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As a participant in the NOLA Anthropocene Campus, I have gained insights on how communities, stewards, and managers of ecosystems in New Orleans have rolled out forms of interspecies care vis-à-vis ongoing environmental changes, coastal erosion, climate catastrophes and their deeply present and current effects (i.e., the 2010 BP oil disaster). Whilst much analytical lens has been given to geospatial changes in the study of the Anthropocene, here, I focus on how relations to non-human beings, also threatened by the changing tides of NOLA’s waterscapes, can enrich our understanding of such global transformations.

After disasters like Katrina, urban floodwaters harbored many hidden perils in the form of microbes that cause disease. Pathogenic bacterial exposure occurred when wastewater treatment plants and underground sewage got flooded, thus affecting the microbial landscape of New Orleans and increasing the potential of public health risks throughout Southern Louisiana. But one need not wait for a disaster event like Katrina to face these perils. Quotidian activities like decades of human waste and sewage pollution have contaminated public beaches now filled with lurking microbes. Even street puddle waters, such as those found on Bourbon Street, contain unsanitary bacteria level from years of close human exploitation of horses and inadequate drainage in 100-year old thoroughfares. More recently, microbial ecologies have also changed in the Gulf of Mexico due to the harnessing of energy resources like petroleum. Lush habitats for countless species are more and more in danger sounding the bells of extinction for the imperiled southern wild.

Human-alteration has severely damaged the wetland marshes and swamps that would have protected New Orleans from drowning in the water surge that Hurricane Katrina brought from the Gulf of Mexico. The latter is something that lifelong residents (i.e., indigenous coastal groups) of the Mississippi River Mouth have been pointing to for a  long time. Over the past century, the river delta’s “natural” infrastructure has been altered by the leveeing of the Mississippi River. Consequently, much of the silt and sediments that would generally run south and deposit in the river mouth to refeed the delta get siphoned off earlier upstream by various irrigation systems.

While some actors see it as a futile effort, there have been many proposals to restore the Mississippi River Delta. For instance, the aerial planting of mangrove seeds has even been recommended to help protect the struggling marshes and Louisiana’s coastal region. Tierra Resources, a wetland’s restoration company, proposed that bombing Lousiana’s coast with mangrove seeds could save it. Mangrove root systems are especially useful in providing structures to trap sediments and provide habitats for countless species. Additionally, mangroves have been touted as highly efficient species in carbon sequestration, thus taking carbon dioxide out of the biosphere.

Species diffusion into new environments has been of great concern for the different lifeways these soggy localities sustain, whether human or non-human. Many so-called “invasive species” have been identified throughout the river delta by researchers at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research hosted by Tulane and Xavier University. Such species have disrupted local ecological relations and practices and have had profound economic effects. Some plants have even entirely blocked waterways in the swamps and estuaries where salt and freshwater mix. 

Louisiana’s humid subtropical climate, and the diverse ecosystems therein, also warrant attention in that they can incubate some of the world’s deadliest parasites and other microbes. Of particular concern would be some of today's Neglected Tropical Diseases (i.e., Chagas, Cysticercosis, Dengue fever, Leishmaniasis, Schistosomiasis, Trachoma, Toxocariasis, and West Nile virus) often perceived as only affecting tropical regions of Latin America and revealing the enduring legacies of colonial health disparities.

How and when are seemingly quotidian events and upsets understood as not isolated but rather as produced in conjunction with other anthropocenics worldwide? What roles will interspecies relations and forms of care play as we cope with further anthropocenic agitation?

NOLA’s oldest tree, McDonogh Oak in City Park, 800 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK9YoGpng_c&t=0s

Other trees in New Orleans: https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/new-orleans-louisiana/trees

"She saw the illness of this group as a "struggle for power" and material resources related to the disaster."

"According to one biochemist, many of the cleanup workers recieved 6-8 times the lethal dose of radiation." "They are alive," he told me.
"They know they didn't die, but they don't know how they survived."

"Citizens, have come to depend on obtainable technologies and legal procedures to gain political regongition and admission to some form of welfare inclusion."

Very little in this film failed to convice me. The information was well thought out and put together, the resources that were in this film were vaild and cannot be refuted because they are first hand accounts. This film does shine a negative light on nuclear power, which made me a little concerned because nuclear power is not always dangerous, but other then that nothing was done sloppily or had incorrect information

" The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be  'like the real life' in the superficial sense; but it sets before us an image of what reality may well be like in some central region."

" in many cases, the actors were still engaged in the story, vs a quest for a cure - in imagining alternative outcomes, evaluating the potential meanings of the past and seeking treatments"

"The diverse accounts of the illness in these narratives represnet attentative plots, a telling of the story in different ways each implying a different story of efficacy and a possiblity of an alternative ending of the story."

Three ways the argument is supported is through evidence provided from rurual Hati- supervised ART and the effects the treatment and betterment of AIDS/HIV infections in Rwanda. Also through explaining that old methods could not wotk- to look  at the population and realize its the infrastructure that is at fault.

The methods to produce the arguments in the report include taking direct evidence and using its information to explain the issue of rape and how it became a more popular issue in the medical community. Statements of general information and explanation are also provided with direct quotes as evidence. The article also includes explained acounts of how rape is treated by the medical community in African communities.

Three ways the article is supported through using statements from the WHO about the problems of public health security, research studies on global epidemics such as “dark winter”, TB DOTS, and others. The article also uses direct quotes from credible sources such as national security officials: Richard Clark and the NSABB to name a few.

Three points I followed up to learn more was:

healthcare currently in the united states, for example obama care and how it helps people without insurance. I learned that through this system it was easier and more efficient for some people to get care and insurance even if they had prior health conditions. However I also learned it is not a perfect solution.

https://www.healthcare.gov/

I looked up the percentages of americans who do not have health insurance. From researching this I learned that the number was a lot higher than I had expected and I questioned why the number was not lower due to obama care.

http://kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-popul…

The last point I looked up was national admission rates to ERs. I was curious on the national average about how many people seek help. I wondered how many people do not seek help becasue they do not have insurance. I also became curious about how many of these people came to get treatement and were denied.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm