New Orleans: The World’s Largest Ecological Restoration Project

Posted at 7:55 am on Tuesday, September 6, 2005, in Uncategorized, and tagged bush, kos.

Previously I blogged the opinion that the city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt after the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina. Simply put, it makes no sense whatsoever; especially when you consider the little fact that it lies under sea level!

A little while after I posted that blog, news came across the internet and blogs that Illinois Republican representative Dennis Hastert made a comment along the lines that the city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt. And did the blogs and media ever pounce (especially the ever-more preachy Daily Kos community). Once reviewing what Hastert said, I stepped back and thought to myself, “Was what I said that insensitive? Is it somehow unAmerican to suggest a city that lies below sea level probably shouldn’t be rebuilt?” And I quickly realized the answer: No.

Hastert made his statement solely from the taxpayer perspective. (That is what his constituents ask of him, by the way.) What I am calling for is the world’s largest, and most expensive, ecological restoration project in the history of the world. My idea is reveled by the NRDC, the Sierra Club, and even the (right-wing-controlled) EPA; Hastert’s ramblings are endorsed by Grover Norquist.

I understand, or at least I try to, the complexity and sensitivity, emotionally and politically, at a time like this. Hurricane Katrina wrought devastation this country has never seen. Thousands of people have died. And many, many more have lost their homes and their way of life. However, the city of New Orleans lies under sea level, and as hard as we may try to prevent it, water flows downhill. It always does. Water does not stop working until it has reached the lowest point. And to rebuild the city, simply to defy the laws of physics, at an immense cost, because it is somehow the American thing to do, is actually the most outrageously ignorant thing to do. We should spend the same amount of money (on the order of tens of billions of dollars) to restore New Orleans as the swamp it is supposed to be. The benefit to society, and the benefit to the environment outweigh (or as Bush would say, “doubly” outweigh) the benefit of rebuilding a torn city below sea level. (Note: Dams do not stop water; dams do a very good job at slowing water down. Verbatim from lecture, Professor Raymond Seed, University of California, Berkeley.)

I know I am certain to receive flack for stating this opinion of mine. It happened similarly following the tragic events of nine-eleven. I had proposed then that the site of the World Trade Center not be redeveloped, but be restored by the planting of ten thousand trees, and thus become a truely sacred site within Manhattan. (Instead it will become, what, a skyscraper or something.)

Recently archived: The Foreseeable Tragedy.

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