Nov 03 2007

Mexico under water: “Katrina on a larger scale”

(Wow…. @10:30 – promoted by buhdydharma )

Eighty percent of the Mexican state of Tabasco is under water, as is a significant portion of Chiapas, and there’s more rain on the way. 

President Calderon has compared the disaster to Katrina — but on a larger scale.  With over one million displaced, his oil industry crippled, his entire air force sent to the region and disease soon to follow, his claim may be valid, even though, by all evidence, his response to the crisis has been the opposite of Washington’s Katrina debacle.

Here’s The Environmentalist’s post on the floods, which includes a video sent from the region and information provided by colleagues working to track the storms’ paths.

More below the jump…

The article touches on the oil impact, but I’d add that we’re almost certain to see financial repercussions from this, since Mexico’s rigs have been crippled (their description).  This includes one rig that slammed into another, killing many of the workers. 

My friends on the ground tell me that all of Tabasco’s and much of Chiapas’ crops have been destroyed.  That this came from what would otherwise be normal tropical storms, but with such increased rainfall, they tip the scale to record territory, is why they’re there measuring the totals. 

They say, frankly, they’ve never seen anything like it.  I would add: so far.

This increased precipitation, as was seen in Oxfordshire earlier this year, is as much a part of the pattern of climate change as the droughts that are impacting more than forty percent of the US.  I try not to be pessimistic, but I’m becoming increasingly convinced the time to act was over ten years ago.  I shudder to think what we’ll be saying next year, as we struggle to redo our models with the increased C02 from the failing carbon sinks around the world.

More on all of this at The Environmentalist, which has just given several of our colleagues (including myself) guest editor status in an effort to keep up on the increasing climate change impact around the world. 

I only wish we had better news to report.

14 comments

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  1. Here’s the link to the Mexican Red Cross:

    http://www.cruzrojam…

    Use google to translate the page if you need to and please help if you are able.

    • on November 3, 2007 at 14:03
    • #

    in the Times.

  3. I try not to be pessimistic, but I’m becoming increasingly convinced the time to act was over ten years ago.

    The world would not have known what to do.

    If you really want to do something effective, btw, the first thing to do would be to help depose the sadistic fools in power.  “President Calderon” is, like Bush, another appointee in power.  He’s there to maintain the regime of domination, so that Mexico can be exploited to death for the profits of a rich few.

    Only with responsible, non-capitalist leadership can global economic systems be restrained from, for instance, creating “surplus populations” (i.e. people not covered by general welfare) to rip down the rainforests in Brazil, or pumping and burning 85 million barrels of oil every day (thus climate change, thus floods in Tabasco).

    If nobody in the “rich” nations, the beneficiaries of global corporate imperialism, can imagine anything different,  then you might as well pass around the Kool-Aid, because Jonestown time is not far off.  Today, Tabasco, tomorrow the world.

  4. As more arable land around the world succumbs to both drought and flood, basic food crops become more scarce, leading to greater instability. The Guardian has a story up right now here

    Here’s a snippet

    Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa. Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.

    Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.

    Last week the Kremlin forced Russian companies to freeze the price of milk, bread and other foods until January 31, for fear of a public backlash with a parliamentary election looming. “The price of goods has risen sharply and that has hit the poor particularly hard,” said Oleg Savelyev, of the Levada Centre polling institute.

    India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have had, or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not seen in decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.

    Adding to the crisis is not only the climate, but the economic pressure for agribusiness to switch from food crops to biofuels.

    Here’s a press release about the EU biofuel plan, which Oxfam says will be a disaster link

    Finally, here is a UNICEF Mexican flood relief page to help out. I refuse to give to Redcross on principle, so here is an alternative.

  5. I don’t have TV…how is CNN et al covering it?

  6. La Jornada reports that everyone in Tabasco knows the reason for the flood….it’s the dam.

    En una reunión de evaluación, el gobernador Andrés Granier Melo manifestó ante el Presidente que el manejo de la hidroeléctrica Peñitas “contribuyó enormemente a la desgracia”, y le pidió que, “de una vez por todas”, se eche a andar un plan hidráulico integral para la región, “no obras aisladas o inconclusas”.

    Rough translation:
    The governor of Tabasco told the presdient that management of the Penitas dam has contributed enormously to the flooding and he asked yet again that the president implement a hydorelectric plan for the region.

    The La Jornada article goes on to say that everybody in villahermos 500 thousand people knows its the dam. …

    Calderon is an American style fascist who clearly stole the recent election from populist Manuel Obrador.

    The Hydroelectric plant fuels mexican industry in the area…the suggestion being that industrial needs led to this disaster.

    This is not just one city…but an entire state…a state as big as most states in the U.S.

  7. Not a word on their FP

    http://www.cnn.com/?…

    Here is their top Mexico headline…

    # KETV:  Missing teacher, student found in Mexico

    Wow

  8. http://www.youtube.c…

    Why is there no reports of this on the American Fascist Media?

    Because Americans don’t care about anybody but themselves…..that’s why.

    This is much worse than Katrina. It’s probably 10 Katrinas…this isn’t a city…it’s a state that went underwater and it appears to be not due soley to rain but to corporate greed in the management of a hydroelectric plant. ….that’s what the MEXICAN papers are reporting.

  9. First off, in order to sell the sheeple on an economic merger of Canada, Mexico and the US corpo-media simply can’t disseminate knowledge about these “foriegn” countries.
    Hence “the media” silence.

    And the global carbon TAX movement?  Ya, I’ll embrace that as soon as the black market for organs taken from Chinese political prisoners dries up.

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