The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities
The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities – Review
This is a highly open work. Mike Tidwell correctly predicted the tragedies of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita several years before they really happened, and he is justifiably angry that his warnings were not eventually heeded. In The Ravaging Tide Tidwell expands on his earlier work to explain why individual activities such as creating levees actually increased the destruction at New Orleans, and to warn that other coastal areas now face the same nature of threat. At times Tidwell waxes somewhat repetitive, making the same point over and over again, but this stems from the great frustration he feels over public and government inaction. He too relies strongly on minor sources such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse (to which he refers frequently) so that those of us who have widely read that work consider Tidwell’s own work is little more than a highly condensed version of other books. Tidwell is strongest when he concentrates on possibly explaining how so much of what we face from climate change can be temporarily alleviated or still avoided through general sense measures, such as currently using more energy useful appliances or involving energy currently using companies to upgrade to previously existing and far more environment open technology. He is also at his most eloquent when strongly condemning the fecklessness of the Bush Administration on energy policy and climate change. Tidwell’s work, like those of Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery, Eugene Linden, and Elizabeth Kolbert, should be widely read by everyone concerned for the future of our world.