Anne Rolfes's blog

It’s an incredible moment in Louisiana. Our Governor, at great political risk, has stepped forward to say that the oil industry should repair the damage it has done to our Louisiana coast. Here’s his reasoning as documented in the New Orleans Times Picayune.

I began my career in West Africa in the 1990s, where Nigerians who peacefully protested the oil industry’s destruction of their farms were raped, beaten and murdered. In the Niger Delta, violent repression was the oil industry and the Nigerian government’s response to a movement that had grown so powerful that on one day, in one protest, there were 300,000 people in the streets.

This week marks the 11th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. This disaster date - August 29th - is seared into my memory, just like April 20th, the date of the BP Disaster. For those in South Louisiana, there will be a new anniversary in August next year: the date of the floods that have so devastated our part of the world. At what point will these disaster-versaires, as I’ve learned to call them, stop?

Photo: Oil stains a family's vehicle after Hurricane Katrina