As it turned out, the veteran Louisianans were half right: Katrina was indeed less powerful than Camille. Had the world stood still since then, they would have been just fine. In Mediocristan, they would have survived. But since Camille, rapid development had destroyed much of the wetlands that had created a natural barrier against storm surge. The force field, in other words, was down. Humankind had literally changed the shape of the earth, and we had done it faster, thanks to technology, than we could have throughout most of history. This fact was well reported in popular media. But the
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