An Estimated 250,000 Katrina Evacuees Are Now Climate Refugees

[Strelnikov_]

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update57.htm

Those of us who track the effects of global warming had assumed that the first large flow of climate refugees would likely be in the South Pacific with the abandonment of Tuvalu or other low-lying islands. We were wrong. The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in late August 2005, forced a million people from New Orleans and the small towns on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to move inland either within state or to neighboring states, such as Texas and Arkansas. Although nearly all planned to return, many have not.

. . .

Many evacuees were able to return in a matter of days, but many more were not. New Orleans’ population before Katrina struck was 463,000. Claritas, a private demographic data-gathering and analysis firm, reported that after the hurricane New Orleans’ population shrank to 93,000. By January 2006, it had recovered to 174,000. By July 2006, the city still had only 214,000 residents, less than half of its pre-Katrina population.

. . .

As of July 2006, New Orleans, the three parishes, and the three counties in Mississippi had lost a total of 375,000 residents because of destruction from Katrina. Some evacuees are still returning, but the flow has slowed to a near trickle. We estimate that at least 250,000 of them have established homes elsewhere and will not return. They no longer want to face the personal trauma and financial risks associated with rising seas and more destructive storms. These evacuees are now climate refugees.

[phantom power]

1. Katrina + One Year....

A sort of photo-essay:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

[Pooka Fey]

2. K&R

[intheflow]

3. Newest #'s I just got say 1.8+ MILLION housing units gone in NOLA alone.

That's houses and apartments.

That's not counting anyone in Mississippi.
That's not counting people who lost homes anywhere else in Louisiana.
That's not counting people made homeless by Rita or Wilma or any other storm of the 2005 hurricane season.

And I'm having to fight to get my volunteers training in environmental justice. They get training in racial and economic justice. It just makes me crazy that so many people don't equate environmental justice with human rights. Hello! Environmental justice IS a human right! :eyes: