11 October

This little civil engineering cartoon shows multiple amazing things. For decades now the US Army Corps of Engineers have been trying to stop the Mississippi from being captured by the Atchafalaya River, itself a product of the Mississippi cutting the old Red River in half. The Atchafalaya is much lower than the Mississippi, and without the engineers all of the water would head that way, massively flooding New Orleans and surrounds, and devastating a large part of the US' transport infrastructure. Louisiana only exists in its current form because of this diversion. This is what climate change means, I think. Humans and nature are not two separate things. We will need to be much more involved in 'natural' processes, more interventionist, not less.