New Orleans is effed, just effed, it seems — DON’T rebuild

Here’s the Gustav potential storm surge and here’s how vulnerable a worst-case scenario is. (Via Wired.)

And, with the latest projections being that Gustav will still be Category 4 at landfall, and will hit just west enough of the Crescent City itself to give New Orleans the full-on brunt of its more dangerous east-side winds, this is all likely to happen.

And, with us about at new moon, rather than first or last quarter, high tide will probably run pretty strong, to boot.

Soo… this is not a black/white, liberal/conservative, rich/poor or Bush FEMA/Clinton FEMA issue, at all, but…

We should NOT rebuild New Orleans.

PERIOD.

Especially if global warming and climate change presages longer-lasting hurricanes and a longer-lasting season, we should not rebuild New Orleans. Because, at the same time it faces these climate-change waters, the city itself continues to sink from groundwater pumping, and continues to lose wetland space in large part due to loss of siltation from the channelization of the Mississippi.

It’s time to move, and time to move on.

Beyond that, to riff on the other geographically-focused national disaster to which parts of America are prone, we don’t have federal earthquake insurance. It’s high time for Washington to get out of flood insurance, IMO, for both fiscal and environmental reasons.

At the least, require all rebuilding in NOLA, as part of federal flood insurance checks, to be done above sea level. If that means much of NOLA becomes a giant cow pasture, so be it.