there in space. so i m somebody who always in favor of competition and i think it s a good thing. the president is putting climate change front and center at the white house today talking about the effects of those recent hurricanes and wildfires. you re in new orleans still dealing with the impacts of ida and now nicholas. you re there in the french quarter, i think. what is the situation there? and also in the outlying areas where they were affected by the levees. well, new orleans is fine, with all due respect to wonderful cable channels, including msnbc. it makes things look more dramatic when you get to the city. when you get in other parishes, the could i have 5 hurricane that hit new orleans was ida, the levees totally hold. we spent i think $14 billion for the levee system around the city
levee system. so for us in new orleans where the levees held totally and we didn t have flooding and despite what you saw on the news the city is quite high and dry and doing well, our hearts go out to the areas in the other parishes where they had flooding but they are handling it pretty well. walter isaacson, just another example of why climate is at the white house today and it s at the u.n. next week. if the conference doesn t get cancelled because of covid, we have to focus on the long-range and the big picture as you do. lieutenant me add, if i may. sure. that these space flights are the way we realize we live on one fragile sphere floating around in space. absolutely. that is the vision. we have to all stay with that. walter isaacson, good to see you. thanks for being with us. always, andrea. that does it for us for this edition of andrea mitchell
actually, all over texas is fossil fuels. it s oil. it s chemicals. where this storm made landfall in where the rigs out there come in. the people make their living off of the oildry and it s hard for people to say we need to loosen up our relationship where you re in a place like louisiana where people s paychecks depend on it. also complicating people s decisions about whether this is somewhere they want to stay, ali. just overnight we re seeing reports that there is a miles long oil spill off the coast near some of the oil rigs you were just talking about. but the fact of the matter is, this is a place they have invested since hurricane katrina. billions of dollars to fortify the levee system to try to make sure when they do have these types of extreme weather events which we know are going to become increasingly frequent
infrastructure to protect against the extreme and long-term damage. lives have been lost. homes and belongings gone. cars flooded. electricity out and the sweltering heat, all off this happening across this country. and guess who are the people most affected in lower income communities. lower income household. it took an extreme weather and humanitarian event like katrina to address the levee system in new orleans. now leaving people without power for as you heard from vaughn four to six weeks. in new jersey i spoke to a hispanic family who had no idea where they would live. another man told me he wanted his house to be condemned since it has now flooded so many times that at least that would pay for his mortgage and he could figure out his family s next moves. another colombia i don t know family in new york getting their toddler and baby out in time, unsure without insurance what
have become so dependent on to a point where many of the 911 system depending on cell were not accessible. if you can t communicate you can t coordinate. so same problem, ability to communicate, ability to do search and rescue. all of that disrupted by power poles laying over roads, trees knocking down power. we have to fix the grid, just like we fixed the levee system, the grid to use the current term has to be built back better to recognize the that fact that you are in a hurricane zone. and commerce and government have not come to grips with this. within a few months this problem will become solid and the legislature each time will refuse to take actions to make the grid better. there is a lot of good things that did happen after katrina. but we got a lot more work to be more resilient, ali. and of course the system of levees and pumps and drains in new orleans.