After watching and reading about all the devastation left in Katrina's wake, I repeatedly find myself thinking of places further north along the Mississippi River. Places in the plains states, towns big and small along the river and its tributaries.
These are places that routinely flood, year after year. And given the vagaries of flood insurance, Uncle Sam usually ends up paying the steep reconstruction costs, with quite a bit of controversy surrounding such bailouts (no pun intended). After all, these people may get renovated homes, but they're still living in a flood plain, doomed to suffer misfortune again.
The bill for New Orleans and its environs will likely be far higher than what we're estimating now. But no matter what is done, when the city is rebuilt it will be rebuilt atop land that still sits below sea level. Dikes may be restored, levees may be reinforced, but nothing will change that fact.
Which makes me wonder: why rebuild at all? After all, we'll simply be postponing the inevitable. And given the increasing problem of coastal erosion in Louisiana-- certainly helped along by Hurricane Katrina-- future threats are looming ever larger.
Now, I know the gut reaction when faced with natural disasters is to suck it up, to tough it out, and to believe in rebuilding. Such determination is a sure way to build hope for the future. It's a wonderfully admirable trait on the part of humanity, and us "can do" Americans especially.
Yet given the abundant-- and enduring-- challenges posed by the geography of Southern Louisiana, I don't see how it makes sense to rebuild New Orleans, at least on anything other than an emotional level. From a rational perspective, it appears to me wiser to permanently abandon the city and relocate to higher ground. Take this as an opportunity to do things right.
Of course, the environmental costs involved in abandonment-- we couldn't walk away without "cleaning up" what was left behind-- would be immense. But we'd have to spend that money anyway to rebuild New Orleans, and meanwhile we'd only be setting ourselves up for a repeat down the road-- only one potentially even more catastrophic in lives and dollars lost.
Mother Nature throws plenty of disasters at us all the time. I'd just hate for our pride to make Mother Nature's job of destruction any easier.
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UPDATE: Oh, and even if New Orleans is rebuilt, guess what? It's still doomed:
New Orleans is sinking three feet per century--eight times faster than the worldwide rate of only 0.4 feet per century.
Of course, this week New Orleans sank a whole lot further than that, with tragic results.
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UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Guess what? I'm a pussy! Gee, thanks a lot Andrea, I love you too.
BTW, I'd love to see the connection between abandoning the War on Terror, and reconsidering reconstructing a city below sea level atop sinking silt surrounded by water smack dab in the middle of hurricane alley. We surrender in the war, we lose our freedoms and our lives; we surrender to the Gulf of Mexico, and we lose tits-for-beads and Anne Rice.
As for Venice, talk to me the day after Venice faces a Category 4 hurricane, and then we'll have a fair comparison.
Can't one man stand contrarian to popular convention without being called names for doing so? We all know New Orleans is going to be rebuilt, regardless of whether I or anyone else thinks it's a bad idea. My job, however, is simply to remind everyone of what a dumb idea this is from a logical standpoint.
The fair Andrea admits she is selfish, and loves New Orleans and doesn't want to let it go. My point is not to care about anybody's love for the great city of New Orleans, but to simply share the facts as I see them, to get people to *think* rationally about what's going to be a massive investment in time and money for a project that by all standards of measurement is doomed to suffer the same fate again, only potentially far worse in the future. But again, why worry about money, and lives, when we're thirsty for a Hurricane (the drink, not the storm)? Disasters are so far in the future anyway.
Like Katrina was-- so very far in the future. Until it showed up, that is.
Louis XV had it right--apres moi, le deluge.
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