Dreamways

The post-waking-nightmare dream was grandiose. "In March 2007, city officials finally unveiled their plan to redevelop New Orleans and begin the move out of the post-hurricane morass. It was billed as the plan to end all plans, with Paris-like streetscape renderings and promises of parks, playgrounds and 'cranes on the skyline' within months." However, more than a year later, it seems that the dream has not gained much waking-life traction, as reported by Adam Nossiter in

"Finding guilt-free food for our menus – food that’s clean, green and humane – is about as easy as securing a housing loan. And we’re suddenly paying more - 75 percent more in the last six years – to stock our pantries. Around the world, from Cairo to Port-au-Prince, increases in food prices have governments facing riots born of shortage and hunger.“ This is the waking nightmare recounted by Dan Barber in his article "Change We Can Stomach“ (The New York Times, 11 May 08).

"Moundville, Ala. After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant workers, hopped into his boat to follow the plume upstream to its source. It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first bio-diesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.“ Earth-friendly fuel polluting waterways? Is this science fiction?

"The Asian carp, which has been working its way north from the Mississippi Delta since the 1990s, is now on the verge of reaching the Great Lakes. This voracious invader, which weighs up to 100 pounds and eats half its body weight in food in a day, has gained notoriety for vaulting over boats and breaking the arms and noses of recreational anglers. Having outcompeted all native species, it now represents 95 percent of the biomass of fish in the Illinois River and has been sighted within 25 miles of Lake Michigan.