Some scientists believe that storms like Katrina — sometimes called an act of God or a natural disaster — owe some of their destructive force to man-made causes: global warming, disappearing wetlands, outdated urban engineering.
In New Orleans, the worst-hit parishes were the lower-income ones. But the city also ignored the power of nature. More than one million acres of Louisiana's coastal wetlands, or 1,900 square miles, have been lost since 1930, due to development and the construction of levees and canals. Barrier islands and stands of tupelo and cypress also vanished. All of them absorb some of the energy and water from storm surges, which, more than the rain falling from the sky, caused the current calamity.
"If these had been in place, at least some of the energy in the storm surge would have been dissipated," says geologist Jeffrey Mount of the University of California, Davis. "This is a self-inflicted wound."
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