefacts of our oil-fuelled civilisation) are shamefully ignored by most.

Energy is not cheap, because we are already paying a very high indirect price. Some of it can be expressed indirectly in monetary terms (good chunks of the healthcare system, the military), but a lot of it cannot be “monetised” – or only when it is too late (all the oil that we waste now and which would be incredibly valuable in post- peak prices). But essentially, we are enjoying our cheap “high” now, and leaving the consequences to our children or their children. As  individuals, that may barely make sense, but as a society, it is incredibly short sighted.

The worst part of it is that we have built a world which can function ONLY with cheap oil. Who would live 50 miles form work when oil is scarce and expensive and public transport is inexistent? Who would drive 4 tone vehicles around to go to school, or grocery shopping or visit friends? Would we rely on fertiliser and pesticides to artificially boost crop yields? Would we get our food only from the nearest non-built land 30 miles away – or from even further away? Would we rely on components coming from many different places, sometimes oceans away, to manufacture the goods we need?

And yet this is the world we live in, and will have to keep on living in even when energy gets more expensive, because you cannot undo in a few years the result of 50 years of distorted incentives on our infrastructrure and living habits.

Why leadership, and a public policy is needed

Cheaper energy is not the solution to today’s energy “crisis”,  it  is its cause.

That’s the first part of the message that needs to get out. Energy is not cheap, simply we pay for it today in indirect – but very real – ways. Making these costs visible is not putting a new burden on us, it is making visible an existing burden in order to better react to it.

We do not have a lot of time to make that clear to everybody. Oh sure, market mechanisms will function. When oil becomes scarce, it will get expensive, and we will accordingly, reducing our consumption and finding alternatives. That’ll work, but the consumption “reduction” will come from death or abject poverty – and it’s the weakest members of society that will bear the brunt.

You can expect less disruption and pain if you have to find an alternative to 500$ oil in 5 years than if you have to find an alternative to 500$ oil right now. 500$ oil will come, and it should be the role of government to anticipate it and make the transition as easy as possible.

The timetable for peak oil and peak gas is a small number of years. Again, this is the INEVITABLE outcome of today’s trends.

When that crisis comes, the Democrats need to be ready with the arguments to blame the Bush administration and with serious alternative solutions. Otherwise, the outcome is likely to be, in the  worst case, another “war of choice” by America against the “profiteering” from nearby shores like Venezuela or further ones like  Iran or, in the best case, calls to relax environmental “shackles” against coal mining and coal-fired plants and against drilling in  various places within the US.

Price signals do work, and market mechanisms do work, so you have to give the markets the right signals – steadily and predictably increasing energy prices (via, yes, taxes or other regulatory constraints). That will  give everybody the incentives needed to reduce demand and find alternatives, and it will provide government with the necessary resources to encourage R&D and to make the transition easier on the weakest members of society.

So, finally, some proposals

The goals must be as follows:

• we must focus on demand reduction. any energy policy focusing only on providing new supplies (even of the renewable kind) will only lead to protecting the status quo;

• we must focus on diversity: there is no single miracle solution. We need all options and partial solutions to be used, both on the supply and the demand side of the equation. Diversity means also fewer risks of disruption and fits in the narrative of energy security;

• indeed, an energy policy is an essential part of a security policy; security from want and security from abject entanglements in unpleasant areas of the world;

• finally, a smart energy policy is an investment in the future, for a cleaner world, a safer world where our children work in local, high tech, jobs in a preserved environment.

With that in mind, here are some more concrete proposals:

• conservation must become the new mantra and must be encouraged and incentivised. This will come from regulation (tougher CAFE standards, new building codes making it compulsory to use energy saving techniques in construction) and from targeted tax policies (subsidise local power production with solar panels and the like, tax gas guzzlers). Meteor Blades has long written about this and I explicitly put it as the first point here. Conservation saves money.

• environmental rules should not be relaxed, quite the opposite, they  should be tightened. Weak environmental rules and lack of planning  for the future is what is killing us (link it to Katrina, it’s  easy enough and true enough). Carbon emission quotas should be set –  this will make  the coal industry (which would otherwise make a killing form the  higher prices) really improve its lot or pay for the renewable  investments. Ideally, the USA should join the Kyoto Treaty and push to make it tougher. This could bring Wall Street on board as the markets for carbon are now mostly based in Europe. This would be a chance to bring them back (partly) to the US, thus creating more job opportunities in a high paying sector. Another argument here is “Drill America last” whereby environmental considerations should be reinforced by long term security considerations. (as proposed by TomB);

• a massive public investment programme in renewable energy – starting with wind, which is already cheaper than gas-fired power, but focusing also on R&D for future sources like solar or  tidal. Governments should either build or tender large scale wind power plants, or guarantee income for projects meeting certain guidelines. In all likelihood, long term power purchase agreements at reasonable guaranteed prices (say 6 cents/kWh would be enough, and would actually allow the government to make money on the power markets which could be used to finance the investments in less mature technologies. I am much less keen on biofuels (the ag sector is already distorted by too many subsidies), but on a reasonable scale it should be part of the mix. But encourage research, provide grants to universities, stipends to students coming into the sector. Reestablish America’s technological and industrial leadership in a vital sector.

