ABSTRACT
Introduction .................................................................................................... 106 The Influence of Classical Liberalism on America’s Constitution .......... 107 The Origin of the American Institution, as an Eighteenth-Century Product .............................................................................................................111 The Evolutionary Changes That Have Occurred in the Philosophy of Government in the United States .............................................................113 Katrina: New Orleans’s Devastating Aftermath ........................................117 Global Warming, Hurricanes, and International Trade ............................ 120 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 122 References ....................................................................................................... 124
The U.S. government has been aware of the problems with the levees in New Orleans for years. Officials have known that the levees were far below the required limit to provide protection and sustainability for the citizens in the wake of a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The Great Flood of 1927 overwhelmed the lower Mississippi basin. This historic event resulted in the implementation of the Tributaries Flood Control Project of 1928 and the Flood Control Act of 1936. In September 1965, Hurricane Betsy drove storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain, pushing water over levees and flooding the city, resulting in the breaching of the Florida Avenue levee. In the Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Chalmette, floodwaters reached eaves of houses and in some places went over the one-story roofs. The floodwaters overwhelmed the lower Mississippi basin, resulting in 164,000 homes flooding, leaving 675,000 homeless, 74 people drowning, and creating a 30,000-square-mile lake in Louisiana. The Army Corps of Engineer’s Hurricane Protection Program exists because of Hurricane Betsy. This country has a record of accomplishment of legislating after the fact, instead of taking preemptive measures to avoid devastation like that caused by Hurricane Katrina.
