President Barack Obama will head to New Orleans on Thursday to mark 10 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. It was the costliest and most damaging hurricane in U.S. history, killing nearly 2,000 people and leaving thousands of others homeless.

The hurricane made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, after passing across Florida several days earlier. Katrina hit Florida as a Category 1 storm; by the time it reached Louisiana and Mississippi, it had grown to a Category 5. According to some estimates, Katrina caused more than $250 billion worth of damage. It was the third-strongest hurricane in U.S. history, affecting about 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast, with most of the damage occurring in New Orleans, where it left 80 percent of the city flooded and destroyed more than 100,000 homes.
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Controversy ensued in the aftermath of the storm, surrounding what many people saw as an inadequate response by George W. Bush’s administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It took four days for the federal government to send help to New Orleans. Critics pointed to the now famous photo of Bush peering out of Air Force One at the devastation and said that it represented his lack of connection to the suffering.

Then-Mayor Ray Nagin made a televised address 24 hours before the storm’s landfall, urging residents to leave the city. About 30,000 people who were unable to leave took refuge in the New Orleans Superdome, where electricity, plumbing and restroom facilities quickly failed. At the Morial Convention Center, people complained of the stench of bodies, feces and urine and of days of delays after being promised relocation.

Some people took it on themselves to help with recovery efforts. Del Walters spoke to two of them during Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead. David Shand was captain in the Navy, and Lt. Matt Udkow is a pilot for the Coast Guard. Both flew rescue missions in the aftermath of the storm.

“I think about it all the time — the emotions that we were going through that day, so many people in trouble, just the utter destruction all the way along the coast,” said Shand.

Udkow said, “I don’t think anything can prepare you to see that kind of destruction and human suffering. To be able to help even in a small way is a blessing.” He said that all government agencies responded to the best of their abilities and that the scope of the storm was unprecedented. 

Shand said there has been an improvement in communication among agencies over the past 10 years. Congress authorized $14 billion to reconstruct the region’s levees and other flood barriers.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that New Orleans had 384,320 residents as of July 2014. That’s down from the population before the hurricane but up from shortly after the storm, when about half the city’s occupants fled.

This is an important week for wildlife conservation efforts across the globe. With Monday being World Lion Day and Wednesday marking World Elephant Day, both species have made recent headlines, since the death of “Cecil the Lion” in Zimbabwe and an increased focus on the international illegal ivory trade.

Cecil became an icon for the conservation movement when he was killed in Zimbabwe last month. American dentist Walter Palmer paid $50,000 to lure the beast from its sanctuary to its death. Social media brought the issue to the forefront, and now the Zimbabwean government is seeking Palmer’s extradition.

Big game hunting draws hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of Americans to various countries across Africa. According to the Program on African Protected Areas & Conservation, as of 2009 South Africa had made about $100 million per year from big game hunting safaris. It is followed by Namibia, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. But the group says although the figures may seem large, they only represent a small drop in those countries’ GDPs.

Some experts say, however, that if wildlife hunting is done correctly, it can actually preserve animals. They say when host countries set up the proper systems, revenue from hunters can be used to support and protect them.

Trophy hunting is not the only threat affecting large animals. Many of them face a loss of habitat when human development encroaches on their living space. But some critics also say that lions and other wild animals can often be threats to people, and controlling their numbers could even save human lives.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment “The Week Ahead,” Del Walters spoke to Jeff Corwin, a wildlife biologist, and to David Hayes, a former Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Interior.

“You may have a hunting license and purchased all the appropriate tags within the region that you’re hunting, but if you break any of those regional laws, for whatever reason, you’re considered a poacher,” says Corwin.

Hayes explains that “there’s a hunting tradition here in the United States that goes way back. I’m not an advocate for hunting, but there is a place for hunting and there’s a place where hunting should not occur.” He adds that the Department of Interior where he used to work found that elephant hunting in Zimbabwe and Tanzania were not being done responsibly, so the U.S. banned the entry of elephant trophies from both those countries.”

Since the killing of Cecil, Delta and other airlines have announced they will no longer transport animal trophies. The South African government responded with a statement saying, “The decision by Delta Airlines to enforce a blanket ban fails to distinguish between the trade in and transportation of legally acquired wildlife specimens, and the illegal exploitation and trade in wildlife specimens. It is a major source of South Africa's socio-economic activity, contributing towards job creation, community development and social upliftment.”