• Give targeted encouragements (subsidies, tax breaks, or more innocuous funding for R&D or guaranteed purchases of their output) to manufacturers in the renewable energy sector. This should be justified by two simple arguments:  security (energy independence) and jobs (renewable create  more jobs per kWh than other energy sources):

  

• The government should show the example and commit to lower its own energy consumption in measurable ways. It should also switch its complete vehicle fleet to plug in vehicles. Make it a highly public competitive bid with a deadline that makes it possible for Detroit to compete – and win.

• the poor will suffer the most from the higher energy prices. They must be helped. That means tax breaks for cheap and fuel efficient cars, and a real effort to provide public transportation to them. A massive investment programme in light rail transportation – together will an equally massive plan to rehabilitate run down city centers (but keeping them accessible to low income people by helping them gain access to decent housing). Otherwise, other programmes supporting the weaker members of society should be reinforced – and made part of the energy plan.

• Getting transportation on the grid should be a general theme. Light rail is ideal in that respect, but individual transport should move that way, via the encouragement (if necessary by regulatory fiat) to switch to plug-in hybrids (another Devilstower suggestion). Similarly, telecommuting should be encouraged and facilitated explicitly (a suggestion by George);

• throughout, the message should be that energy policy is vital and  cannot be let in the hands only of the energy lobby led by Cheney & co. They are enjoying the windfall profits; they have not planned for the future, they are the cause for today’s situation, and only a real break from the past, making them pay, can have a chance  of success.

• ideally, the plan should come as a steadily increasing gasoline tax, but I know that  this is a politically sensitive topic. As part of a “Marshall Plan”  for energy, including real help for the most affected, and asking all to sacrifice for a better future, it might be sold. Remember the argument: prices will increase – better have the money go the federal (or local) governments than to Halliburton or to the Saudis. The likely degradation of the federal budget deficit following Katrina and then the inevitable economic slowdown will make tax hikes appear more reasonable and necessary. As red clay dem posted, the “grander” the plan, the more chances it has to work and to be taken seriously.

This fits with the theme that Democrats propose RESPONSIBLE policies, and that they care for all Americans, and for the future, not just for a select few today.. The political conditions for such a message, with a discredited administration internally and externally, the coming price hikes, and the likelihood of economic and financial difficulties for many, could not be better. Fate favors the bold – and the prepared.

Further credits to mateosf, Catriana, Knut Wicksell, LondonYank, moonfall, Doolittle Sothere, ignorant bystander, and to all the regulat contributors to my energy threads who have provided materials and ideas which I have tried to absorb and bring out. If you feel forgotten, please tell me and I will correct it. This is not the work of one person, and we should certainly work together to make something ambitious out of it.

The above picture is an oil spill in Murphy, from the Chalmette refinery, taken from the report by Environmental News Service which has little additional information. The only other widely read sources I have found are an article in the Houston Chronicle with a lot of detail, and two pieces coming from the other side of the Atlantic, in the Financial Times and the Guardian.

First of all, kudos to the Houston Chronicle. They are close to the best sources (the oil companies themselves), and they have gathered pretty detailed information. Pity it does not appear to be distributed much more widely:

Oil spill adds to woes of a Louisiana town

As if the residents of Chalmette, La., didn’t have enough to worry about with entire neighborhoods underwater, this week an oil spill coated homes, cars, animals and streets in crude.

According to the Coast Guard, Hurricane Katrina appears to have caused more damage — both onshore and offshore — to energy industry infrastructure than first suspected.

Millions of gallons of crude oil burst forth from ruptured storage terminals and pipelines in Louisiana, stretching from Chalmette, just southeast of New Orleans, down to Empire, Venice and Pilottown at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

The leaking facilities are owned by Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Murphy Oil and Bass Enterprises Production, run by the Bass family of Fort Worth.

And offshore, the Coast Guard said 52 oil and gas production platforms sank in the storm and 58 were damaged.

(…)

Some of the onshore oil spills appear to be contained, including the 3.4 million gallon spill at Bass Enterprises’ tank near Venice. A company spokesman said the levy ring around the facility is half full of crude.

