Water Logged By Josh Mahan

Lowbagger’s staff emerged from the wilderness canyons of the Salmon on the last day of August, and found a new world. When we put on the river Baghdad was by far the most hellish city on Earth. When we took off the river New Orleans had been swallowed by the ocean. Millions of people living below sea level suddenly found themselves in a sink or swim situation, and the city surpassed Baghdad as most hellish. But there is a connection in that shift. Left strapped for person-power, supplies, and money, the federal government has laid forth a lackadaisical effort to aid those left stranded by the storm. If American troops weren’t in other countries causing problems, they could stay home and lend a hand domestically. That way the people living paycheck-to-paycheck in New Orleans won’t have to go five days without food. Though that’s a quick stretch to go without sustenance in battle-hardened Baghdad, but it’s a rough dry spell for most Americans – save our large homeless population, but now I digress. Thankfully the birthplace of Jazz will soon begin to recover. We’re still not quite sure when Baghdad will be given the same opportunity.

Let’s shift focus to the storm itself for a moment. This could be one of the first major casualties of the impending global warming crisis. Abnormally warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, upward of ninety degrees, are cited as one of the major contributing factors that shifted the Class III storm into a devastating 100-year Class V storm.

Germany’s environment minister, Juergen Trittin, even attributed the storm to global warming and fired off sharp words toward Bush and the U.S. global-warming policy. "The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy," he said. "The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies."

We’ll leave it at that for now.

As the world falls apart, parts of it remain intact and whole. Roselle and I returned to Lowbagger’s place of conception, the Salmon River. Last year we spent the week lamenting about how you couldn’t find distinct environmental writing anymore. It was depressing really. A year later we floated the river with a group of bona fide Washington D.C. professionals who check in with Lowbagger regularly, and claim to be thoroughly entertained and informed by the site. Of course, they are gentlemen and they could just flat-out be trying to make Mike and I feel good.

Speaking of Lowbagger, maybe you’ve noticed some changes around the site. Mike and I will be in the office everyday for the next couple of weeks. I’ll be tweaking the format and software platform of the site as Lowbagger continues to build its reputation as the rawest environmental news available on the web, before beginning a string of posts from the road. We’ll be coming to a pub near you and will post the schedule of our crawl before we leave. We’re even attempting to make history in October as the first Lowbaggers to post to the web from the Grand Canyon via satellite. Keep checking in with Lowbagger as details emerge.

Josh Mahan welcomes Lowbaggers many and merry readers to September.