ATTEMPTING TO TAME THE MISSISSIPPI

What people don't understand is that the Mississippi historically moved around, and has only been bounded in a channel by the Army Corp of Engineers for the last 60 years or so. If it weren't for them, the Mississippi's main channel would have shifted west to the Atchafalaya decades ago, leaving New Orleans high and dry--and probably better off.

But there was political pressure to leave New Orleans as a Mississippi River town, so the Corp of Engineers has been engaging in ever-larger and more futile projects to channel this mighty river into one channel.

The ports of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and points in between exist as an intermodal link between river barges and ocean going ships. As it is cheaper to ship by barge than by truck, this increases the competitiveness of our exports and decreases the cost of imports. The Mississippi River, on its current artificial path, is a superhighway of commerce. It could be allowed to take its natural path. However, this is not without consequence to the rest of the country.

There have been many consequences of this decision. The annual flooding of the Mississippi used to rebuild the coastal reefs and marshes and extend the Louisiana coast line. Now, the soil that washes down the Mississippi is channeled deeper into the Gulf of Mexico, and the coastline is steadily eroding.

Man cannot control the universe. There are things that Man should not fool himself into believing that he can control. The mighty Mississippi is one such thing.

We held back the flood for a hundred years, but Mother Nature is letting us know who is boss. And this has nothing to do with "global warming." It's just the way it is.

In the long term, man indeed cannot control the universe. But in the short term man will not stand idly by and not attempt to resist the flow of the universe when it suits him to resist. The easiest and most "sustainable" course with nature is to do nothing -- to starve when and where it is dry and to drown when and where it is wet.

It can be argued that everything that man has done since he started with stone tools and crude agriculture is ultimately "unnatural".

In the end we use our ingenuity to try to fool mother nature. And in the end we often relearn the lesson that she won't be fooled. But holding back the flood for a hundred years has created a kind of prosperity which allows us to be more able to recover from mother nature's wrath than we would have otherwise been able to do.

Many will take away from an event like this flood that it is folly to undertake the kinds projects which are now threatened -- that in the end, we will fail. And in the end we all will fail. But a hundred years of the prosperity that these projects have given us is not chopped liver. And our prosperity will make it easier for us to survive and thrive "after the flood".

No undertaking by mankind is permanent. Those undertakings are the way we pass the time. They are the way we provide ourselves a bit of temporary relief from otherwise constant and random threats to our comfort. Someday the Mississippi will have its way. And we will adapt. But adapting from a position of relative prosperity is easier than adapting from a position of poverty.

Our counterparts in Bangladesh have not had the temerity (or resources) to resist nature's flooding and, frankly, I can live with the malevolent Mississippi, our ingenuity and the ultimate certainty that we will not always have our way with it.

The alternative to subjecting ourselves to the certainty of failure in resisting or ignoring nature's power is to huddle into the "safe" places and to engage only in "safe" undertakings. To forgo the benefits that risk takers who live in places like New Orleans, San Francisco and a thousand other risky places have shared with us. And to reduce the opportunities for each of us to find like minded people and diverse places which satisfy our diverse sensibilities.

The river will move, and so will we.

Posted in: US