(…)

Other crude spills, such as Murphy Oil’s leak in Chalmette, were borne on the water and quickly spread outside the facility’s boundaries.

Murphy Oil spokeswoman Mindy West said roughly 890,000 gallons of oil were spilled, but she could not say how much of that escaped into Chalmette neighborhoods.

Chevron lost 966,000 gallons of crude oil from one tank at its Empire terminal.

The location stymied cleanup crews at first because of the lack of electricity, phone service and open roads into the area. Crews arrived by boat and helicopter.

MORE BELOW:
The article has more detail on each of the spills. The oil companies are making efforts to contain the oil, but have not succeeded everywhere. Thus the picture above, where the dark stuff is clearly invading neighboroods which can safely be considered lost for a bit of time.

The Financial Times has essentially the same information, but it was published at least a day before (it was posted at 9 pm EST on Thursday) and does not seemed to have been widely picked up since.

Ruptured oil tanks ‘spill 3.7m gallons’

Oil storage tanks ruptured by Hurricane Katrina may have dumped as much as 3.7m gallons of crude oil into the lower Mississippi river and surrounding wetlands.

Officials estimate the spillage at roughly a third of the volume of the huge spill when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground off Alaska in 1989. Last night experts said they could not yet assess the short-term effects of the spills but were hopeful there would be few long-term effects. Some of the oil is expected to find its way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, the Guardian has the most extensive reporting, in a must read article this morning. Just a few highlights here:

Oil spills, ravaged industry and lost islands add to the hurricane’s toll

Ecological cost of Katrina includes petrochemical pollution, vanished islands and a seafood industry facing ruin

The extent of the environmental damage inflicted on the southern US states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama began to emerge yesterday with reports of an entire group of islands disappearing, serious oil slicks and the potential ruin of the seafood industry.
Immediate concern centred on Louisiana’s heavy industrial area. Katrina flooded many of the 140 large petrochemical works that line the Mississippi river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and little assessment has been done of the damage.

Initial aerial reconnaissance by the environmental protection agency suggests no serious chemical damage but has revealed several large oil spills. About 85,000 barrels of crude is now known to have escaped from a Murphy Oil plant in Chalmette, Louisiana, and a further 68,000 barrels were spilled by a damaged storage tank at the Bass Enterprises site in Venice.

(…)

“The 40-mile long Chandeleur chain of barrier islands off the Louisiana coast which used to protect the delta from storm surges have pretty well gone,” said Laurence Rouse, of the oceanography department at Louisiana State University. “The delta is definitely under more threat now. Great damage has also been done to the important wetlands and marshes east of New Orleans which also act as defences. They have been ripped up.”

(…)

On land, the environmental protection agency warned people to take precautions against an explosion of mosquitoes which could be carrying West Nile fever and said 73 drinking water systems were still affected in Alabama, 555 in Mississippi and 469 in Louisiana.

More than 500 sewerage systems were damaged across Louisiana.

(…)

Some 6,600 petrol stations, each with an average of three underground storage tanks, must be inspected for leaks, as well as hundreds of industrial facilities that could be releasing contaminants to add to the air and water pollution. The task of clearing up to 90m tonnes of debris has barely been contemplated.

(…)

“The problem is that a century of long-term industrial pollution held in the soil is being released. A lot of this is being pumped into Lake Pontchartrin. The ecology is definitely being changed,” Prof Rouse said.

Read the rest. The most worrying are the calls to relax environmental standards today to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane. While that may be understood to solve the direst emergencies, it appears incredibly short-sighted. The article makes clear that it is the accumulated environmental damage that has made the damage so extensive this time: the natural protections in the wetlands and the Islands gone, the channeling of the river, and the natural accretion of toxic products in our industrial economy, products which were obviously not stored in hurricane-proof or flood-proof locations.

As Meteor Blades wrote in a recent diary, this disaster should be an opportunity to do better, not to relax our standards. This should also apply to the care taken to follow, and even improve on, environmental guidelines for industry. I have few illusions that this will happen, but if there ever was an occasion to see the price of not doing it, this is the one, and progressives should certainly say it loudly: environmental rules are not a burden, they are a smart investment.

Remember this diary from Devilstower about the coal industry: it will behave well, and apply the highest standards, only if it is forced to; it needs both to be shamed into doing it, and the permanent oversight of a tough regulator. Same for the oil industry.

THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO RELAX ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS, QUITE THE OPPOSITE. Even if it appears to be more expensive, it is worth it.

[From the diaries by susanhu. Thank you, Jerome, for telling this story, and for your deep concern. It’s almost impossible for us in the U.S. to grasp, let alone write about. Btw, Anderson Cooper is doing a CNN special report at 4pm PT on the mutilated corpses, etc. at the convention center. I hope it is carried internationally.]