“I think the argument on the side of game hunting in Africa is that there’s an economic value attached to the aesthetic value of wildlife,” says Hayes. “And if that wildlife isn’t protected and conserved and available for hunting, then that revenue won’t come in to protect the other species under the umbrella of the right to hunt that creature within the environments where they live.”

Poaching is another concern gaining awareness. The United States used to be the center of the illegal ivory trade. John Calvelli of the Wildlife Conservation Society says, “In 1980 there were approximately 1.2 million elephants, and now there are less than 500,000. Every day 96 elephants are killed, that's one every 15 minutes.  That's 35,000 a year and at this rate the elephants will go extinct.”

“The level of poaching today is unprecedented,” says Corwin. “Poaching is why one out of every 12 African elephants has been illegally harvested and disappeared in the last few years. Poaching is also why a race of black rhino is now extinct and a sub-species of white rhino has only a few individuals left. We are at the battle lines, and right now we were losing the war.”

“When you have vibrant populations of animals, that there is a natural selection process that occurs, there’s a rhythm and a need sometimes for a culling and for hunting” says Hayes. “The issue is much more challenging, though, when you have species that are under tremendous stress, and that’s when the calculus gets much more complex.”

Corwin says we need to look at the bigger picture. “It’s very important that we need to take this energy and we need to be rational about it. We need to focus that energy in a real world situation to recognize the greatest challenges affecting wildlife. Certainly the challenges to human societies and to our own species plays a role in the management of all living life on our planet. Oftentimes when we see human beings in desperate situations, where human life is so cheap, it is often a reflection on an ecosystem that’s out of balance.

Five years have passed since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP, led to the largest marine spill in U.S. history.

The spill devastated livelihoods, with $5 billion having to be paid out to settle tens of thousands of claims, according to the Deepwater Horizon Claims Center. BP says it’s paid out $13.7 billion for claims, settlements, and other payments, as well as $14 billion for response and clean-up activities. BP may also have to pay up to $13.7 billion to settle claims stemming from the Clean Water Act, which is yet to be determined by a New Orleans judge.

Following the spill, BP downplayed damage to the ecosystem, but independent investigations and the courts found negligence on the part of BP and its contractors, Transocean and Halliburton.

Reports show that the financial impact on day-to-day operations affected by the spill could exceed $1 billion. It breaks down to about $6 million a day in just clean-up costs alone. Billions of dollars that are generated from fishing and beach tourism are also at risk, including Louisiana’s oyster and shrimp operations, which generate about $962 million.

Al Jazeera’s Jonathan Martin explains that two contradictory reports have emerged five years later, one from BP itself, and the other from the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF). BP cites its “massive response” as a reason for the Gulf ecosystems “rebounding” and oiled shorelines being “largely recovered.” However, the NWF says that a BP crew was in Grand Terre, which is part of the Barrier Islands, just last month, digging up a 28,000-pound tar mat.

During Al Jazeera America's Sunday night segment "The Week Ahead," Del Walters spoke to Steven Kopits, Managing Director at Princeton Energy Advisors, and Bob Deans, Director of Strategic Engagement at the National Resource Defense Council.

“The major issue was that we had placed enormous faith in the blowout preventer, the failsafe device at the seabed, to cut off the flow of oil and gas coming forward,” says Kopits. “That failed at the end of the day, and that was a sort of ‘Pearl harbor moment’ for the industry.”

“The blowout was the result of a long chain of mishaps, misjudgments, and mistakes on the part of operators, as well as the failure of that blowout preventer,” says Deans. He adds that the same situation could still unfortunately happen again today. “The industry and the government have taken steps to reduce some of the risks of what is an inherently dangerous industrial operation at sea, but we haven’t made it safe. We can’t make it safe. We still put our workers, our waters, and our wildlife at risk when we go after oil and gas in the ocean.”

More than 8,000 types of animals died in the first few months alone after the accident, including birds, turtles, and mammals, some that were already on the endangered species list. Thousands of other animals were harmed, and only a fraction of them were successfully cleaned and released back into the wild.

