We got our first look inside the city of New Orleans today, 29 days after Katrina struck. There's still water pooled in the streets on the east side of the city, thanks to levees that re-breached during Hurricane Rita. It's eerie to see mile after mile of residential and commercial neighborhoods of a major American city emptied of all life and strewn with debris. Mark was at ground zero in Manhattan a month after 9-11. Clean-up was underway, the city was coming back to life. A month after Katrina, New Orleans is still supine and it's not clear when it will get back on its feet.

We passed a car dealership with a lot full of sport utility vehicles, all ruined by floodwater. Those cars, at least, will not contribute to global warming.

We spent the morning in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans. It's home to two refineries - Chalmette Refining (owned by ExxonMobil) and Murphy Oil Refining - as well as low-income citizens of several races. An oil tank floated off its mooring during Katrina and spilled approximately 800,000 gallons of oil into the neighborhood. Some houses in St. Bernard's have high-water marks, some have high-oil marks, black rings marking the furthest extent of the flood. We spoke to several families who were able to return to their homes for the first time in a month. None of the people we spoke with will return to St. Bernard Parish. One man estimated 70 percent of the residents will never return.

This afternoon, we spent four hours flying over the Gulf of Mexico, checking on oil platforms. Weather was perfect for flying - five miles visibility, sunlight reflecting off the cyan water of the gulf. There are, however, 4,000 oil platforms in the gulf and almost one-quarter of them were in Rita’s path. One rig - Rowan Gorilla IV - was pumping oil over the side as we approached, but cut the flow as we made a second pass. Must have been feeling guilty, eh?

We saw a five-mile long oil slick and are investigating what might have caused it. We observed damage to refineries in Port Arthur, Texas. We saw plenty of damage to wetlands along the Louisiana and Texas coastlines, ensuring that damage from future storms will be severe.

Autumn is spreading across much of the American continent; homeowners are growing anxious about the cost of heating oil as the nights grow cold. Reuters reports Hurricane Rita may be the most damaging storm ever, in regard to oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, which will send prices even higher.

It's still hot and humid in southern Louisiana; last night we were attacked by fire ants after we inadvertently stepped on their nest in the dark.