I just wanted to flag two stories underlining the horror in Louisiana. One you’ve probably seen, as I have found it on CNN. It’s pretty harrowing nevertheless:

Victims feel forgotten in southeastern Louisiana

CHALMETTE, Louisana (AP) — The cars were swallowed, the homes shattered and the people left clinging for life. Survivors waited for help, but it seemed like so little, so late.

More than a week since Hurricane Katrina cut its swath along the Gulf Coast, word is only now starting to trickle out from this outlying area of some 66,000 people on Louisiana’s southeastern edge.

What’s said is filled with anger — residents feeling even more abandoned than hard-hit New Orleans — and disbelief.

“If you dropped a bomb on this place, it couldn’t be any worse than this,” said Ron Silva, a district fire chief in St. Bernard Parish. “It’s Day 8, guys. Everything was diverted first to New Orleans, we understand that. But do you realize we got 18 to 20 feet of water from the storm, and we’ve still got 7 to 8 feet of water?”

(…)

As relief efforts sputtered in the days after the storm, Verlyn Davis Jr., an out-of-work electrician, took charge. He transformed his parents’ bar and seafood restaurant, Lehrmann’s, into a shelter where he dispatches people to clear roads, hook up generators and help in the disaster relief process.

About 20 people have been staying there these days. On a boarded-up window out front is a blue spray-painted sign: “ABOUT TIME BUSH!”

“The governor and the president let thousands of people die and they let them die on their roofs and they let them die in the water,” said Davis, 45. “We got left. They didn’t care.“

Help has begun to pour in — the sound of the military helicopters overhead interrupts the silence. Search teams in boats pound on rooftops. They shout, “Anybody home?” But they know the answer.

“New Orleans took a beating,” said Jason Stage, a 47-year-old maintenance worker staying at Lehrmann’s. “But St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines was ground zero.”

The other comes from Le Monde, and comes from one of their special correspondants inside NO. This is the original article in French, and below you can find a translation by Google corrected by me as required:

Floating corpses, polluted water: death drives out the living

The odor of dead has fallen on New-Orleans. Nine days after the cyclone, the rescuers patrol in boat in the zones flooded, searching for survivors but they cannot escape the corpses everywhere, floating in putrid water, wedged in cars or stuck in garbage. They have orders to leave them on the spot, nothing being ready to deal with them.

At the headquarters of the police force, Captain Bayard confirms that to its knowledge, the phase of recovery of the bodies has not started: “Our priority is to find survivors”, he says, acknowledging his impotence: “we have not been told the procedure to be followed to remove the dead.”

However, in order to prevent the corpses from drifting around, rescuers and police officers attach them by an arm, a leg or by the neck to the nearest tree, truck, or whatever traffic sign which still emerges. Then they note the exact location and transmit information to their headquarters, which has started to build a list. Some army units note the GPS co-ordinates of each body. On the other hand, the volunteer first-aid workers do not get close to the bodies and do not always provide information on those they saw.

CONTINUED BELOW:

In the districts where water invaded only the ground floors, the army teams search the houses, one by one. When they find bodies there, they make a special mark on the frontage. Sergeant Turner, of the 20th Battalion of the special forces of the American army, says that no house will be forgotten, even if the operation will undoubtedly take months: “Where water went up to the roof, we can do nothing yet. We will have to wait until the level goes down.” He knows that the worst is to be come: “In the next weeks, as water is pumped, we will undoubtedly find many victims in the buildings, including in the attics. It was the last refuge.”

MIASMAS AND BACTERIA

It is a specialized federal service, the D-Mortuary (Disaster Mortuary), which will manage the recovery of the corpses, because the more time passes, the more this mission will be complex and dangerous. Black and thick water, already saturated with chemicals and oil poured by the flooded factories, fills up with the miasmas and bacteria of the bodies in decomposition. One sees also many dead dogs, poisoned by water.

The persons in charge for the FEMA, based in Baton-Rouge, 130 km from there, say that some specialists in D-Mortuary are already on the spot with refrigerator trucks. An emergency mortuary was assembled close to Baton-Rouge, and 25 000 body bags are expected.

But no reliable figure on the number of victims, nor even on the number of corpses located to date, was published. Last week, during a press conference, the democratic mayor of New-Orleans, Ray Nagin, had advanced the figure of 10 000 died, but nobody knows on what he based this assertion. And some think now that the mayor perhaps spoke under emotion, or to feed the polemic which opposes him to the federal government on the insufficiency of first aid.

In the meantime, death drives out life. The army blocks the access to the city, and in view of the risks of epidemic, the mayor ordered, Wednesday September 7, the total evacuation of the center, including the spared zones. By force if necessary.