Martin says that just last year, bottlenose dolphins were found dead at historic rates along the Gulf coast. The NWF cites “increasing evidence” that it was related to the spill, whereas BP insists there is “no evidence” of a link.”

Martin explains that many people say there’s a lot more that needs to be done. People are grateful that BP stepped up to the plate by settling a lot of claims and by creating a massive response and cleaning up around 800 miles of shoreline along the Gulf, but many other people feel that BP hasn’t really taken responsibility for the overall environmental damage.

“Deepwater drilling with high-pressure wells is inherently a risky operation,” says Kopits. “I think industry standards have come up a lot, and most importantly the awareness is better, but it’s all still not without risks.”

“It’s been disastrous and one of the longest-running environmental disasters in our history, and we’re still tallying the toll,” says Deans. “It is damage that scientists tell us will last for generations. “We can’t undo this damage, we can’t un-dump this oil, we can’t make this right. We have to reduce the risk as much as possible and reduce the amount of ocean we expose to this risk, and we have to reduce our reliance on oil and gas, and all of the damage and danger they bring.”

Kopits says, however, that “oil still remains our best source of transportation fuel, and natural gas is a fantastic fuel. I think it’s going to be around for a long time.”

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has been a controversial endeavor. The bill passed the House of Representatives 252-161 on Friday for the ninth time, although President Barack Obama has not publicly said whether he would move forward with the project. It’s an oil pipeline system that would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, moving about 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and would more easily allow Canada to sell its oil to the rest of the world.

The Senate is set to vote on the bill this week, but the legislation is being delayed by a court battle in Nebraska, and Obama said he wants to resolve all the legal issues before he is presented with a bill to sign. The Department of State has been reviewing the proposal because the pipeline crosses an international border.

Many groups opposed to the project. Farmers, ranchers and environmentalists are concerned about the adverse effects on climate change and the safety of groundwater around the pipeline. The State Department argues, however, that the oil will be produced regardless of whether it is transported by the pipeline or some other means.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Richelle Carey spoke to Alex Epstein, an author and the president of the Center for Industrial Progress, and to Anthony Swift, an attorney at the National Resources Defense Council.
“A pipeline is a means of expanding access to oil,” said Epstein. “It means more people can drive, fly and use modern agricultural equipment. I think the benefits of oil far outweigh the risks and side effects.”
Proponents of the pipeline say it will create thousands of jobs and boost the economy. The chairman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said on Friday that it will “bolster energy security and inject billions of dollars into our economy.”
In a clip from the ABC News show “This Week,” Russ Girling, the CEO of TransCanada, told Martha Raddatz, “The Department of State’s own report says it will create 42,000 jobs and a $3.5 billion GDP increase of the U.S. economy [translating to] $2 billion in wages.”
Epstein said, “Oil is a global market. The more that’s produced in the whole system, the more prices go down.”
Swift, however, argued, “Tar sands crude is very expensive. It does not fit in a world of cheap energy or cheap oil.” He said he believes the major disadvantages of this pipeline will be its undoing.
Al Jazeera’s David Ariosto reported that the controversy has been unprecedented for a pipeline and has taken center stage in national politics, even straining trade relations with Canada.
“Understand what this project is,” Obama has said. “It is providing the opportunity of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.”
The Keystone XL pipeline is an addition to the existing Keystone pipeline, which runs from Canada to Oklahoma. The new part would allow oil to be transported to refineries in Texas though channels put in place last year. Canada is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer and sends most of its crude exports to U.S. refineries.
Also strongly opposed to the project are Native American communities living along the pipeline’s route. It’s expected to run through the Sac and Fox Nation, a patchwork of land that belongs to 38 Native tribes in Oklahoma. Each tribe has sovereignty over its land and affairs, something that would be disrupted by the pipeline’s construction.
Native Americans in the Black Hills of South Dakota worry that any spills could contaminate their water supply with oil and chemicals. It would affect seven Native American reservations nearby. Some residents say the pipeline violates 19th century treaties they made with the U.S. government over land rights.
“We’re finding that among the indigenous communities of people who live in the area of the Athabasca River [in Canada], there are cancer rates far higher than you would expect,” said Swift. “We’re beginning to nail down some really significant impacts associated with tar sands production. And once a tar sand spill happens in a body of water, it’s very difficult to bring it back to its original state.”