Steve Chapman:
Of all the ideas I've heard about what to do with New Orleans, the best one came from former Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind, who said we should "put somebody like former President Jimmy Carter in charge of rebuilding New Orleans."
As president, Carter distinguished himself by failing to free the hostages in Iran, failing to vanquish inflation and failing to solve the energy crisis. Were he to fail to rebuild New Orleans, he'd be doing the country a great service.
If you were looking for a place expressly designed to endanger people and property, it would look a lot like New Orleans. No one today would ever think of building a city on a plot of ground below sea level, surrounded by water, endlessly vulnerable to floods and hurricanes. So why would anyone think of rebuilding a city in exactly the same place?
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No amount of money will change the fact that this is no place for a large urban population. Most of the city is below sea level, and it continues to sink, even as the ocean is rising. Over the next century, it's expected to drop by a full meter. Virginia Burkett of the United States Geological Survey told National Public Radio, "Within the next century, the areas that didn't flood this time will be likely to flood under a similar hurricane situation."
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Before the hurricane, New Orleans had one of the poorest and least mobile populaces in the country. You could have made a case before Katrina that the best thing most residents could do is leave for someplace with higher living standards and a better job market.
Now, most of them have done exactly that. It's hard to see why they would be better off returning to New Orleans six months or a year from now. It's even harder to see why the government should encourage them to do so. There's a whole continent where they can settle, most of it above sea level.
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For a long time, New Orleans has been fighting a war with nature, and it finally lost. Why fight that war again?
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