Now that Katrina has passed through and left misery behind her, should we search for a moral message? Were the burst levees a judgment on the sybarites of New Orleans? Was the devastation of the Gulf Coast a rebuke to seaside casinos? Maybe Katrina was divine retribution to some of the reddest states of the union for saddling us with another four years of George Bush. Too bad Pat Robertson is enduring a period of penitential silence after calling for the murder of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last week. He can usually be counted on for an off-the-wall analysis that interprets disasters as God’s attack on the left or endorsement of the right.

Although insurance companies may list the damages wrought by Katrina under their “act of God” category, those damages were not God’s will. This month’s issue of National Geographic magazine has an article on the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes. The author, Chris Carroll, cited three factors playing key roles: more people building near the ocean, a peak in the 60 or 70-year natural cycle of hurricanes and heightened sea levels, the result of global warming, which comes from burning fossil fuels. The cover story in this month’s issue is: “After Oil: Powering the Future.”

“After Oil” may be coming sooner than we think. Between the war in the Middle East and Katrina shutting oil rigs and refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, the price of gas jumped by 40 cents a gallon Wednesday and Mr. Bush has consented to open the strategic oil reserve. Reports in this morning’s papers say $4 or $5-a-gallon gas may be coming soon. The cost of gas and the unending war in Iraq (nearly 1,000 people were trampled to death in a panic over a presumed suicide bomber in Baghdad Wednesday) has driven Mr. Bush’s poll numbers to the lowest point of his presidency.

All of the above are products of ignorance. The usual adjective preceding ignorance is “willful,” but a more apt word would be “selfish.” Casinos, in and of themselves, are not bad things, but to build them on a coast despite hurricane warnings from meteorologists is just giving in to greed. Greedy, selfish ignorance is reinforced all down the line. Oil companies deny global warming, the Bush administration works for the oil companies, so it denies global warming, too. The governor of Mississippi is a Republican, so he denies global warming; the governor of Louisiana is a Democrat, but relies on oil revenue for the state’s coffers, so she also denies. It’s to everyone’s political advantage to play along, but there’s a price for all that selfish ignorance and, as the news reports show, the human price was paid by people too poor to get out of Katrina’s path. When the northern home heating season begins in a few weeks, the poor there will suffer most, too.

Schools open this week and gas costs three bucks a gallon. Most school budgets were passed last spring and few school boards then were contemplating the consequences of $2.50-per-gallon gas, much less this. Some school districts may be forced to cancel their bus routes, leaving parents to figure out how to get their kids to school, but gas will be no cheaper for them than it is for the school district (although the parents – and their neighbors – are the school district).

Maybe it’s better if the kids stay home. We’re about due for another of those studies showing how American students are lagging behind their European and Asian counterparts in math and the sciences. Should we be surprised, when Mr. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) support “teaching competing evolutionary theories” in our schools? (For more insight on this issue – and an alternate theory on the cause of global warming, see http://www.venganza.org/.) How can our children do anything but lag behind when our official policy is to deny climate change, the greatest scientific challenge yet encountered? In current events class, the kids are taught that we invaded Iraq to bring democracy or find weapons of mass destruction to win the war on terror, or… something.

Maybe this week’s events are a form of retribution for ignoring God’s words. God does not sit on a cloud and move storms here and there to punish us; he just tells us to take care of each other; we fail to do that and disaster follows.

© Mark Floegel, 2005