A year ago Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, and ripping through the oil infrastructure of the gulf. The aftermath of that storm was a spike of inflation that rippled across the country and slowed the economy - and vast slashing scars across a great American city.

I remember those hours with a dry clarity, running models, reading weather underground and blogging on the dangers of flooding from the storm. I remember following the train wreck of prepositioning, and the sinking feeling that found its way into musical expression, as well as proposals in my day job existence.

Even today Katrina haunts the nation - it has called for a monumental masterpiece from Spike Lee - and a torrent of songs and poems. It's icons are great and small, public and private.

This is why this graphic should not give anyone a warm fuzzy feeling.

Jeff Masters has an able summary of the available data, but the most chilling words come from the National Hurricane Center:

IN SUMMARY...ERNESTO COULD BECOME A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS HURRICANE AS IT MOVES ACROSS THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO. INTERESTS IN THESE AREAS SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF THIS SYSTEM.

Forecaster Beven is not prone to overstatement, or even much in the way of humor, unlike some of the other NHC forecasters, who insert wry irony into their discussion. Beven's "just the facts" approach, and conservative orientation makes this warning starker.

This year has been far more hostile to tropical storms than last year - which was the Barry Bonds wonder year of Atlantic tropical storm formation, eclipsing records last set in the 1930's. Global warming probably plays a significant role in increasing storm formation, but a tropical cyclone is a complex beast - requiring sea surface temperatures, low level vorticity, mid-level conditions and high level winds to form, and strengthen. No one is seriously expecting a replay of last year's awesome total of storms, hurricanes and massive cat 5 hurricanes. But then that isn't necessary - another strike through the oil producing areas of the gulf, when combined with uncertainty from the Middle East, problems in Alaska and massive speculation in commodities will deliver a shock to an economy that is tottering on the edge of recession.

This is why it is important to take this warning seriously, but also to realize that conditions could turn against Ernesto tomorrow, and dissipate or weaken the storm. A high level ridge could develop more slowly, or steering currents veer the storm off in another direction. Earlier this year Tropical Storm Chris seemed destined to run the Katrina track, but was sheared apart by dry air and unfavorable winds. There is a great deal of spinning before this particular climatalogical roulette wheel comes to rest.

Which is why it is important to be blunt - we have learned nothing from Katrina and her sister Rita - which ripped across oil infrastructure near Texas, and put upward pressure on prices that persists today - and the near miss of Wilma, which was a late season monster storm that veered off before striking the Gulf oil producing areas. We have learned nothing in preparedness, nothing in development patterns, nothing in economic restructuring, nothing in prevention and nothing in bidding and construction of protective infrastructure. Instead of a coordinated plan to rebuild, we have a mad rush of people back into their homes, hoping that somehow it will all work out. New Orleans today still has only half the people of a year ago.

We have done nothing - even of the simplest variety.

Consider for example the state of oil and gas leases near Louisiana. Because of long conflicts between a corrupt state government and the federal government - dating back to the Truman Administration - Louisiana gets almost nothing from the leases that the Federal Government writes. This is the money which could pay for repairing the battered wetlands and other forms of flood amelioration, and it is sitting in the mire of a reactionary Congress that thinks that dead people's money matters more than preventing people from dying for lack of money. The insurance system - which has allowed people to over-build near the coasts all along the Atlantic, has not been overhauled. The "F" in FEMA is still a four letter word, and the Department of Homer Simpson has done donuts for preparedness.

In short, at the very moment when an active, engaged and intelligent government is necessary - in an environment where the combination of coastal growth, increased storm formation, dependence on gulf oil production and economic pressure are coming to a head - we have seen a government whose primary focus has been on keeping the military pork and revenue reductions flowing for one more year. This has an unseemly resemblence to looters packing in the last television sets as they hear the sirens in the distance.

Last year there were a series of steps that could have been taken to stabilize New Orleans. They weren't taken. Over the course of the last year there were a host of actions - to reform, restore and where needed replace - that could have been taken to set America and New Orleans on the path to recovery. But the same kind of squabbling and egotism that has delayed the rebuilding on the site of the World Trade Center has occured with an order of magnitude more force over New Orleans.

The chaos of these efforts is mirrored by the chaos in handling Iraq, which now enjoys triple digit inflation and a broken down banking system.

There is no single magic bullet - though a complete overhaul of the catastrophic bureaucratic boondoggle which is the Department of Homer Simpson would be an excellent place to start - but instead a long and focused chain of policies that will reduce vulnerability to storms on the Gulf Coast. These would include reducing oil dependence, shifting development away from the shore line, overhauling the Army Corps of Engineers, an agreement on oil leases for Louisiana, better disaster response and management systems, removal of political deadwood packed in by Bush and his cronies, laws to change flood and wind insurance to prevent people from being stranded with huge damages and no coverage, and a civic planning system for Housing and Urban Development - and that is just what should have been started in the last 12 months, let alone what further research and study would bring to light.

To understand the scale of what has happened, remember that not since the first decade of the 20th century has American had a city slain by natural disaster - the Galveston Hurricane. That decade was before there was such a thing as government as we understand it, when the understanding was that government protected the borders, minted coins and put a few criminals in jail from time to time - or gave them large loans to build railroad monopolies.

Bush has presided over the scarring of two great metropolises, both preventable disasters. But while he is personally culpable in ways that only history can measure - more so because there is more than slight suspicion that the mismanagement of the rebuilding of New Orleans has benefitted the Republicans by making Louisiana a more Republican state - it is a more fundamental reality that the whole of the body politic must have the will to act to protect all Americans from such overwhelming events as this. This is because there is no part of the country that is beyond reach of economic or natural catastrophe, whether earthquake, flood, snow storm, heat wave, tropical storm or drought, we are all vulnerable and believe that in our hour of need the rest of the country will not desert us. But in order for the rest of America to be there for us, we must be there for them.

More over, as our overheated and underinvested economy becomes more and more dependent on the rise and fall of a single commodity for the personal well being of most of its citizens, we must realize that what happens in New Orleans does not stay in New Orleans - exports and oil prices were not merely regional problems after the storm, but were felt in every city, village and town in America.

And we have not even begun moving on any of this yet in any meaningful way. Instead, just now political leaders are begining to gain a view to the scope of the problem.

Baseball teams with only two good starting pitchers often say "One, Two and Pray For Rain". Here we had best look to a change in leadership, and pray, very hard, that rain does not come. Because out there in the sea, Ernesto is churning forward with greater force.